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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2023 17:54:16 GMT
Sadly it closed in 2007. I came across this archived page today, which is interesting. I bought a NRP polychrome tricone there around 2005. They had a Kalamazoo acoustic for £2000. I was shocked - I sold a similar one for £75. www.resocentre.com/ |
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Post by Michael Messer on Sept 28, 2023 19:51:17 GMT
Hello Phil,
Welcome to our forum.
This is very strange because it looks to me as if someone is keeping this online and still has the resocentre URL.
I forget when they moved from Duncan Street to Denmark Street, but it was probably 2004 and this page and its content all date back to the early days of the LRC. I know all of the images and their contents. One of the photos is of me playing my Style 4 square neck Triplate and Dobro player Doug Cox in Edmonton Canada in 1999. I also not only wrote the Amistar review for The Guitar Magazine, but I also wrote quite a bit of the other content. I was involved with the LRC from day one as a consultant, and for maybe two or three years I looked after the website. It was great for me as a busy touring musician, I could help the LRC and make extra money....and get good deals on guitars!
The two Far Eastern Dobros in the top header are baffling me, because they were never a part of the LRC website. I remember the Sho-Bro guitar, but I have never seen that piece of writing about it and the guy's father. Everything written above it was written by me for the opening of the store in 2001. It's all very strange.
I would be interested to know who keeps resocentre.com alive, because I know that Ron Smith certainly doesn't. As for Mel Isaacs, nobody I know has any idea of his whereabouts, or if he is still alive.
Hmmmm....
Shine On
Michael
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Post by leeophonic on Sept 28, 2023 20:05:55 GMT
The 2nd of the two Sho Bros on the web link the less fancy roundneck I sold to Mel as he was gathering stock for the new shop to open in Duncan street, he was either about to meet Michael later that day or I gave him some contact info, either way it was gathering pace at that time for an exciting venture.
Great times and looking back I wish I had bought more and sold less at those prices!!!
Lee
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Post by Michael Messer on Sept 28, 2023 20:06:40 GMT
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Post by Michael Messer on Sept 28, 2023 20:08:17 GMT
The 2nd of the two Sho Bros on the web link the less fancy roundneck I sold to Mel as he was gathering stock for the new shop to open in Duncan street, he was either about to meet Michael later that day or I gave him some contact info, either way it was gathering pace at that time for an exciting venture. Great times and looking back I wish I had bought more and sold less at those prices!!! Lee Lee, I knew you had something to do with one of the Sho-Bros in there, but wasn't sure which one. This is a weird thread! Shine On Michael |
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Post by leeophonic on Sept 28, 2023 20:11:41 GMT
Yes a torch illuminating great memories, The Islington store was a fantastic store but also Good memories with Dave and celine in Denmark street.
Lee
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Post by snakehips on Sept 28, 2023 22:14:49 GMT
Hi Michael,
That link you gave, has a comment by you to go to another thread, for anyone badly affected by the abrupt closure of the LRC - to leave a comment about what happened to them.
I couldn’t get this link to work/load.
I visited the LRC quite a few times.
On one visit, I had escaped Edinburgh for a wee bit of retail therapy, having just broken up with a fiancée, 9 weeks before our wedding (and she immediately shacked up with the harmonica player I’d been gigging with for the previous 10yrs !).
So, I was a bit down, and fancied spending a few hours at the LRC, having a good play on many of the reso guitars there.
Mel spotted that I was a bit down, and I told him my sob story.
In an attempt, perhaps, to cheer me up, he told me about his marriage history. Not entirely sure how true it is - maybe Michael knows ?
Mel told me that he was married FOUR times !
The morning after his first wedding, he woke up in his marital bed, and he said his new bride sat bolt upright in the bed - and exclaimed she had just made a terrible mistake marrying him - and left him ! (The day after their wedding !).
He said he then married another two women and neither lasted long.
I reminded him he said he got married 4 times.
And he replied that was true - but he said he married his first wife again !!!!!!!!
In the weeks before the LRC abruptly closed, I had bought a Dearmond FHC archtop pickup but did not yet have an archtop guitar to put it on. But then I spotted a nice Gibson L50 archtop acoustic on the LRC website.
From my home in Edinburgh, I phoned the LRC shop and spoke to Mel about this Gibson guitar. By the end of the consersation, I had paid £1250 over the phone, using my Debit card.
A few days later, I received this fabulous guitar - no problems encountered.
Just ONE week later, the news broke that Mel had done a runner, with all the till money & guitar deposits etc etc
I assume he must have been planning this for a while - yet somehow decided not to swindle me too !!!
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Post by Michael Messer on Sept 29, 2023 7:53:30 GMT
Opening that shop was an insane thing to do and only someone with no understanding of money, business or the market he was dabbling in, could have done it. Some of the things that happened in that shop are beyond putting in writing, but without Mel's cavalier approach it could never have existed, so we do have him to thank for that.
If he had done it ten or fifteen years later it might have worked, because back then there was very little worldwide online shopping.
While we all had some good times in there, sadly because of some of the things that happened during and especially at the end, I don't have as many fond memories of the whole thing as others might. It was not the right way for it all to end.
Had he listened to the people around him it might still be there today. The person he employed as his manager, at my recommendation, now owns and runs one of the UK's best and most successful guitar shops.
Shine On
Michael
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Post by resonatadog on Oct 29, 2023 7:35:33 GMT
I played that Yanuziello, (red with thick rope binding) can’t forget its unique tone. I experienced the strange sensation of cutting through a wall of ice with a laser gun. P.s. I wasn’t hopped up
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Post by Michael Messer on Oct 29, 2023 9:24:40 GMT
Joseph Yanuziello is a superb luthier. A friend of mine bought the cut away one so I know it well
Shine On
Michael
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