A guitar update

If you’ve noticed that I haven’t mentioned playing the guitar on here for a while, that is because I lapsed. I was really enjoying it and thought it was going to stick, so I don’t quite know why that happened. I came to the end of the community college classes available, but haven’t yet managed to do the last one I could do because even though it’s supposed to rotate it keeps coming round on the same weeknight, which doesn’t suit me. Then I kept playing through the music we were given on the courses I did do till I was sick of it (and I didn’t overly like some of it in the first place - it was boys in garages material), I downloaded a couple of things from the internet and they were too complicated, I tried to access some of the music from church and that didn’t work ... and I was borrowing a classical guitar, when I was learning to play acoustic, so I sort of kept telling myself that soon I’d get my own acoustic and it would all be grand. (I also think I got distracted by crochet.) Then last year for my birthday I was given some money, by request, towards a new guitar, but I was just a bit daunted by the idea of trawling around music shops by myself trying to find a good one (I always feel like guys in those sort of shops see blonde hair coming and try to hoodwink me and sell off some dud, so I wasn’t going to go to buy one till I had done the necessary research). So it all stalled.

But I hadn’t given up altogether. Recently I had this brilliant idea that I could go to visit relatives and ask my Uncle to help me. He is a “muso” of the guitar-playing sort and he’s good at buying things. He cuts deals with people. He’s not rude or aggressive or one of those pushy customers people dread, he just says nicely “what’s the best price you can do on that?”, and it’s amazing how this works. (I tried this once in Harvey Norman, because he says you never pay full price for electrical things, and I got $30 off a heater.) So, on Saturday I headed off to his local music shop with him (I knew he’d enjoy this), where they know him by name and would appear to like him, because when he goes in there he means business and he buys things.

Basically he sat on a stool playing his way through guitars before handing them to me to see what I thought. We tried a lot of guitars (I am using the time “we” loosely here, because I was more or less happy for him to choose) and in the end settled on one nicely less than I was willing to spend. For those who are interested in specifics we mostly started in on Yamaha and Takamine and the odd Ibanez, up to around $500 (a couple were over it) but kept coming back to a Crafter, solid top (that means solid wood, I discovered, rather than some laminated junk), that was marked at only $299. It had a nice action and a nice rich tone to it. Then my Uncle barely had to open his mouth and just said we’d take this one and the guy said he could have it for $200. I was flabbergasted. $200! And that’s not all. I got a deluxe double-thickness gig bag worth $90 for $30, then I got $20 off my strap, a few picks for nothing ... It was amazing to watch. So, I am totally chuffed that for a measly $200 I got what seems a very nice guitar. My Uncle recently bought one worth $1200 (though of course he didn’t pay that for it!) but reckons he’d have been happy with my nice little Crafter. And when I look this guitar up on the American website, the land where I thought everything was meant to be cheaper, it’s listed at $479 (with a hard shell case but they are not worth $179 dollars). I can’t do a direct link, but if you go here, select Dreadnought body type, it’s the HD-100S (I like the spruce wood colour - nicer than that orange colour guitars have when they are cedar top).

So, I am pleased. I can get carried away on these things, but didn’t want to spend a huge amount incase I lapsed again, and so I didn’t. Now I just have to get myself some music I can and like to play (and toughen up my fingers for the steel strings).