Saturday, August 1, 2009

My Mom Asked How Many Guitars I Have

1) My old acoustic, the Ibanez I bought in college. Battered, defretted, still owned for sentimental value.
2) The replacement, a Fender acoustic/electric cutaway dreadnaught. Laminate back and sides, solid spruce top.
3) My all-black MIJ black Telecaster, strung with .009s for country-style crazy bends.
4) My Rondo Tele copy, which I just have back from the shop. Bone nut, y'all! I have it strung with .012s so I can do drop tunings, open tunings, slide and generally get the monster tone huge strings give you.
5) A Supro lap steel. This guitar has legs! I keep in in a C6 tuning (C-E-G-A-C-E), and I've been trying to learn pre-steel country licks on it.
6) An Epiphone PeeWee Les Paul that the kids hadn't been using, so I put a nut extender and put it in Open A (A-E-A-E-C#-A, like open D up a fifth). This is the one I pull out when I try to be David Lindley. I've done enough with open six-string tunings that I get them more than the C6 tuning, and can play more fluently.
7) A no-name classical guitar, currently being played by my eldest son, whose guitar is non-functional. I like a small-bodied fingerpicking guitar, one that just sits comfortably in the lap, and right now, that's the one I have for that purpose. I think this one was also bought for the kids but found more life in my hands.

That doesn't count my mandolin. She didn't ask about the mando.

When I counted to seven, there was a little bit of "That can't be right!" I don't think of myself as having a guitar collection. I just have a few guitars. But I guess I kinda do. But, clearly, none of the guitars cover the same ground as the others. The Teles can kinda be hot swapped for each other, but a broken, fretless acoustic won't swap for a classical fingerpicker or a working Dread with a piezo.

I should probably get a full family photo one of these days.

2 comments:

Logan said...

I get the same "That can't be right" feeling when someone asks about my guitars. It's easy to become a collector without realizing it, yet hard to explain why you need all of them. I can't count the number of times I have heard "You can only play one at a time, right?"
But I feel you brother. My Strat just won't cover the same ground my Dot will, and vice versa.
Really enjoying your blog!

Dave Jacob said...

Always glad to find another reader.