schundog Posted August 20, 2012 Posted August 20, 2012 Any time you have an opportunity to listen to Rendall Wall, do it. I had the pleasure of listening to him at PSPV as he chatted about everything and nothing in his cove off of the main buffing room. He chatted with about 8 of us in his folksy manner that belies his incredible talent, creativity, and intelligence. He showed us a new guitar he's having built for himself, I then asked him about a contraption he had on the wall. "Oh, that's my Wall Hanger," he said. It's apparently a guitar neck attached to a hunk of wood that he can temporarily put pickups in to see how they sound. Interesting. Then, out of the blue, with a straight face, Ren looks at me and asks, "How about this moon landing, thing, what do you think about that?!" Playing along, I assured him that it was all a hoax, it was really all just an elaborate sound stage, that kind of thing. One older couple that had been listening to the conversation for about 10 minutes abruptly left the room, haha. Ren didn't miss it, and chuckled about it a few minutes later. http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/zz327/schundog/PSP5/Copy2ofPSPV248.jpg[/img]"]https://
FredZepp Posted August 20, 2012 Posted August 20, 2012 Very cool stuff. Ren is amazing... great stories from that guy.
Guest HRB853370 Posted August 20, 2012 Posted August 20, 2012 I had the rare pleasure of talking to Jack French, Ren, Marv and Jim on Thursday August 2nd, each of them one on one, when I visited the plant to see Elijay pick up his new custom guitar. Free from the distractions of having 60 people walking around, each of them had their own stories to tell. Jack told me about his days with Gibson, then talked about how much he loved his property near Mackinac. Ren was interested in knowing if I was going to play drums in the barn over the weekend. Marv was interested in my move to South Carolina and I asked him about Ted McCarty, and he told me some anecdotal stories. Jim seemed the most serious of the three, tending to business as he talked. Bill Paige was running around taking care of things but always friendly. When Bird, Elijay and myself were standing in Marv's office, he pulled out some old Gibson catalogs from the 50's and 60's out of his file cabinet. Some were dog earred, some looked almost new. He showed us one photo of him in the catalog holding a Gibson; he must have been only around 25 years old then!
DetroitBlues Posted August 20, 2012 Posted August 20, 2012 Even his "Wall Hanger" guitar has some nice maple flame on it...
Kuz Posted August 20, 2012 Posted August 20, 2012 These guys are super cool, generous to a fault, EXTREMELY intelligent, and true National treasures!!!!!
hotfordcoupe Posted August 20, 2012 Posted August 20, 2012 That Wall Hanger reminds me of Les Paul's Log. That's a great story.
Thundersteel Posted August 20, 2012 Posted August 20, 2012 I talked to Ren, and was highly impressed that he remembered my name, since I haven't spoken to him since PSP III. Only later did I realize I was wearing a name tag on my shirt!
smaj Posted August 20, 2012 Posted August 20, 2012 Yep, these old boys are a TRUE treasure in every way!
Hfan Posted August 20, 2012 Posted August 20, 2012 Those guys are great. We are so frigging lucky to have an association with them.
DC Ron Posted August 21, 2012 Posted August 21, 2012 Fine points...the headstock is labeled "Wall Board" and the "cavity" has a date of 1985, making this a B serial number. Not easy to see how the pickups can clear the strings, tho I'm sure they do...
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