Evening, all,
I'm what might be considered an odball Gibson afficianado - the favoured Gibsons in my collection are a Music City Jr (yup, the B-bender abomination) , an SG Futura and a 50's Tribute Les Paul (just the best playing LP that I've ever owned, or played - so bite me!). My other passions guitar wise, are good Telecasters, Gretsches, Rickenbackers and... Starfields - yup, y'know - the guitars Ibanez made to appeal to a more *ahem* mature audience. Y'all will know that some of these were madein Korea, some in Japan, and some made (or finished from the better necks/bodies) in the CA Ibanez Custom shop, by some rather well respected builders.... They had some tasty endorsees - from Rob Buck (10,000 Maniacs - one of my favourite players) to Ritchie Kotzen.
I have a handful of Starfields - from US Altairs, to the lesser spotted Japanese made 12 string - all absolute corkers - a build quality that I've seen rarely elsewhere (except for the Korean ones - decent players, but not the dog's bollocks in build quality), and .... here comes my bragg - I've just scored one of my holy grail Japanese Starfields (sucked boiled sweet, twin humbucker, slightly offset tele) for £249 (WITH A HISCOX CASE), from a dealer here in the UK.... for all of £249. Only problem now, is which guitar I have to pass on to one of my sons (it's the only way I can circumvent the one in, one out rule that I now have with my wife).
Apologies if this post comes off as unduly smug, but I'm feeling unduly smug right now.