A collection of stage and studio equipment from former JUDAS PRIEST guitarist K.K. Downing will be auctioned next month. International auction house Bonhams has announced the sale of eleven of Downing's guitars, including the 1967 Flying V that was K.K.'s main instrument on several of classic PRIEST albums — from "Sad Wings Of Destiny" to "Point Of Entry" — as part of the Entertainment Memorabilia auction. Other items for sale on December 11 at Bonhams' New Bond Street premises in Central London include Marshall amp heads, guitar FX and a pair of leather jackets from the "Turbo" and "Screaming For Vengeance" tours. To view all the items being auctioned, click here. K.K. announced his retirement from PRIEST in April 2011. He has since been replaced by Richie Faulkner, who was once the guitarist in the backing group for Lauren Harris, daughter of IRON MAIDEN bassist Steve Harris. Downing's autobiography, "Heavy Duty: Days And Nights In Judas Priest", was released in September via Hachette Audio as a digital download, and in print and ebook from Da Capo Press. The book was co-written by the Scottish author and journalist Mark Eglinton, whose previous collaborations include "Official Truth, 101 Proof" with Rex Brown of PANTERA and "Confessions Of A Heretic" with BEHEMOTH's Adam "Nergal" Darski. Asked by VintageRock.com if writing his autobiography provided him with a sense of closure concerning his time in JUDAS PRIEST, Downing replied: "Yeah, I think so. I guess it's the same with any long-term relationship — whether it's a husband or wife, or father or son or whatever — you spend enough time together, and idiosyncrasies show up. I guess there was no particular right or wrong — some people have more tolerance than others, and it takes a bloody miracle really to stay together for 40 years. Someone has to give. And it has to be give-and-take. But inevitably, it becomes a bit of an imbalance, and I like to think that democracy is always the best policy. And there wasn't enough of it there, I don't think. But it kind of happened — Rob [Halford, vocals] and Glenn [Tipton, guitar] went off and did their lengthy solo careers, and that became a bit disruptive. I didn't even mention that in the book. But Rob actually released two albums and did his own tour in the exact year before I left. And then when they said, 'K.K., we want you to start writing for a five-track EP,' I went, 'Fucking no way in hell! Rob has just released two albums in the last year, and we are only releasing an EP? Something is not right.' Enough was enough, really, and I bailed out there. And, like I said in the book, I tried to put it as diplomatically as I could. But, in a nutshell, enough was enough, really. And that was it."
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