This guitar was probably one of the earliest Travis Beans in Germany. It was sold in the late 70s by Music Shop Bochen-Härle at Munderkingen and for several years played by Robert W. - a local guitar hero and one of my most admired guitarists. He reshaped the lower cutaway to have better access to the higher frets, threw out the pickups and replaced it over time with various DiMarzio and MightyMite types. In the early 80s he fell in love with a Stratocaster (hard to understand when you own a Travis Bean) and I got it in exchange for a tuned Fender Twin Reverb amp. I modified it in cutting away most of the wood between neck and bridge and put in an Ibanez V70 humbucker, a Strat single-coil pickup, another V70 and a DiMarzio SDH humbucker (seen from neck to bridge). In addition I modified the electrics by adding a 9V battery powered preamp (self-made based on low-noise Op-Amp) mainly acting as an impedance converter. Although the guitar spent a hard youth with rough treatment (the wood could tell a lot of stories ;-) ) it's still a wonderful guitar. After a hard day's work I like to play it on an overdriven old Dynacord Reference 500 tube amp, especially with the DiMarzio SDH. I feel this is pure rock'n roll ;-). The V70 in neck position has a warm, but very precise tone I also appreciate much. The Strat single-coil can't convince me within this guitar, the sound is too metallic... When doing some repair work I removed the body from the neck which is a bit tricky due to both parts being glued together. I reassembled it without any glue, body and neck are now just fixed by the bolts of the bridge. Now I have the impression that the guitar has a bit less of sustain. Being a hobby guitarist and slowly getting old (too old for Rock'n Roll, too young to die...) I can live with that...
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