Vintage electric guitar is big-headed instrument

THE dayinthelifeofaguitarfiddlingwithacoltoneproject is ticking away nicely. Now strung with a new set of Dean Markley F150 gauge, and with the neck reshaped down from lump of wood to a player friendly profile, the old 1960s cheapie ColTone shows a stunning quality.
Some of its resonance and clarity may stem from the elevation of the bridge, as outlined in the earlier posts, but the headstock is likely to have a bit to do with it.
The headstock measures 26.5cm from the nut to the tip. This compares with 19cm on my tele copy.
The position of the machine heads fans the string anchoring widely over the headstock, perhaps contributing more resonance.
The ColTone headstock was, in fact, an item of amusement for the only other ColTone owner I have been able to find.
We wrote to each other a few times several years ago, after I found a reference to his ColTone in his band profile, which has since disappeared from the internet.
Again, I promise to comb my pile of back-up discs at some stage to recycle a bit more info from him on this rare guitar brand.
Please, ColTone owners and anyone who knows anything about the brand, contact me so I can record it on this site.
We don’t want the ColTone to remain in obscurity when we have an opportunity to write some history.
My success so far in bringing my old maroon ColTone, with accordian-style pick-up switches, up to a high standard of playability through a few adjustments has encouraged me to keep up the amateur luthier approach here.

NEXT post, I’ll have a touch of humour on another subject. Pat Hussey, now of Nelson, South Australia, should get a grin out of this. My first jamming mate and I were at opposite ends of the scale. He was and most likely still is an obsessive string changer, feeling to heart the loss of brilliance after even a few hours playing. I have always defended using strings right through until they expire, avoiding the nuisance of bedding in new sets and preferring the security and predictability that other players may describe as dullness (to me it is ‘mellowness’). Of course, it is important to keep old strings clean. The amount of grime that becomes embedded in the wound strings and builds up under the plain types would shock a plumber. Anyway, more on this in a few days.