General Music Chat

A retired fella up the road from me had a pick up truck camper he was giving away. I saw the sign and got it home greatfully. Yesterday, I checked to see if he had the title transfered. He did not. However, he had a Japanese made Martin that needed repair. I understand from one dealer that Tioma ( I know spelling is probably not close), bought prefabricated parts from Martin and asembled the guitars under their own badge. The bridge was separating from the top. Cleaned it up, and re-glued it with super glue and put clamps on it. Will remove them today, but the neck has convex issues. Luclily, it does have a truss rod on it so after we put the string tension bck on it, we will see if that can be corrected. Another guitar on the wall turned out to be an Epi-Gib 12. It had been collectic dust for probably years, so I cleaned it up before attempting to play it. I didn't want to grind in the dirt. It was badly out of tune, as yuo might have guessed, but tuning a 12 string was something he (CJ, the owner), did not know how to do. Missing the high E was not a magor issue. After resucitating his guitar, CJ was humbly restarting his interest in his old hobby-guitar playing. He's not the best player by any means but he could strum a few bars and I could know the songs he was playing, which helped him lose that lost and forgotten feeling that may not be as lost as he thought. Needle and the Spoon- AWW man, this guy was renewing me also. I'm going back this afternoon to revive the glued Jappy. And I'm bringing a couple of my own.

Spending some time with that gentleman may be the single most important thing any one of has done this year.

It is just as good for me as well! Thnx

Totally agree with Sans...So many people alone, that its a godsend to give and share time..with them...

Went back today. I brought 2 acoustics. He played Wildwood Flower and others until his fingers hurt too bad to go on. He was very interested in what I was playing. My guitar was in tune before I left my house, but after getting to his house and going through a couple of temperature changes, The 6 & the 12 strings needed some tuning. In doing so, I was breezing through some scales where he noticed some Ted Nugent influence, which I was not trying to convey. So I did Cat scratch Fever, which is really easy, but showed him that if you get that down, the rest of Teddy is not far behind. I then played Strangle Hold for demonstrative purposes, but it doesn't translate real well on acoustic, so I did Time for me to fly and Ridin' the storm out to show him some moving action shapes followed by Hold on loosely which has some neat barre chords that spread and compress the index finger. Looks harder than it is, and looks impressive that have never thought bout tackling that one. I also hit on a few sounds, going through my scales that brought me into playing some songs I've never played before that he recognized. Even though his fingers were hurting, he was compelled to take another shot at it, playing yet some more tunes. He was doing better than he was giving himself credit for. He liked my scales exercises, so I explained some of the basics. Overall, a gret coupla' hours went by then it was time for me to fly!