Back to Hallmark 60 Custom:
A stranger showed up at my house today to pick up an old bicycle my son had put on the internet to sell…(man, lotsa bikes here I tells you)
It was a young man in his early 30’s whom I let into the house and he couldn’t help but notice my AVRI Strat ’57 and Vibrolux amp sitting in the living room and his face lit up… “so you play the guitar too!”, he concluded.
My setup looked very inviting so from one guitar player to another I said “well, then you must be a player too …go ahead and play if you like and tell me what you think of her, she’s still brand new”.
He needed no further prompting and was soon hitting it off doing some nice rhythmic strumming, intricate and fast finger picking and also some cool riffs. My jaw dropped…clearly he was an advanced player. “My neighbours will be thinking ‘Paul’s progressing at last’…” I joked. (laughs).
Guitar enthusiasm fired up and pushed the bicycle topic right to the background -it would have to wait…
He voiced his compliments for my gear but things were yet to become better as a little voice in my brain was nudging me on saying…
“come on Paul, show him your Mosrite!”
I honestly had no desire to brag but I reasoned: what the heck, he is a guitarist after all –and a good ’un too! …at any rate I shan’t be ‘throwing pearls before swine’.
Let me get straight to the point. After a minute or so into my Hallmark 60 Custom after I had handed it over to him, it was now his turn for jaw dropping.
One superlative after another followed as he proceeded with test driving it. He praised it for it’s playability and feel… “this is a real players’ guitar, I love it…amazing how chords are much easier to play and intonation stays true as you move further up on the neck. He remarked that the Strat was less suitable in this respect. I could agree.
He was repeatedly in awe and I could tell that his admiration was spontaneous and genuine. I guess these are symptoms of being ‘blown away’ –which he was IMO.
I gave him the low down on Mosrite and Hallmark and explained that Mosrite is one of the most copied guitars in the world, next to Fender and Gibson. “...really?!”
It was all new to him and he was not familiar with the iconic offset body shape but it sure was growing on him and he liked the sound very much.
“You won’t find another one quickly in Holland” I said and so I pointed him to Hallmark guitars [Bob, if you receive another order from Holland in the near future, it could possibly be from our bicycle friend]. He invited me check out his “myspace”
http://www.myspace.com/leemason which I did.
