God help me, I’ve ruined her life.
I was just trying to be helpful, so I told her about Luna guitars, which are designed for women — smaller, lighter. The designs are also very pretty. (I have this one, although I assure you I didn’t pay anywhere near this price.)
The company was founded by a stained-glass artist whose mom was a bass session player. As her mother got older, she had trouble with older, heavier guitars. These guitars were the solution.
But anyway. My friend’s been practicing away, and I called her yesterday to see how it was going. She hesitated, and said, “It’s like an addiction. I find myself looking at guitars all the time now, I can’t stop thinking about them. I want more!”
Oh my God, I’ve infected her. Her life will now be one long miserable longing for that next guitar.
This Guitar Acquisition Virus is an actual thing, by the way. So much so, they even make T-shirts. (I saw one last week that said, “I woke up from a nightmare that I died, and my wife sold my guitars for what I told her I paid for them.”) And when I buy used guitars, the first thing I ask is why they’re selling. The invariable answer: “I bought a new one, and my wife said I couldn’t have it unless I promised to get rid of one.”
Most of my adult ,life I never owned a bed, but did own five guitars and +/= $10,000 worth of sound gear.
That’s a beautiful guitar in the link. When I was 20, my mom cosigned a bank loan so I could buy a Yamaha SA2000. $1,100 was a lot of dollars in 1981, but damn, I HAD to have that guitar. In retrospect, it was one of the best financial (and otherwise) decisions I ever made.
In the late 90s I traded a car for a ’67SG that was my very favorite guitar. I reworked it a little and was very happy with it, until, like the SA2000, it was stolen in a burglary.
Now my main guitar is a second-hand low-end Les Paul, and I like it quite a bit, and I still have three other guitars: a Yamaha acoustic that I bought new in 1976, an Eko 12 string that I got from Ted Falconi (from Flipper) and a weird nylon string electric, (a Yamaha AEX500n). Also, I recently gave my student-size Jay Turser hollowbody to my friend Sara who is a symphony-level violinist with some nerve damage to her right wrist and in need of an instrument she can play without a bow. She says it is helping, and I can only play them one at a time…
So you have the virus, too! I still have my first real guitar, a Yamaha Red Label FG150 I bought in 1969. I sold it to my brother, who sold it to someone else, he bought it back and then I bought it back from him. It has such a bright sound, everyone always thinks it’s a Martin.
A nylon string electric? That, I’d like to see.
It looks like this:
http://maplestreetguitars.com/show_item.php?dep=28&cat=CNU&item=USED%20AEX%20500N
It’s a thinline hollowbody with an unusually narrow fretboard for a nylon string. A friend of mine brought it to me when he found out my other guitars had been stolen (that’s also how I got the Turser, but from a different friend).
My Yamaha acoustic is an FG160 and I paid $150 for it brand new, and I have loaned it out to various players who invariably returned it with a “I will pay you good money for this guitar” which always made me more determined to keep it. And yes, with a new set of strings on it, it does sound as loud, bright, and even as a Martin. To be fair, its not as pretty and the action is higher, but I still like it a lot.
What an elegant guitar.
My dream guitar would be a hollow-body Telecaster. I love Telies, they’re just too heavy for my next and shoulder.