NGD: 1994 Nighthawk CST

[bossaddict]

File this one under "Always Regretted Selling."

I had a '93 Nighthawk Standard a while back (even posted a NGD thread on it) and as I tend to do, sold it. I really regretted selling it, though and have been on the hunt for one at about the same price for quite a while. I finally found this one and couldn't be happier with it after a major setup adjustment.

It's a 1994 Nighthawk Custom in Antique Natural finish. I always liked the Custom (CST) variety of these due to the J-200-like appointments that they used (bound headstock with crown inlay and crest fretboard inlays). It's kind of interesting that they went that route since the Nighthawk is a relatively small-bodies electric compared with the J-200 being on the large end of the acoustic range.

I believe this one used to belong to Ricky Lee Phelps, formerly of the Kentucky Headhunters and later, Brother Phelps. It came with the original order paperwork with "Artist Inspection - Brother Phelps" listed under the Special Instructions. I tried to find some images of him with it, but no luck, so who knows.

Anyway, I really like the way this plays (now) and the pickups sound surprisingly good, especially the bridge. Here are some pics I took yesterday...

 

[Les Paul John]

Cool story on this, you're probably correct in your assessment. What a beautiful guitar! Stunning top …. looks original, hate to see when people get guitars and have to customize things, replacing pickups and all that. Then when they see a vintage Gibson these same people say things like "Wow, too bad it isn't original. What an idiot they were for doing that. It's no longer original and it's a shame".

This is an absolute beauty!

 

[Banned]

Its got a Gretsch vibe with those beautiful inlays, ebony board & natural top...like my MY1 !

 

[Les Paul John]

You may have something special there as you suspected.

I did find a video of one Frampton owned with same inlays that got damaged and then repaired from that awful Nashville flood.

 

[P-Nutz]

I have owned two; the first was a '96 three-pickup ebony Special that I stupidly sold off some years back (to finance other guitars) ...

I have a red Standard now that I will never part with; not crazy about the flamed top (I'm a painted/plain top kinda guy), but I love the three-pickup switching options, the binding and the split-block inlays ... sounds amazing and plays like buttah ...

 

[bossaddict]

Here's a quick video with some sound of what each pickup position sounds like with a fair amount of dirt (Friedman Small Box BE Channel) and just a bit (Plexi Channel). I finally got around to using my Zoom H6 that I bought for this purpose, but forgot to pan the stereo channels coming out of my OX and my video editing software doesn't have panning functionality, so they're stacked here instead of panned right and left. Doesn't sound too bad though.

Nothing fancy, just trying to play roughly the same type of thing for each position for comparison...

 

[Caretaker]

The neck position sounds awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Banned]

YES.

 

[endial]

Excellent.

Both tone, and looks!

 

[Midnight Blues]

Nice! Congrats, HNGD and play her in good health!

Frampton actually had a couple of them (from FCA II):