In the last 52 years I've owned four guitars. One at a time.

My first one was a mistake. I'm sure it was a perfectly good guitar, but I didn't know what I was even looking for. I wanted something to do finger style playing along with my singing. I bought flat-topped a steel strung guitar, and the salesman threw in three free lessons with it, which was plectrum playing. I learned something from it, of course, but not the finger approach I wanted. The sound with fingers (even if I had known how to play that way) was not very loud, and the steel strings tore up my fingers. I don't remember what brand it was, but it was not cheap for the day. This was in '49 or '50.

I had it maybe four to six months. I learned that it was not what I wanted, and I traded it even up for a used student classical guitar. Again, I don't remember the brand, but it had a nice sound. I started classical guitar lessons, and after maybe a year of watering at the mouth looking at better guitars, including some at my teacher's store, I traded up to a better classical guitar, new.

It was a Regal. Now Regal made perfectly awful steel strung guitars, I was told, but this guitar was wonderful. It played so easily, and had such a sweet tone! It came packaged with a case, a big rectangular case, rather than a guitar-shaped case, and included the little footstool that classical guitarists use. The price for the guitar, case, and footstool in 1951 or '52 was $210. That doesn't sound like all that much today, but in that time that was a pretty fair amount of money.

I proudly took it to my next lesson, and was scolded by Mr. Belson (Who had started life as Signor Bellisoni), my teacher. He didn't say it just this way, but I know he had expected that I was going to buy my next guitar from him, either a Spanish classical guitar he had, which was $500, or a guitar-tuned lute, in the same price range. As I say, he didn't SAY that as part of his lecture; he pointed out that the Regal was shorter in the neck, lacking I think two frets that classical guitars generally and even my student guitar had, and that I would never be able to play the full classical type repertoire without the upper range that it lacked. That was all right with me, because I didn't intend to be playing that sort of music anyway; I just wanted to accompany my singing.

THAT was the nicest guitar I ever had, or ever played for that matter. So smooth, so easy, so sweet!

That guitar lasted me MANY years, but finally gave up the ghost, mainly a victim of dry air.

So in about 1995, knowing that the Regal could not be repaired to be even playable, let alone a decent instrument any more, I trashed it and bought a Montana MI6-4 (or maybe it's M16-4). It was described as being a second, and was on sale, as I recall, for about $150, but I may be mistaken on the price. Certainly wasn't more than that, in any case. If it was a second, I never could find the flaw that made it so. The Montana is not the sweetheart that the Regal was, by any means, but has served me pretty well for about nine years now.

But oh, if I could have that Regal back as it was when new! It was wonderful.

Dave Oesterreich