1950 Stella H298

I’ll be posting about guitars from time to time. Even if you aren’t a player, I will try to make them entertaining with pictures, a short story and even a short video when possible.



This was my very first guitar. It was given to me by my uncle Mark Nicky, who had married my Father's oldest sister, Elizabeth. Mark could play a little; when I was about five years old I remember him giving an impromptu concert at the family Christmas party. He gave me the guitar about six years later. I struggled with it: the intonation was poor, the strings were high and the sound was feeble. It was heavy and crude, but it did make noise. I tried hooking a microphone to the top which helped with volume but not the tone. I managed to learn a few chords from a Mel Bay book, but never played this guitar above the third fret.

It met its demise, smashed to pieces, in a performance piece. The group I was playing with emulated The Who. It was the final performance of my high school rock ‘n’ roll days. Film exists, one of these days I’ll get it digitized and post it here.

Until then, here’s a spiffy YouTube clip I found with a lot of information about these iconic instruments as well as some short performances. The blonde version starts at 4:00: