Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?

Subject: RE: Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?
From: PHJim
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 10:07 PM

My brother Dave and I were going from Hamilton to Port Hope one cold winter night and decided to stop and watch my son, who was playing at The Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto. We left my '62 D-21 and his 72 D-18 in the trunk of my car. (No lectures please. I know better but...)
We took the guitars out of the car in Port Hope and left them in the cases all night. In the morning, when we opened the cases, Dave's guitar's lacquer was covered with tiny cracks. Mine had always had these cracks and I noticed no changes to my guitar. Dave was devastated, but almost everyone who's played the guitar before and after this happened agrees that it sounds much better since the crazing in the lacquer.

Subject: RE: Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 13 Oct 12 - 10:12 PM

My Gibson LGO is crazed all over and sounds great.
(:-( ))=

Subject: RE: Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?
From: GUEST,Fyldeplayer
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 04:20 AM

Performing at Battersea Arts Centre in a Folk Show, the over enthusiastic perucssionist 'rocks' the stage so hard my valuable bouzouki slid from stand 'engraving' my recently acquired Fylde Oberon! - since then I always think 'First cut is the deepest'.

Who remembers the Reginald Perrin/Joan Collins Cinzano advert on the plane (the tipped drink)? Standing by a chair where I had placed octave mandola face up, I enquired about the time. In slow motion the caller who was holding a bottle of beer rotated his wrist to check his watch sending a stream of alcohol neatly into the sound hole!!

Subject: RE: Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 14 Oct 12 - 09:08 AM

I went to do a job and stayed overnight. When I got back a cat had jumped on top of my Seagull Mini Jumbo and put a couple of deep scratches into the cedar top. It had been in mint condition.
(:-( o)=

Subject: RE: Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?
From: PHJim
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 12:23 AM

My friend Washboard Hank had his old D-18 run over by a truck at a festival a few years back. When I visited the Hank To Hendrix guitar shop in Peterborough, I saw that it was on it's way back to becoming a guitar again.    Hank's Broken Guitar

Subject: RE: Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?
From: PHJim
Date: 15 Oct 12 - 12:31 AM

Here's a link to a blog about a horribly modified pre-war O-21 or OO-21 that I bought over 30 years ago. It has been rebuilt by Ed Dick and is living in British Columbia.    Sorry guitar modification

Subject: RE: Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 19 Oct 12 - 05:16 AM

I asked about having my Mosrite built Acoustic Black Widow solidbody electric set up and to have the frets leveled and recrowned. They recommended a local fellow who worked out of his house. I told him what I wanted and trusted it would be done properly. When I saw my guitar again all the yellowed lacquer down one side of the neck had been stripped off. A new chip was in the back of the neck. He had also taken the neck off and put a thick wooden shim in the neck pocket, making the string action extremely low. I told him to put it back the way it was. Must have made him mad. He screwed the neck back on, distorting the metal neck plate and cracking the body at the neck joint. My first decent guitar and very rare. He must have gotten a Stew Mac catalog and thought he could be a pro luthier. Off in Fantasyland.
(:-( o)=

Subject: RE: Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?
From: GUEST,Noddy
Date: 19 Oct 12 - 05:24 AM

It was a long time ago at the Rhuddlan Folk Festival (now no longer with us)two guitarists were standing chatting behind a car with cases on the ground both the worse for ware after a great session in the bar. One left and joined us while the other got into the car and drove off. Unfortunately he forgot to put his guitar in the car and reversed over it. Matchwood.
We did not know wether to laugh or cry. But we did have a bit of a collection around the festival to help buy a new one.

Subject: RE: Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 20 Oct 12 - 03:22 AM

A common thing to happen, I think. That, and leaving it on top of a car and driving away.
(:-( ))=

Subject: RE: Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Oct 12 - 01:50 AM

I was playing music at a summer dance. Two hot dancers with sweaty hands who had been drinking, lost their grip and one of their heads smashed into my guitar top leaving a splintered hole. My fellow musician beside me covered the damage with his hand so I would not see it right away....my guitar has not been the same since. It needed major surgery to repair....

Subject: RE: Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 21 Oct 12 - 12:57 PM

The Dead Man's Guitar
From several Halloweens ago...

Subject: RE: Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?
From: reggie miles
Date: 22 Oct 12 - 12:37 AM

A tad on the edge of this thread's parameters perhaps but here goes.

Though any salty seafarin' scoundrel'll do, you may wish to read the following tale using your best Robert Newton impersonation of Long John Silver from his 1950 performance in "Treasure Island". AR!

At the following link you'll find an obscure foot note in the annals of maritime jugbandalry...

The One What Bitsed Me Washboard's Leg Off!

Enjoy!

Subject: RE: Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 22 Oct 12 - 01:51 AM

Felix, GREAT little story there!

Subject: RE: Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?
From: MAG
Date: 22 Oct 12 - 02:58 PM

My contra dance band was playing on a rickety stage which turned out to have tied together sections.

A leg of my chair went down as a section pulled free and over I went' landing on my David Webber and smashing it flat.

Thank you, David, for somehow managing to put it back together. at a price I could manage to pay.

love love love my guitar

Subject: RE: Any Good Instrument Horror Stories?
From: Rumncoke
Date: 25 Jan 13 - 07:30 AM

My first guitar was an old thing with F holes, but it sounded sweet, and I had worked all summer in a canteen kitchen to buy it so I felt a strong attachment to it.

It went with me to college in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, and met a fellow named Adrian Bell - self proclaimed expert in all things who had been everywhere and done it all.

He said he could mend a small crack in the seam, which did not need mending, prised the back of, stripped off a layer of ply, glued it back with Bostik and tuned it up before the glue dried so the seam opened up several inches wide.

I could probably forgive him for almost everything he did and said, if I tried, but not for ruining my poor old guitar.