My first contact with a guitar i can recall was when my mother played a funny tune called "Amanda", i was very young back then and i don't know what year it was. My mothers guitar is an old acoustic "Bjärton", and this was also the first guitar i ever played. It still lives on, but it's in a terrible condition .0. I din't start of with "Smoke on the water", (surprise, surprise). The first song i played was Kiss "Heaven's on fire" that i picked up from the record. Low E-string and a lot of energy made it sound really kool back then. My brother,six years older then me, played guitar in a local band in those days, he was my idol. He had a sunburst Scandi at first, (which i never could get my hands on), then he traded that for a white Swede. He used a Peavey Bandit 50 amp., (were did that go, i really liked it?). As i got older i started taking nightcourses and trying to pick "Tom Dooley", (ever heard that before?).
As time passed by my brother got himself a family and the Swede moved up to the attic. After some pursuation he agreed to lend it to me, but by now the Peavey amp. was gone. Fortunately he had another amp. that i could use, and this is still the worst guitaramp. in the world! It has an unique sound and a very unusuall range of effects. It sounds almost like a speaker in a cardboard box, and the effects are a wide range of different AM-stations, (you just gotta love it!). This was the first time i could try those heavy Hendrix riffs i learned earlier. (The picture on the right is the only one I've got, so it´ll do for now.) Me and a couple of friends got together and tried to be a band and during this noisy period of my life i bought the Scandi.
Soundclip from the first rehersal of "Totalt Plakat", terrible!
Running in darkness. (1,11Mb)
My brothers Swede was a heavy piece of instrument, after playing a few hours both neck and arms felt sour. Anyone with experience of this guitar knows what i´m talking about. But it had a wounderful neck and a good sound, (something special about those humbuckers). So i managed to save up some money and started looking for something lighter. I grew up in a small town, and there was only one guitar-dealer. Infact that store was originally a ""Hagström"" store. My brother and I walked into the store on the 5th of march 1990 to look at two Fender Stratocaster I had seen earlier. (I think it was a black american and a white asian.)
When we were sitting down and trying the Strats. the storeowner recognised my brother. (My brother bought his guitars from this store too.) He told us that he had something special in stock that might be just what I was looking for. He handed over the white Scandi and i got bitten really hard. This was two worlds coming together. Both the wounderful neck and the singlecoil sound, all in one guitar. A big plus was that this guitar had no Tremar, (i never liked that). I didn´t want to look to enthusiastic so i kept on comparing the Strats. and the Scandi. After some discussion with my brother, a few bars from ""god save the queen"" and a couple of Hendrix riffs I decided to buy the Scandi. The storeowner then told me that this was the very last brand new Hagström guitar he had. This is a bit strange, the Scandi was manufactured 1978-80 and the guitar i was holding in my hands was brand new! When the store opened many years before, he saved the very first guitar for himself and he thought about also saving the Scandi, but luckely he didn´t. So i paid 2800sek. and walked home with a big smile on my face.
Picture to your left shows my old boy-room, The amp. from hell just out of shot.)
....and by the way, it's coffe in the glass ;).....
In the fututre i will tell you a bit about a small project i´m working on. I'm trying to find my brothers old Swede. It was in pretty bad condition the last time i saw it so i'll try not to get my hopes up. I've got a few hints to were i might be, but you all know how it is. These things take time.......
