: : Does anyone know who manufactured crestline guitars? : hmm.. it’s not nice to knock someone else guitar, especially if they like it. The crestline SG was not junk. : http://store.bluebookinc.com/downloads/BrowseCategory.asp?Product=electricguitar&Heading=212 : bluebook says: : Crestline: : Instruments previously built in Japan circa mid to late 1970s. Distributed by the Grossman Music Corporation of Cleveland, Ohio. : These entry level to intermediate solid body guitars featured designs based on classic American favorites. Crestline offered a wide range of stringed instruments, including classical, folk, dreadnought, and 12-string acoustics; solid body electric guitars and basses; amplifiers; banjos, mandolins, and ukuleles. Considering the amount of instruments available, the Crestline trademark was probably used on guitars built by one of the bigger Japanese guitar producers and rebranded for the U.S. market. One model reviewed at a vintage guitar show was based on Gibson´s Les Paul design, and had Grover tuners, 2 Japanese covered humbuckers, and decent wood. : i wrote a review about my Crestline SG at Harmony Central’s site. : I also own a bunch of guitars. the Crestline SG was my first solidbody electric that i bought for myself. : in the mid to late 70’s, the music store i used to get lessons at carried Gibson, Fender, Baldwin, Conn, Yamaha(accosutics only), and Crestline. : A new Crestline SG with the bigsby style tremelo was a little over $300 (US dollars). about 339 or 349. : they also has les paul copies by Crestline there, they had one with one of those yellowish red sunburst finishes, about $289 if i recall… so the prices were similar. : I got mine there for $133, but that was about 10 years later. it was one of a few older guitars they had forgotten about in their warehouse.. old stock, but new, so they decided to sell them off, cheap. mine had a few scratches on the back and on the back of the neck, but was ok. : it didnt stay in tune well when it was new, but the strings that came on it were the original old strings. the bigsby spring needed to break in a bit to stabilize, and new strings helped. : it would stay in tune better with 10s than 9’s, and with ernie ball, or adarios.. regular electric strings. : i used to abuse the strings terribley with major tremelo use. at the time I recall people always said you had to have a real gibson or a real strat, and that vibrato bars were for basicly, idiots. no serious guitar player. : funny how a few years later they became popular again. then they started to design better tremeloes for the folks that wanted to do major dive bombs without it going out of tune. : kah;ler had a good one then, so did some others. then later floyd roses came out. floyd rose bought out their competition, as i recall. : but nearly any guitar manufacturer knows how to make a semi decent vibrato nowadays. : or maybe people arent as picky. idont know. : my bigsby copy worked ok once the spring was broke in. theyre like new strings, you have to stretch them a bit till they stay in tune. : I have an SG copy by crestline. I bought a Gibson SG Deluxe many years later. : the woods are darn similar. they weight the same. the necks feel very similar, except that the Crestline has a bolt-on neck, and so you have that problem getting to the higher frets. : the Gibson inlays dont have the same appearance even tho they are both block inlays. the crestline’s edges to the blocks were rounded off a little bit. : they are both made of solid mahogany bodies and necks. : if you put them side by side, next to each other, or back to back.. the shape and contours of the body are the same, except the Crestline is a little more beveled on the inner "horns" than the other. : also the Crestline is a "batwing" type like on the new SGs. mine is an older SG that has just that smaller pickguard below the strings. : the tuners werent great on the crestline, so i put on some Gotohs, which were cheaper than schaller or grover at the time but work at least as well. : the finish on the wood is fabulous on the Crestline, a deep dark red transparent stain, that lets you see the grain. it has binding on the neck, similar to the gibson. : the headstock has layered binding around the edge of the top surface, and is black, and had inlay work for the Crestline name in it. the gibson is black on top of the headstock, with no binding around the edge of the headstock, and inlays for the Gibson name on top, also the little logo they put in the middle there. : the elecronics inside is the same 500 k pots, etc. : (just a personal preference, but i like sealed tuners better than ones with just a chrome cover.) : the crestline actually had originally come with single coils. i thought they were humbuckers because they have those wider style chrome covers like they put on les pauls and SGs. but years later one of the pickups went dead, and i opened it, and found it was a single coil in there. : so then i replaced it with a humbucker pickup. the guy at the store told me that they were the same pickups they put in Gibson Les Pauls, but it didnt have the original box with it, so i wasnt so sure. but it was cheap, so i thought I’d try it out and see. : it sounded great, so i bought another one just like it. : Since I have an actual Gibson SG now, just for the heck of it, i pulled my crestline out of the closet, and plugged it into my amp, and played it, then played the gibson. they sound pretty much the same, so i think they were gibson pickups. the wood is the same type, too, so it would kinda figure they’d sound the same. : the crestline SG isnt a bad guitar for someone who can’t afford a Gibson. mine worked for years as my main guitar and i had no complaints, except for the bolt on neck. : later i bought a fender strat, which, to be honest, is even more of a hindrance when playing higher frets. : but i like the sound of a strat sometimes, ya know? Sometimes I like the sound of a different guitar, so that’s why I have a bunch of them. : I bought the strat because the SG needed refretted and I couldn’t get it refretted then. I didnt want the lamination destroyed either, so wanted it done by a pro. : I used to play alot and wore out frets and pickups and things. I used to wear out my strings, the windings would get torn up where they sit over the fret wires becase i was so hard on them. : a crestline is probably not worth a lot, but that doesnt mean it isnt decent or worth having one. : guitars tend to get huge leaps in sales and value if a poplar rock star plays a certain kind. : for example. one year before Brian Setzer and the stray cats recorded their first album, he bought his mint condition Gretch for $100 at a pawn shop. because they weren’t "popular" then. : two years later, they were worth almost a similar price as they are now. : the beatles popularized Vox amps, but they didnt especially like them. they were simpley the highest wattage amps they could afford at the time, and they could plg more than one into one amp. after they got popular Voxes were worth alot more. : : Eric Clapton used to play a Les Paul, and a Marshal. He got an SG then, in the later 60’s. around 68 or 69, he bought a bunch of old stratocasters from a music store for about a hundred dollars. he explained they were cheap then because not many people actually played strats. : they liked Rickenbackers and gretches and Gibsons more. strats were a "dime a dozen". he took the strats apart and built strats (about a dozen of them) from the parts. He gave some to freinds. George Harrison a white one. He kept a few for himself, one was a black one, one was a brown sunburst. : i heard this in a interview on him years ago. : kurt cobain liked the old fender jaguars and mustangs, because they were cheap. in fact, i recall seeing them in pawnshops, and stuff, and people saying how they were really awful, and never stayed in tune. they were cheap till Nirvana popularized them again. : now they cost at least as much as the other fenders, but they were always just bottom line fenders, from way back. : i had a harmony rocket as my first electric, it was cheap,(used, but barel used) so my parents got it for me. : I loved the guitar for a long time. still have it, and like it. people would think i was nuts for liking it. : Now the darn rockets are going for around $300-$400. : I guess someone figured out they were made of solid maple and mahogany, not cheap laminates, and they had DeArmond pickups on them. : the wiring is extra extra sheilded inside them, and despite its age never had anything fail to work right on it. : has nice sunburst paint job and bindings and stuff. : how much a guitar is worth, just depends on who is buying and who is selling, and how much they agree it’s worth. : this was kinda long.. guess i am sort of overly bored at home right now. lol : –dan Just wanted to let everyone know, I have a crestline guitar given to me by a friend. It seems it is a strat copy but on the junior scale with a thin body. The instrument is solid wood ( of what type I do not know)not quite 2 inches thick, with a bolt on neck. I am using this instrument for home recording and it does a good job of delivering a " k-chink " sound for funkier tunes. Action on this guitar is super low so it is easy to play. I can leave this thing in the case for 2 months not even touch it and it is still in tune at 440. It is the most reliable guitar I have and probably the most fun to play when plugged in. The sound almost reminds me of a Jimmy Reed meets Jimmy Ray Vaughn sound. Just thought I would drop in and share my story.