Gene Payne

I have a story for you. My neighbor, Tim Brown or (Timothy McCoy), is a musician friend of mine and has been for about 40 years. About 3 years ago his house caught on fire and destroyed most everything in it. After a day or so we were sifting through the ashes and discovered in the front bedroom an assortment of musical instruments still leaning in the corner. There was 2 fiddles, a Martin D1 acoustic, a Johnson left handed acoustic, a Fender Strat and a Carlos 240k acoustic. Most of the damage was from smoke and a lot of heat with no direct burning and luckily they were all in cases. My neighbor said all he wanted was the Martin, which he purchased new in 1998. The other guitars he just traded different things for. He said just throw away the rest. I said, "sure"! The Martin had heat damage from around the 6th fret on up to the headstock where the heat blistered the finish off of it. The case melted away from it around the neck and the body was smoked up pretty bad. Martin wanted $700.00 to repair it. I sanded the neck down and refinished it myself and cleaned all the smoke off of it and it plays as good as new. Luckily it didn't warp. The other instruments all have been repaired as well. I didn't fool with the Carlos for a long time because I thought it was just another cheap guitar. Finally after the first of this year I ran across it in storage and cleaned it up. Luckily it was only smoked up, badly I might add. I finally got it clean and put new tuners on it. It has the brass nut, saddle and dots on the neck. The sound from this guitar really surprised me. Like you, I've owned a lot of guitars and some were crap and that's what I expected from this Carlos but I was wrong. The body style and everything about this guitar is just like a Martin acoustic and the sound from it is almost as good. Amazing. I am doing further research on Carlos guitars. Carlos Guitars were imported acoustic guitars distributed by Coast Wholesale Music (a division of Kaman Music Corporation) from around 1976 to the late 1980s. Check out our music on Ourstage.com >Gene Payne, Tim Hood, Timothy McCoy, John Kelley Rocks and Mark Levi. All of this music was recorded in our studio. TenTimes Recording. Thanks. Gene Payne. logunsrun5@aol.com