Well

2005 is the Centenary of the birth of Albin I'm happy to have visited Sweden, TWICE! We saw the statue last time, re-positioned on a new plinth, and newly cleaned. When we came back in October, there was a plaque, and an all round brighter smile! So, here we are again! This time further north in Östersund... Thanks to Arne Johansson and "The friends of Rock" for all their tremendous efforts in staging this amazing event. There's Guitars of course... plus Loads of Hagstrom PA, the Patch 2000 in action, dealers and devotees, entertainment and guests from all over! Maybe next year in Älvdalen? Hmmm, do you need an international Project Manager?
This may take a while to complete... So don't just make one visit, there's videos and interviews, plus TONS of photo's from this trip!	First I should get the "Guitar Quiz" out of the way. You the reader have probably heard about John Haskin, well he likes his Hagströms too! It just so happens he had the last production model of one of the models, and I knew where the first one was... It had to be... So Chris and I trudged through the Airports with this extra bit of baggage to help his quest a little bit more... So, what is it? Often misunderstood this big-band sound D'Aquisto, very rare, and really great fun - especially through a good amp... The Jimmy Oval was intended as a great dance band arch-top... and does it so well... So here's a couple of shots.... then we'll move on to the event itself eh?
Chris guards it at Heathrow and checks the board for the flight details... The guitar is in phenomenally good condition too, but I'll leave the rest of this story to John! We set off early Thursday 29th September 2005, and arrived back late Wednesday 5th October. All our usual preparations were made - you know - you leave your eBay bids in place, only to find the item you're not bothered about comes in with a cheap win, and the item you placed a silly high bid for gets chipped away by a new guy who doesn't have a clue about value... But hey, I'm still breathing, so life's pretty good after all!
The story was out, this was going to be a special event, there was equipment from the ABBA tour, The Boppers, Larz Kristerz and Rock-Ragge were playing amongst others, and there were over 250 guitars of all types and ages with just one common denominator - the Hagstrom Brand. On to the visit itself PAGE 2