Comments

• rimm Ireland✭✭✭✭ Paul doyle D hole, washburn washington

  September 2010 Posts: 605

  'Cite de la musique' in France 8)

  I got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell
• Craig Bumgarner Drayden, MarylandVirtuoso Bumgarner S/N 001

  September 2010 Posts: 795

  Django's #503 is in the Cite de la Museum in Paris. This is confirmed on their website:
  
  http://www.citedelamusique.fr/anglais/m ... _coll.aspx
  
  Scroll down to the bottom, Recent Acquisitions. Funny, I thought they had it for years, just not on display.
  
  The last I heard it was not on display, but they do have Instrument museum that is 150 years old and the fact that they are talking about #503 might suggest it is now or soon will be on display.
  
  Craig

  Bumgarner Guitar Blog
• WColsher PhiladelphiaNew

  September 2010 Posts: 53

  Dregni indicates 503 is (or was) on display sometime before 2008. Apparently Naguine donated it to Musee du Conservatoire de Paris in 1964 and from there it migrated to the Cite de la Musique. (Gypsy Jazz: in Search of Reinhardt and the Soul of Gypsy Swing, p 127)
• thickpick ✭✭✭

  September 2010 Posts: 142

  I don't have Dregni's other book in front of me at the moment (Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend), but I recall he wrote at the end that Django's guitar was burned after Django died. It obviously wasn't #503 that was destroyed (unless the one at the museum is... an impostor!) What was it?
• Michael Bauer Chicago, ILProdigy Selmers, Busatos and more…oh my!

  September 2010 Posts: 1,002

  It wasn't his Busato either! That one is still around. I imagine Django had multiple guitars (GAS is beyond time and place!), and I'm betting a cheap one was sacrificed on the funeral pyre and his good ones were spared.

  I've never been a guitar player, but I've played one on stage.
• Bob New

  September 2010 Posts: 19

  Les Paul said that he was given one of Django's guitars. He shows it in the DVD "Chasing Sound" released last year. I read somewhere that he paid for the stone on Django's grave and was given the guitar afterwards. Or is my memory playing tricks again!
  
  Bob.
• Lango-Django Niagara-On-The-Lake, ONModerator

  September 2010 Posts: 1,855

  Shit, I hope he wasn't the one responsible for mis-spelling Django's name on the original headstone at Samois... it's since been fixed, but his name was originally spelled "Djengo"---!

  Paul Cezanne: "I could paint for a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing."
  
  Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."
  
  Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
  
• Jeff Moore Minneapolis✭✭✭✭ Lebreton 2

  September 2010 Posts: 476

  Anyone venture a guess when he started using 503? Did he alternate between it and others even after he started using it. I only have a mental image of three of his recorded guitars: the original D-hole (holes?), a short scale oval hole (like in the advert for the England tour, and 503. Dregni doesn't seem to cover such details much. Does anyone know how much of what we listen to was this or that guitar?
  Seems like everyone associates Django with 503, but didn't it just happen to be the the last regularly used guitar, while the others could be of equal interest?
  
  I've never seen this discussion though it must have happened and I missed it.

  "We need a radical redistribution of wealth and power" MLK
• pzwinakis New

  September 2010 Posts: 9

  Django also got number #704 in 1948. It was badly damaged shortly after he got it (needed a new top) though and when repaired was given to Grappelli.
• frater Prodigy

  September 2010 Posts: 763

  It happened in Rome and at first the top was substituted with a round hole, classical one! I think I remember Dupont made it right many years later...