# Rosie



## Kenmac (Jan 24, 2007)

Well everybody, here's the latest addition to my "guitarsenal". :smile: It's a 2007 Dillion Rosewood "Rosie" guitar patterned after the one that George Harrison used in the "Let It Be" sessions with the Beatles. First a little backstory on why I got this guitar. I didn't want to go the obvious route for a Beatles type guitar like Rickenbacker and Gretsch, not that I'm knocking them but I wanted something a little bit different. I've been gassing for a rosewood Tele since August when I saw a Tokai version of the Rosie on Craigslist Toronto. I e-mailed the person immediately and he told me he sold it the day before so I *just* missed out by one day. A couple of weeks later I saw another Tokai Rosie on Ebay and I decided to bid on it. Now, keep in mind this is the first time I ever bid on anything on Ebay so I didn't know about what's called "sniping". It happened to me, the auction was getting down to the last few minutes and I was the high bidder so I kept refreshing the page every 20 seconds or so to make sure I was still on top and with 9 seconds to go a German fellow outbid me by $10.00! To say I was angry would be an understatement. That's when I learned about "sniping". Well around the middle of November I happened to be checking out Ebay and I saw this Dillion Rosie that a person in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. was selling. I noticed he made some modifications to it and that seemed to keep people away from it but let me tell you, these modifications really improved the guitar. Here's what he said about it in the description:

"Purchased brand new just a few months ago. Modified with the replacing of the stock single coil by a very good sounding but generic PAF style humbucker in the neck position; also replaced weak stock bridge pickup with Fender pickup---not sure what model/origin, sounds very good though. Furthermore, replaced stock bridge with vintage style, 3-saddle bridge. 'Custom' plate mounted to conceal screw holes from the original bridge. Pickguard is ALL PARTS. Some scratches here and there, this guitar has been on the road. Neck is like a '59 Les Paul, medium frets, super smooth, amazing feel. A member has asked if the original pickguard was available. It is, and I will include it in the sale. This is a very nice guitar. Comes with gig bag. Thanks all for looking. 

Features: Solid alder body Genuine Rosewood top & back rosewood fingerboard,graphite nut dyed rosewood maple neck Rosewood headstock 25 1/2 "scale bolt on neck Hand polished 2.7mm jumbo frets dye cast chrome gears & hardware pearl dot inlay markers 1 volume, 1 tone + 3 way selector."

I made 4 bids on it but amazingly he didn't raise the price on it. I got it for $399.00 U.S. which was less in Canadian funds. It was $349.00 plus $50.00 shipping. As far as the playability goes, it's just about perfect. The action is just right and it has the C-shaped neck similar to the Les Paul as he said in the description. I'd rank this right up there with the Tokai Love Rock that SneakyPete shipped to me earlier this year. It's really that good. As far as tone goes, the bridge is classic Tele all the way. The neck humbucker takes you into Les Paul territory with its warm tone but this guitar really shines in the middle position. You get the warmth of the neck humbucker with the clarity of the single coil bridge and it's this position I use the most. Regarding the "Custom" plate, at first I didn't care for it but now I think it gives the guitar character along with the humbucker modification and as he told me, that modification is pretty common. Keith Richards, Andy Summers, Mike Stern and the late Albert Collins all had Teles with a neck humbucker pickup and a single coil bridge pickup so I figure I'm in pretty good company. :smile: BTW he did include the original pickguard but I'm not changing it back to two single coil pickups. This guitar sounds great with the humbucker/single coil combination.

One more thing which was very interesting to me. When I received the guitar on December 5th I was looking it over and noticed it had a Fernandes neckplate on the back. I wrote back to him informing him about this and he said: "The Fernandes plate is my 'good luck' plate----I wish I'd remembered about that. I used to have a Fernandes Telecaster that I liked very much. The guitar was destroyed in the parking lot of the fairgrounds where I was playing that day and the only thing I was able to salvage was the neck plate. Ever since that time I installed the neck plate on every Tele I owned." He asked me if I wanted to send it back to him but if he didn't get it back, not to worry about it. Needless to say I did send it back to him and he was very appreciative about that. Dillion is making some really nice guitars and even though they don't copy all the specs the way a company like Tokai would, they do get the essence of the guitar they're paying tribute to. You'll notice in the pictures that the headstock isn't an exact copy of the Fender Tele headstock but there's no mistaking the influence. You can see more pictures of the Rosie here: http://s145.photobucket.com/albums/r227/Netskenmac/Rosie/


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## Kenmac (Jan 24, 2007)

BTW I also posted this over on the Tokai forum and somebody pointed out something that I didn't notice until he mentioned it, the humbucker is in upside down. :smile:


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## al3d (Oct 3, 2007)

How much does those little beauty go for?


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## simescan (May 15, 2007)

Sweet lookin' axe there Kenmac,...good price on it too.....congrats!


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## JSD's Guitar Shack (Feb 24, 2006)

Looks good, I'm glad you ended up finding one.....:food-smiley-004:

Another correction I'll add, not that it matters, that guitar may have been bought new in 2007 but was not manufactured in 2007. I'd say that one is maybe a late 2003/ early 2004 model.


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## Kenmac (Jan 24, 2007)

I'm not sure what they'd cost in stores but I got it for $349.00 U.S. plus $50.00 shipping for a total of $399.00 U.S. which was actually even less when you consider the Canadian dollar was even stronger when I bought it.



al3d said:


> How much does those little beauty go for?


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## Kenmac (Jan 24, 2007)

Thanks Simescan. It's a very nice sounding and playing guitar. 



simescan said:


> Sweet lookin' axe there Kenmac,...good price on it too.....congrats!


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## Kenmac (Jan 24, 2007)

Thanks. Well he did tell me in his correspondence that the guitar was a little scratched up but he said it was because he was gigging with the guitar and I thought he must have been using it pretty heavily because it did seem to be a little rough. I've seen the discontinued one on the Dillion website but it had a purplish headstock and this one doesn't so that's why I thought it was new. I guess the serial number on the back indicated it was from 2003/2004.



JSD's Guitar Shack said:


> Looks good, I'm glad you ended up finding one.....:food-smiley-004:
> 
> Another correction I'll add, not that it matters, that guitar may have been bought new in 2007 but was not manufactured in 2007. I'd say that one is maybe a late 2003/ early 2004 model.


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

How would this sound different from a regular ash body & maple neck tele???


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## Supro (Dec 17, 2007)

Very nice, Ive got a Dillion, a copy of the Gibson explorer, great guitars, well built good hardware, if I had money for another one right now, it would something like yours!


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## Kenmac (Jan 24, 2007)

Rosewood is a denser type of wood so it'll affect the tone more. I guess you could say it has a bit of a "darker" tonal quality to it and add to that the fact the neck is rosewood as well instead of maple as in your example and you can see why this would have a different sound to it. I really like this humbucker/single coil combination as well.



Robert1950 said:


> How would this sound different from a regular ash body & maple neck tele???


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## Kenmac (Jan 24, 2007)

Thanks Supro, I have another Dillion as well, a PRS copy which you can see in this thread: http://www.guitarscanada.com/Board/showthread.php?t=2433&page=7 I'm the second one down. I agree with you, they really do make good quality guitars.




Supro said:


> Very nice, Ive got a Dillion, a copy of the Gibson explorer, great guitars, well built good hardware, if I had money for another one right now, it would something like yours!


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## JSD's Guitar Shack (Feb 24, 2006)

Kenmac said:


> I've seen the discontinued one on the Dillion website but it had a purplish headstock and this one doesn't so that's why I thought it was new. I guess the serial number on the back indicated it was from 2003/2004.


Yes, the way the serial number is inked on the back plus the three screw truss rod cover tells me it was made in the old factory which is no longer in business. The body is alder with a rosewood veneer and the neck is maple, not solid rosewood.

The (bad) pictures shown on that site appear to be a 2005/06 "Rosie" which were made by our supplier here in Canada using our current factory thats been in use by Dillion Canada since 2003.

For those that don't know Dillion guitars started here in Canada back in '96, are Canadian owned and no longer supports Dillion USA or that website.


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## Kenmac (Jan 24, 2007)

Ah, I was wondering why he had this quote on the website: "Dillion U.S.A is independently owned.Our guitars are hand crafted in Korea.We are not affiliated with Dillion guitars in any other country and we only warranty guitars that are sold in the U.S.A." Now I know. Thanks for the information.



JSD's Guitar Shack said:


> Yes, the way the serial number is inked on the back plus the three screw truss rod cover tells me it was made in the old factory which is no longer in business. The body is alder with a rosewood veneer and the neck is maple, not solid rosewood.
> 
> The (bad) pictures shown on that site appear to be a 2005/06 "Rosie" which were made by our supplier here in Canada using our current factory thats been in use by Dillion Canada since 2003.
> 
> For those that don't know Dillion guitars started here in Canada back in '96, are Canadian owned and no longer supports Dillion USA or that website.


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