Not a horror story as such, but still, when I think about it from time to time, I give myself a dope-slap!

In 1963, when I enrolled in the Cornish College of the Arts Music Conservatory, there was plenty of opportunity to practice between classes, so I wanted to bring my guitar with me to the school. But unless I wanted to pack it upstairs and downstairs and in my lady's chamber, I had to leave it somewhere, and the only semi-convenient place would be under the table in the coffee room. Actually, a couple of other guitar students were keeping their guitars there as well, so…….

But anybody could simply walk off with a guitar or two.

I had two guitars at the time, a very pricy classic and an extraordinarily good flamenco guitar. Very stealable stuff, and I didn't want to take a chance with either of them. So—buy a beater that, if someone pinched it, I'd be totally pissed, but it wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg.

I went to a small shop that a couple of friends ran. They imported guitars from various countries, Spain and France mostly, but a couple from Japan. Some of them were concert quality, but they also had a line of "student guitars," serviceable, but not so pricy.

I spent an evening trying out a bunch of them. It came down to two. One was a Spanish-made classic made by an apprentice of the luthier who had made my flamenco guitar. The other was a Japanese-made guitar made by a luthier completely unknown to me:   Masaru Kohno.

I was familiar with Fernandez because I had one of his guitars, and I assumed his apprentice would be well-guided by the master. Kohno was completely unknown to me. The "Casa Fernandez" guitar played nicely and sounded pretty good. The Kohno also played nicely, and actually sounded great.

But I had heard all kinds of bad things about Japanese-made guitars, so I opted for the "Casa Fernandez." The prices of the two guitars were about even.

About six months after I bought it, the "Casa Fernandez" developed a spilt in the back. Then another one on the lower bout. In fact, it spent a fair amount of time back in the shop being repaired.

In the meantime—Kohno guitars have not only held up well, but are now considered some of the best concert guitars in the world!

Selling for many thousands of dollars now. And I could have had one for well under $300!

I didn't know it at the time, but Masaru Kohno had also apprenticed under Arcangel Fernandez, and now that he had his own shop in Tokyo, he was making his guitars of top-quality woods, which was not the case with most apprentice-made instruments. The maestro doesn't want a student to screw up first rate woods in case he botches the job, and the woods used in the "Casa" were kind of second rate. Something that Arcangel Fernandez would never have used in his own guitars.

Here's some poop on Kohno guitars:   CLICKY.

My mistake was in listening to what people who didn't know from Shinola told me about "cheesy Japanese guitars" instead of trusting what my own ears told me!

So—self-administered dope-slap!!

Don Firth

P. S. One thing about practicing between classes at Cornish. At the time I as there, Cornish didn't have practice rooms as such, so it was sometimes a bit tricky to find someplace where you wouldn't be distracted or distract other people. But I blundered into a neat place that only a couple of other students had thought of.

There was a performance hall in the building that nobody used during the day. I'd go in, flip on the stage lights, and set a chair in the middle of the stage. For guitar practice or singing, in addition to practice as such, I could get a feel for what it's like to perform in a concert hall—and how the sounds I made projected. It got to the point where I felt comfortable performing on stage. That helped my actual performances quite a bit.