Hi, Ian: Just a couple of thoughts. Back in the 60's I was living in New York and spending all my time in Greenwich Village. I met a banjo-picker back then by the name of Luke Faust. Luke was legendary in New York... Dylan wrote about him in the liner notes of his first album.He was the most wildly creative musician I've ever known, and there was something intuitive when we played together. The thing is, Luke had crap for instruments. The guitar he played was a cheap axe that someone who crashed overnight in his apartment left behind, and never bothered to come back and get. It was nylon string, when only Joan Baez wannabees would be caught dead playing nylong stringed guitars. His mandolin was equally cheap. But, he could make the worst plywood top guitar sing like an angel. At that time (as is still true) folks referred to their instruments by model number. People would ask me what model my Gibson was and I'd say, "six-string." I never have learned the model numbers of my own instruments.. the few that I have.

And then, I've known people with beautiful, disgustingly expensive instruments who can't play anything but feel that they have to start with a Martin. Once they realize that it takes work to learn to play an instrument, the guitar or mandolin goes into its case and molds away in the back of the closest. I paid $10 for my mandola, and $10 for my 5-string banjo. If they don't sound like a million, it's because I don't play like a million.

I too had a fender, which I bought back in the 50's... would be worth a fortune now. It was traded in on a Gibson classical, which was traded in on a Martin, which I gave away. So it goes. The music goes on.

Someone told me once that "a sacrifice is giving up something good for a greater good." Looks like that's what you've done, Ian.

The music is only as sweet as the person playing it.

Jerry