Nice little article.
I got my first guitar from Harry Rosenbloom (they misspelled his name as "Rosenblum") in '72-- a Penco bolt-neck SG. While looking at the Penco Strats and Teles he told me "Strats are rhythm guitars, Teles are lead guitars". At the tender age of 13 I wasn't brash enough to argue with him, but the thought in my head was "old man, didn't you ever hear of Jimi Hendrix"?
But while he wasn't really into rock, his store was always filled with cool stuff -- Coral electric sitars, Craviola acoustics, Japanese Teles with a built-in amps and the speakers mounted under the strings between the pickups. The first Marshall half-stack I ever plugged into was in Medley Music. A few years after the Penco I bought a Morris dreadnought there and he threw in a blue molded Martin case (with the Martin nameplate removed). The case was so strong I could stand on it (though I was a lot skinnier then). The Penco and Morris are long gone but I still have the LPB-1 I bought there.
(My dad bought the Penco for me for Christmas -- he took me around to a lot of stores to pick out something reasonably priced that I liked. I fell in love with the SG but liked the Penco Tele a lot too. When I decided on the SG my dad sent me out to the car to wait while he bought it and I wasn't allowed to see or touch it until Christmas morning. On Christmas Eve, dad solemnly told me that they discovered a problem with the SG so he had gotten me the Tele instead and I went to bed that night a little disappointed. But when I opened the case under the Christmas tree and saw that cherry red SG inside I literally danced with joy -- his little deception tricked me into really appreciating it. Two years later I got a Gibson goldtop Les Paul Deluxe and dad thought my having two guitars was a little extravagant so he encouraged me to sell the Penco. Now I kind of wish I could have kept it, but I'll always have the memories.)
Pencos are near the bottom rung of the so-called "lawsuit" MIJ's. That SG had a plywood body and there were single-coils under the humbucker covers. But a bandmate had his dad's old Gibson SG Jr and we both thought the Penco sounded better -- and even with its Bigsby-clone tailpiece it stayed in tune better than the Gibson with its wrap-over bridge.
I moved away from Philadelphia in the '80s but always missed Medley Music, Zapf's, and Suburban Music. A few years ago I was saddened to hear that Medley Music had closed.
Sorry for writing such a long boring post, but seeing Harry's name brought back a lot of fond memories. Thanks for the link to the article.
