Confessions of a Guitar Junkie

Subject: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: JedMarum
Date: 09 Apr 03 - 11:57 PM

As beautiful as my guitar is, I have to confess I make trips weekly to vairous guitar shops and play all their best guitars. I pick different stores each week so they won't know just how depraved I really am. That way each store thinks I only come in once a month or so.

I go during quiet hours so I'll be left alone, and I pick out two or three that I know I like, or try a new one I haven't tried yet - and I usually spend about an hour playing my favorite. If it's busy, or I get bothered by some sales person, I wander a bit and try a few more - maybe a banjo or even an electric ...

This bad habit is most gratifying! I have found a few Martins and Taylors that I love, and in one of the shops in Dallas - they carry some great Bourgeois, Collings and, of course Martins. I sometimes hit two shops in a day ...


Anyone else suffer this shamelful addiction?

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Cluin
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 12:58 AM

I would but I can't afford it. So why torture myself?

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: C-flat
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 02:52 AM

Jed, I've been doing the same thing myself for years!
By varying times and days, when visiting local shops, it's possible to avoid detection by the staff, who are on constant alert for us proffessional-"just-looking"-guitar-testers.
I've had to extend my area to include a few more stockists and also resort to various disguises to maximise the number of visits per shop.
I have 4 accoustic,3 electric guitars, keyboards, a mandolin and several other assorted pieces of musical equipment but cannot resist the lure of a shop full of instruments because I am certain that one day I will find my own personal holy grail that will somehow turn me from the average pub-player into a super-star!!!!!
When I was a kid I wanted a magic pair of football boots like my hero in a comic strip.
I think there's a pattern forming!!!!

Come to think of it, I am on wife number three too!!!!!

Anybody reccommend a shrink?

C-flat.

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: wilco
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 08:43 AM

C-flat. From bitter experience, I have found that wives don't like to be enumerated like sequential guitars. Imagine that!!!!???

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Midchuck
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 08:51 AM

I had the great good fortune to find the one right wife for me on the first try. I've never found the one right guitar, although I've claimed to have found it quite a few times. I hope I never do, since the search is so much fun. This is a better arrangement, since you don't have to pay alimony or child support to your ex-guitars.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: dwditty
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 09:06 AM

Busted!!!!!!!!! Man, I have this affliction I even occasionally stop in to Sam Ash, fer cryin' out loud. There are a number of nice small shops the carry the best of the big names as well as smaller shops like Collings (got one), Santa Cruz (yup), Tippin (not yet), Fox (on the list), and lots of others.

dw

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: JedMarum
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 09:39 AM

It's funny, but when the Guitar Center opened up in Dallas (they have three stores here) they carried Santa Cruz and Larrivee. They dropped Santa Cruz early on and recently they dropped Larrivee. The chain is so main stream focused - and it's too bad ... but they do keep a few nice Taylors and Martins, so I keep going there.

We've got a real nice, smaller shop that carries a large number of great guitars, in particular, Martins, Bourgeois, Collings. He also sells Deering Banjos (my favorites). I love that store and usually spend a lot of time there when I visit.

Cluin - I don't have the money to afford one of these beauties, either - but I already have one (a Larrivee J10).

And comparing wives to guitars? My Larrivee nevers minds me admiring the beauty of these other instruments!

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Wesley S
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 01:44 PM

Jed - What always suprises me about this area is the lack of selection in the guitar stores. If you do find an OM - 000 - or 00 sized guitar you have to wade through 25 or 30 "D"'s to get to it. Also - I love Martin's - I have two of them - but I'd sure like to try out a few other brands while I'm at it. And don't get me started on the mandolin selection in Dallas and Ft Worth.

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Steve-o
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 02:32 PM

Yup, me too, but I probably only need a fix about every two weeks. Just love to go in and smell all the wood. I have owned my dream guitar for 35 years, a 1946 D-28, and never came across anything to match it, but it's so fun to play and admire everything. Came across a pre-war 000-28 that made me drool, but a little on the pricey side, you might say. The thing that I love is that each of the "try-outs" seems to make me play different styles and different songs than my usual stuff. There's a new "inexpensive" D-type that I played last week called a "Blueridge" that's pretty impressive (both sound and looks). BTW, I picked the right wife too, about 33 years ago.

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 03:58 PM

Stopped cold turkey 2 years ago.
But when I'm driving by a guitar store, the cold sweats begin and I have to get the hell outta there.
I have 5 guitars, 1 tenor banjo, 1 five-string banjo, 1 mandolin, 2 fiddles and 3 bodhrans at home, and I don't need more.
Oh yeah, I nearly forgot.
I have an addiction to Bose P.A. speakers.
They're all I use in my sound system, and I love 'em. Light, portable, powerful; so when I see a pair for sale, I snap 'em up.
I've really gotta quit!
If any 'Catter wants to buy a couple of pairs of 802's or 402's, let me know!

Happy habit-breaking.

Seamus

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 04:50 PM

Isn't this the real reson people tour and accept out of the way gigs?

My addiction is song books. If there is even one piece in there I've been wanting to learn, I figure it's worth it.

~S~

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 06:24 PM

Since I've been self-employed (aka impoverished) I don't try 'em out as much as I used to. I made the mistake of spending too much time with a nylon-strung Taylor some months ago and fell in love with it. If I had still been gainfully employed, it would have been mine. As it was, it went back on the wall. Maybe I'll take the habit back up when I become rich and famous.

Bruce

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 06:31 PM

Jed.....it simply NEVER ends. My current work guitar (a beautiful pearl encrusted D-41) simply isn't making me happy ant more.

The small 0018 style Tac that I'm playing now makes me DELERIOUS!*




* 'specially after I had the neck shaved and a whole new saddle carved for perfect intonation!

Cheers

Rick

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Walking Eagle
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 07:27 PM

Maybe you could rationalize it by saying you are helping to sell their guitars. That way, everyone would be happy. Maybe you could even get paid for demonstrations! "Guitar demonstration today featuring Mr. Jed."

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Paul G.
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 10:06 PM

My problem became one of picking up instruments at shows handcrafted by gifted luthiers. I absolutely fell in love with an instrument displayed by a Florida luthier at the 2002 Folk Alliance Conference. A cedar top beauty with a flamed walnut back, experimental bracing system, misplaced sound hole plus a monitor hole. Played like butter. Haunted me for 14 months -- saw it a couple of times in the last year. Finally couldn't stand it any more and put down an down payment on her last week. I can't take posession until she's 50% paid (hopefully this summer) and probably won't fully own her for a long, long time...Now I dream about her and the anticipation is killing me. You can see a few shots of her here. Scroll down to the 4th row of pictures and take a look at SHADOWFAX.

This is one expensive addiction.

pg

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 11 Apr 03 - 12:40 AM

So you guys really know the will-power it takes to walk away from an instrument that captures you.
Rick, I've had that phenomenon occur when the instrument you've played for years doesn't make you happy anymore. Several times in fact.
When and why does the instrument you love and have been playing a long time cease to be your sweetheart.
You loved her when you first played her, and with the passage of time she must sound better.
What's different?
And no facetious refernces to wives, girlfriends, etc. please!

Seamus

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Greycap
Date: 11 Apr 03 - 02:52 AM

There's nothing strange or wrong in being addicted to guitars - it beats cars ( they drop in value ) and they are sorta nice to own. I've stopped at four, oh, and two autoharps.
Well, I think I've stopped....

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Green Man
Date: 11 Apr 03 - 08:58 AM

Some Years ago I was Ambushed by Stuart from music city in Worcester with a ' Dave you really have to try this guitar' which turned out to be a Northworthy. Handmade in Derbyshire it fitted perfectly and was left handed. I was broke but bought it and never regretted owning it. I thought that was the end of it until I bought am Epiphone Sheraton for blues and a copy of an O series dobro made by Ozark which is really quite superb.

Even though Stuart is now touring with his band I don't go anywhere near the shop now.

Just say No, Just say No, etc.....

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: UB Ed
Date: 11 Apr 03 - 11:27 AM

I am finding that the stores are carrying less high end instruments, citing post 9/11 economy and attitudes. Apparently the weekend musicians and the $200 guitars are carrying the day as people focus on more local hobbies...

I'm scared of seeing a Gibson SG. I seem to need one, but I don't know why...

Ed

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: reggie miles
Date: 11 Apr 03 - 12:36 PM

She was a curly blonde with a big body. The kind of body that made a grown man's desire leap from within and want to possess it and caress it. The bulge in her upper bout was something to behold, bigger than most. I like that in a plaything. Her waist curved deep but not too small, with just enough room to get my arms around and hold close. Her neck was long and slender and looked so smooth to the touch. I could imagine my hand gently gliding up and down and back up again effortlessly, my fingers moving along the entire length of it back and forth. She had big inviting hips that beckoned, "Take me now!" My head was spinning at the sight and the thought of holding her next to me made my pulse race. Her ears were adorned in gold. "A pretty sophisticated dame." I thought. Then suddenly reality kicked in. Like a cold shower it slapped me in the face. "Yeah, that's it isn't it? She's probably lookin' for some guy with deeper pockets than I've got. I mean, who am I kiddin'? I ain't exactly drivin' a limo here, far from it in fact. I doubt I even qualify for a credit card. I'm standin' here like a chump with a beer budget droolin' for champagne." I realized this is about as close as I'll ever come to that fantasy. I averted my eyes for a moment to glance around the room. I didn't want to be embarrassed by having anyone else there notice how caught up I was. Luckily, no one else saw me as I lustily studied each and every detail of her appearance. "Good," I thought, "The moment was mine to savor." I lingered a while longer. My hands nervously fumbled with the few coins in my pocket. I turned around and headed for the door thinking to myself, "Yeah, but I can dream. Can't I?"

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Wesley S
Date: 11 Apr 03 - 12:47 PM

Reggie - Trust me - I know her. She'll go home with anyone who's got the cash. Anyone. Sad but true.

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 11 Apr 03 - 03:58 PM

Ah, guitar lust. Kind of like drug addiction, the prices are always going up. I've got three nice guitars, but am always trying new ones at the shops. I figure these days that if I buy a new one, I have to want it enough to let one of the older ones go.

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Mudlark
Date: 11 Apr 03 - 09:46 PM

It isn't just guitar lust, for me, it's the energy in these shops...all those stringed instruments, humming to themselves. I would love to work in a guitar shop. Well, maybe not...

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Mooh
Date: 12 Apr 03 - 06:58 AM

It's a good thing the nearest quality guitar shop is over an hour away, or I'd have serious marital problems. Whenever I can I play whatever I can, that's how I ended up owning a handmade. After playing a Marc Beneteau flattop in a shop I went straight to him and had one built. It wasn't enough. Neither was the next. Or the next. Most recently I bought an Ernie Ball 5 string electric bass. Money doesn't burn a hole in my pocket, guitars burn a hole in my heart and it's incurable.

Currently lusting after a guitjo and another mandolin. At least it's good for the economy.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: CraigS
Date: 12 Apr 03 - 08:44 AM

I swore off a long time ago. Never again. Then last week I'm passing this place that sells guitars and CDs, so I go in to look at the discs - there's this far East dreadnaught with a solid top in the corner, winking at me. I try it out - the bridge slide is distorted, but I can fix that. It still plays well, and the sides appear to be solid rosewood. The top is four-piece, but it's 16 lines to the inch!
How much - less than $200 - well, would you have resisted? It's better than any $1000 guitar I've played in the last ten years!

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 12 Apr 03 - 02:50 PM

My God, this thread is like a 12-step meeting!
Anyone else gonna stand up and testify?
Hello, My Name is.............and I'm a guitaroholic.

Seamus

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: wysiwyg
Date: 12 Apr 03 - 04:00 PM

Hardi is too busy to post but he got a nasty case of VD yesterday.

~S~

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: bigchuck
Date: 12 Apr 03 - 04:43 PM

Mudlark,I do work in a guitar shop. Unfortunately, I almost never get time to play with the stock, so to speak. I do however get first shot at interesting trade-ins at store cost, which can be great. Although they do tend to come in at fiscally inconvenient times (I just got a great old Guild F-50R that way). I guess I am what my mother would have called "guitar poor".

Sandy

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Mooh
Date: 13 Apr 03 - 08:39 PM

What slays me are the young ones with great axes, and sometimes they don't appreciate what they have! Among my students there are high end Taylors, Fender American Standard Strats, Godin electrics (I love them), Breedlove mandolin, and lots of good quality middle-of-the-road stuff. One young (16) fellow has 4 Strats or Strat like guitars, and I know a teenage girl with a mandolin, banjo, bass, and (I think) three guitars.

GAS attacks early.

(Anyone wanna buy a bass? I need to fund another instrument.)

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: HuwG
Date: 14 Apr 03 - 08:38 AM

Hello, my name is HuwG, and I think I'm becoming a Guitar Junkie.

A music shop in Buxton (UK), just around the corner, closed down the other day. I wandered in to the closing-down sale, and saw an Epiphone SG going cheap; some haggling, two trips to a cash machine, and it was mine for £130 (~ $220). Apparently, they are over £500 new from the factory.

It makes a truly lovely noise, even through a puny 30W practice amp; after the sustained notes have died away, all that can be heard is the next-door neighbour's dog digging an escape tunnel. And for the first time, I can get my blues tunes to sound like something other than builders dismantling scaffolding.

But, even in the wall-to-wall bachelor squalor of my house, four guitars are taking up too much space. So, one of them has got to go. The Yamaha dreadnought acoustic stays, so its either the Gremlin electro-acoustic or the nameless classical. The classical isn't fit for firewood, but I might get £40 for the Gremlin, if I'm lucky.

Can any 'Catters recommend any medication to dull the pain ? (Several pints of J.W. Lees bitter does work when dumped by girlfriends, but there are social consequences, and the after-effects aren't pleasant).

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: C-flat
Date: 14 Apr 03 - 10:56 AM

You're approaching the problem from the wrong angle HuwG. Instead of reducing the number of guitars, look at ways to fit more guitars in!
You'll only regret parting with one of your babies!

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Songster Bob
Date: 14 Apr 03 - 11:35 AM

Well, I have a rotating stock of 20+ guitars, six five-string banjos* and a few mandolins and such. I also buy and sell 'em, so part of my "stock" is just that, but part of the bunch are keepers, too. For some reason, I'm less attracted to the high-end acoustics; though they are fun to play, I'm not interested in getting one. I like older instruments, odd-ball instruments, and "different sounds." I have a friend who can afford LOTS of guitars, and he has at least one of each of the high-enders, but he doesn't have a pair of 1944 Epiphone archtops, one of which is from Pearl Harbor (though later than the attack there, of course). He may have five Fox guitars, for all I know, but I have a 1950s Valco/National "solid body resonator" guitar with a homemade pickguard made from that 1950s counter-top material with a Danelectro lipstick pickup added to it.

Yeah, I like to troll the stores, but tend to look on Ebay instead, and will buy on spec from there, sound-unheard, if the price is right. The result is that I have ended up with a few clunkers, a few gems, and a number of pretty-good guitars that I can sell for what I paid for 'em if not slightly more. I've never made a "killing," in terms of a $30 Martin (actually, yes, I did, but that was in 1968), but the business pays for the habit, and allows me to try out just about every kind of guitar to see if it suits me.

Bob Clayton

* I used to have a set excuse for having five five-stringers:
1 steel-strung fretted
1 steel-strung fretless
1 nylon-strung fretted
1 nylon-strung fretless
1 Frank Proffitt-style fretless strung with steel or nylon on demand.

Recently, I bought (from Ebay) a 1925 Gibson trap-door era shell with a reproduction neck that I liked so well that I'm keeping it, so now I have to modify the list:

1 steel-strung fretted open-back (the Gibson)
1 steel-strung fretted resonated (B&D Silver Belle -- my uncle's ex-tenor banjo)
... etc.

Next I need to justify having more than one tenor banjo. The mandolin justification was easy -- 1 f-hole, 1 oval-hole -- but the tenors will take some thinking (no one makes a fretless tenor).

Bob

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: paddyspig
Date: 14 Apr 03 - 12:33 PM

YEAH...
You guys are all alike..
You lust after the one you dont have, thinking its better somehow then the one you have waiting for you at HOME..
If you if you had said..."Charge it"..to the right one the first time around....YOU wouldnt need to be out Cattin about in Sleezy String Shops at all hours of the Day and Night!
Susan

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: reggie miles
Date: 14 Apr 03 - 07:56 PM

From the first time I felt her body gently vibrating next to mine, right then and there, I knew it was love at first touch. The result of our combination, our giving to each to another, was greater than the sum of our individual energies. I felt empowered, transformed, amplified, bigger, larger, swollen, stimulated beyond my expectation. So magical was this change that I wondered if I was worthy of the feelings I felt. Surely this was meant for someone else, I thought, someone more deserving than I.

Subject: RE: Confessions of a Guitar Junkie
From: Mooh
Date: 15 Apr 03 - 09:06 AM

reggie...Maybe that's why I like wide hips?

Got my eyes on a resonator.

Peace, Mooh.