Fame Guitar Revisited

The Fame Guitar and Fame Guitar Classes

Earlier in this blog, (June 2012), I talked about restringing my Fame guitar for the first time ever. Over the past few weeks, I've stumbled across three of these bad boys for sale, and interestingly enough, all three still have their chipboard cases.

I don't remember how much these cost way back when. I know that I got it some time in the early to mid 70's, and that it was a fairly significant expense for my family.The book has a copyright of 1971, which sounds about right-I would have been 8 or 9 years old when I took the classes. 

To repeat what I have written previously, it is a Japanese guitar purchased when everyone still believed that Japanese stuff was junk. In doing some research, the Japanese had enough practice to be making some pretty decent instruments by the early 70's, and they were still using good tone wood. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out which instrument factory made this guitar.

 I believe it is some sort of laminate, but I can't be sure. I don't think that I've done anything to the guitar except change the strings. The neck is interesting, a C-shape that feels both thick and narrow. It appears to have a rosewood fretboard, and the frets are still all in reasonably good shape. Pulling it out of the case, it's still pretty close to in tune, even though I strung it up back in June. Grant it, I don't play this one that often, but holding a tune is still a good thing.

I saw something on the internet that said it came with a record album, and that does sound familiar and could be somewhere in my mother's garage with the amplifier that came with it. I do have the book, and tried a few of the exercises in it. I might try some more, they aren't bad.

If I recall, you bought the guitar/amp package and signed up for lessons for an extended period of time. I recall going to a music studio in South Gate, CA (the same one that Weird Al Yankovic learned accordion, from what I can gather), where for one hour a week I would sit with a few other beginning guitar players. The instructor, some young guy with long hair and a tie, would fire up the projector for the "Chet Atkins Fame" method of guitar lessons. We would all dutifully play along with the recorded sound that matched with the slide in front of us.

You can see where I wrote "complete"
many years ago.

Though I wasn't too thrilled about it at the time-I really wanted to play drums-at this late age I'm glad that I did. I can read music slowly, and I learned several chords so I can actually play along with people. Some basic music theory stuck with me over the years, which I refine every time I go for guitar lessons. I can pick up most stringed instruments (ukulele, bass, mandolin and banjo), and make something that resembles music.

If you were part of the Chet Atkins Fame method, let me know. And if you know anymore about these guitars, let me know that, too.

I've downloaded video before, but for some reason I can't get the video to load on this. Check back and I'll have a video uploaded using the pickup on the guitar. That was the whole reason I was posting in the first place.

April 14, 2013 Update.

It took me a few weeks, but I got back out in the garage yesterday and redid the video, using the camera in my iPad mini. I thought about this after I made the video last night-the tone nob on the guitar was acting up just a bit, and I think it took a bit of treble out of the guitar. On my other Fame guitar post (June 2012), you can hear the sound without the pickup. I'm still using those strings on the guitar.

Please write back with any comments or info.

Thanks!