Brushes with Equipment Greatness

Let me lay out this story. Perhaps some of you have experiences that are similar. I suppose if any of you have been playing seriously for any length of time, something like this has probably happened to you:

The year ? 1981. I am a Senior at Del Norte High in Albuquerque, NM. I have been playing guitar for approximately 2 years. At this point I am figuring out that knowing how to play has a positive effect on females and a negative one on males: both are desired outcomes. My first electric was a black Memphis Les Paul copy. Not a bad guitar; bolt-on neck, stayed in tune decently, served it's purpose.

I decide to go into a pawn shop here in town to see what I could see. In one shop in particular there it is ! The Holy Grail of guitars. A Les Paul Goldtop. As I look back now I am guessing it must have been about a late Sixties model. It was in great shape and felt more solid and wonderful than anything I had ever played.

I looked at the price tag: $600 ! Crazy expensive for me at that time. I was a sacker at Skaggs-Alpha Beta an got barely over minimum wage. I was probably making about 4 dollars per hour. But I had to have this guitar. It was a major step forward in guitar-playing evolution ! I could just hear my Dad telling me how nuts it was to spend that much on a guitar. The pawn shop owner allowed me to put it on lay-away, so I did. I worked and scrounged to get the money and got the guitar.

Later that year my brother (Darren Dalton who played bass) and I wanted to form a band with a drummer friend of mine named Andy Martinez ( who also went by the name Leandro James). I had one problem. The amplifier that my girlfriend had sounded horrible (solid-state Baldwin keyboard amp with push buttons) and the Marshall half-stack that I was able to borrow on occasion was no longer available. I was broke from putting gas in a 1973 Cutlass Supreme and smoking marijuana. Since I had recently acquired a set-neck Memphis Les Paul that played well, I decided to trade the Goldtop For a Marshall Combo at Wild West Music here in town.

Looking back I now know why the guy at Wild West was so attentive to the transaction and willing to make the straight-across trade for the Combo. As a dumb 18 year old kid, I wasn't totally hip to what that Goldtop was really worth. God only knows what it would be worth now. $10,000 ? $20,000 ? Ugh !

Well, that is the story of one that I wish I had back. More proof that youth is wasted on the young !