For some time, my good Mudcat friends Bluejay and GaryT have been urging me to get my guitar checked out by a good luthier to see if my problems with hamburger-fingertips were more due to problems with the instrument than with my general wussiness. I resisted, thinking if I just toughed it out, pretty soon my fingers would get hardened and I'd be good to go.

However, what actually happened is that I found myself picking the guitar up less and less (I'm only learning to play now, after 30 or so years saying I wanted to "some day." Such is the nature of Someday ...)and feeling pretty resigned about the possibility of ever being able to do more with it.

BUT!!! The gently insistent GaryT dragged me off to his good friend Kevin Smead, Kansas City luthier of loverly guitars, who spent part of one of his precious Saturday afternoons rebuilding the bridge and adjusting the action on my guitar. And now, friends and neighbors, I'm here to tell you, guitar playing isn't SO bad once you stop crying after each session.

The setup on the guitar when I bought it would work fine for a man or strong-handed woman who played the guitar hard, but for little ol' small-handed, limp-wristed me, it was a sumbitch.

SO, the moral of this story is, Never Underestimate the Value of a Good Set-up. And When Your Friends Who Know Better Tell You to Get Something Fixed: Listen. Go, pay money to someone who knows what s/he's doing and get the darned thing fixed.

This adjustment didn't automatically make me able to play the guitar, but it ha encouraged me enough that I'm back to regular practice.

As Ever, WyoWoman