Well Marty, it was 7 years on January 12th. I started out as a classical guitar player for 5 years, but them when I got here to BIG university, dreams of a classical guitar minor were dropped, so now I'm pretty much steel string all the time, but I still play it like a classical guitar a lot of the time. Not wanting to bust the strings on my steel string, I'm doing the alternate tunings on my dusty, rusty-stringed classical guitar...the very first one I learned to play guitar on. Now I have a good concert guitar for all my classical, but my 2 old ones (and inexpensive, I might add) are gaining a new life as the subjects of wacky tuning experiments. Love those rust stains on my fingers!