Long-time El Degas abuser

[Fiddler Crab]

Hi there... first post. Absolutely love the spirit of this site. Glad someone has honoured this solid old brand.

I got my El Degas back around 1982, when I was but a wee hairball. My dad picked it up for me, second-hand. Black '70s Strat knock-off, maple neck. That poor guitar... I spent the rest of the '80s absolutely abusing it. If it wasn't getting mangled and tossed to the ground dramatically at band practise, I was torturing its truss rod and other fiddly bits during my bored moments of Frankenstein experimentations at home.

These days, the poor thing is an unplayable husk... neck out-of-alignment, mystery tuning heads on it, chunks out of the finish, ridiculous paint on it, El Degas logo scraped off the headstock. I've moved on to bigger-name brands, but the truth of the matter is that my El Degas was a heck of a quality guitar for the money. Not only could it take a major a beating, it played and sounded great. Well, before I beat it into submission. Poor thing.

To this day, I think about getting an actual Strat that looks the way my El Degas did before I went all ape-with-a-suitcase on it.

And lately... I've simply been thinking about finding a nice old El Degas Strat, and this time treating it right.

Great guitars!

[charles]

Hey there,

Thanks for sharing. Admitting you're an El Degas abuser is half the battle

Cheers!

[Barry]

Hi Fiddler, thanks for the story. Sounds like a lot of us, although maybe to the death of the instrument!
There seems to be quite few Strat's showing up lately in the Toronto area. If you're serious, have a browse through Kijiji and Craigslist and you might just make your wish come true for a couple hundred bucks!