I found a beat up Crestline Les Paul that was made in Japan..I had bought it back in college 86-87 for about $60 as a decoration to hang on the wall...I had no intention of ever playing it. But recently I've been inspired to learn and have been doing my best with an acoustic guitar, but I want more. Lucky for me I found my old Crestline collecting dust in my storage shed this morning.
Like I said it's a Les Paul design w/Cherry Sunburst and it looks like the 50's style neck. It's a very solid guitar, very heavy, a lot more moving parts than my Washburn acoustic. It seems to be made very well. I think I'll need to change some of the electronics and the tuners are fried. But I'm excited to see that someone else has at least heard of Crestline.
I'm looking forward to refurbishing this and plugging it in.
: : "...purchased a crestline flying v modle from a pawn shop with grover tuners and humbucker pickups ..."
: I know Crestline is listed on a banjo-players' Web site as an "Asian" instrument-maker, though official information about a "Crestline" company is hard to find. Most likely they're Japanese; those I remember seeing in the 1970s were (as was typical) copies of American designs. There is a "Crestline" trademark that used to be a line of Gibson amplifiers in the '60s; the guitar-headstock name may have imitated that as a way of seeming more "American" in the days before Japanese guitars earned their own reputation for good craftsmanship. (In the '70s, the Japanese copies were often made embarrassingly better than the American models they were imitating, hence the "lawsuit" Ibanez LPs that are sought after today.) Not surprised about the Grovers; I'm guessing a previous owner upgraded the originals because the rest of the instrument was so good. If today's Asian guitarmakers (for example, Samick and Cort make guitars in Korean and Indonesian factories for many of the "name brands") are any indication, then "Crestline" may be one of many brands manufactured at the Nippon Gakki factory by Hoshino (the Japanese company that markets its products under the Ibanez brand) -- that's just a guess, but it might be a place to start. You should also know (courtesy of a luthier friend of mine) that Japanese makers in the '60s and '70s imported all their pickups from the USA; your humbuckers could be genuine DeArmonds. But name-brand snobbery aside, the main criteria for a player's instrument should always be sound, fit-and-finish, and craftsmanship. Play on, and enjoy.
Re: crestline guitars
I found a beat up Crestline Les Paul that was made in Japan..I had bought it back in college 86-87 for about $60 as a decoration to hang on the wall...I had no intention of ever playing it. But recently I've been inspired to learn and have been doing my best with an acoustic guitar, but I want more. Lucky for me I found my old Crestline collecting dust in my storage shed this morning.
Like I said it's a Les Paul design w/Cherry Sunburst and it looks like the 50's style neck. It's a very solid guitar, very heavy, a lot more moving parts than my Washburn acoustic. It seems to be made very well. I think I'll need to change some of the electronics and the tuners are fried. But I'm excited to see that someone else has at least heard of Crestline.
I'm looking forward to refurbishing this and plugging it in.
: : "...purchased a crestline flying v modle from a pawn shop with grover tuners and humbucker pickups ..."
: I know Crestline is listed on a banjo-players' Web site as an "Asian" instrument-maker, though official information about a "Crestline" company is hard to find. Most likely they're Japanese; those I remember seeing in the 1970s were (as was typical) copies of American designs. There is a "Crestline" trademark that used to be a line of Gibson amplifiers in the '60s; the guitar-headstock name may have imitated that as a way of seeming more "American" in the days before Japanese guitars earned their own reputation for good craftsmanship. (In the '70s, the Japanese copies were often made embarrassingly better than the American models they were imitating, hence the "lawsuit" Ibanez LPs that are sought after today.) Not surprised about the Grovers; I'm guessing a previous owner upgraded the originals because the rest of the instrument was so good. If today's Asian guitarmakers (for example, Samick and Cort make guitars in Korean and Indonesian factories for many of the "name brands") are any indication, then "Crestline" may be one of many brands manufactured at the Nippon Gakki factory by Hoshino (the Japanese company that markets its products under the Ibanez brand) -- that's just a guess, but it might be a place to start. You should also know (courtesy of a luthier friend of mine) that Japanese makers in the '60s and '70s imported all their pickups from the USA; your humbuckers could be genuine DeArmonds. But name-brand snobbery aside, the main criteria for a player's instrument should always be sound, fit-and-finish, and craftsmanship. Play on, and enjoy.