Restoring Old Things & Ruining Them

[rp]

A New Class of Ferrari Takes a Bow at Pebble Beach: Unrestored

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/autom ... tored.html

After "f'ing up" a couple old amps and guitars (back when still relatively cheap at least) I quickly learned, by like 1985, to leave well enough alone. I always quickly sold off what I over-restored, thought I was going to adore it more but it lost all it's appeal after it was all spiffy nice - new machines, new tolex... At least I caught on pretty quick and stopped it. You have to do new filter caps, but leave tattered tolex, do minimal parts swap, and keep all the old parts with the amp.

I read too many posts out there where people still don't get it, they buy a furry old tweed and immediately have it re-coverd and massively rebuilt, rather than than hunting down the very few old parts it likely needs to work right. If you are hyper-anal what are you doing around old crap in the first place? You are supposed to fight obsessive compulsive tendencies not feed them.

BTW if you hit the NYT paywall try private browsing mode. W/ FF it might be an add-on.

[Leo_Gnardo]

BTW if you hit the NYT paywall try private browsing mode.

I look up NYT articles on duckduckgo, skinflint that I am, works every time so far so good.