[mplpost] Re: Canadian Guitars (but Russian balalaikas and Mexican bajos sexto, etc.)

[Jay Linden]

ductapeguy@canada.com wrote:
> 
> Hi, I'm Sean and I'm a 3 chord guitar player! (Is there a meeting for this?)  (Well maybe 4 or 5 if you count G7 and Em)  :)

I multiplied my knowledge of chords many times over by the simple and
expedient method of buying a capo <grin>.

> My first guitar was a Hohner 3/4 classical that my Mom and Dad bought me for my twelfth birthday. My uncle helped pick it out.

[...]

Mine was a brand new Stella my folks bought for $6 when I was 9 years
old (let's just say Kennedy was still president).  I'm sure it was also
the first guitar my Famous (and Award-Winning!) Kid Brother played (he'd
have been 3 at the time), but for some reason, vague memory says he had
his own guitars before he got the chance to inherit mine.

Someone wrote about $6 Stellas being very painful and difficult to play,
and I think that was probably true, but I managed to learn all the
chords and sing all the songs.  ("All the chords", of course, meaning
all 6 or 7 of 'em).

My next guitar, a "real one", was a classical Espaņa which, as I'm sure
everyone can tell from the name, was made in Sweden.  I'm sure it's
still in a storage space somewhere, probably with not very many strings
on it.  I never thought about this until this thread, but I now suspect
a large part of the attraction of the classical was the strings, which
were softer, and the action, which was less painful than the old Stella.

A few years later, that Espaņa would be the first guitar I ever played
on a stage in front of people, a high school coffee house (in suburban
New York), playing with an old friend who is the only person I still
keep in touch with from that whole sector of my life.  The song was "The
Weight", by Robbie Robertson and The Band.  Growing up in the US (though
a Canadian by birth and citizenship), the Cancon-ness of that meant
nothing until years later.  I'm not even sure I knew they were from here
(which perhaps is how it should be, but that's another thread).

Several years later and several cheap guitars, mostly Japanese-made
12-strings with half the strings removed, I bought my first and only
"real" guitar, a Laskin, in 1974.  I was pretty annoyed with myself for
not having bought it two months earlier, as Grit had just raised the
prices -- from $350 to $400!  27 years later, you could sell me a
mansion for the same price and I wouldn't think you were giving me a
better bargain.

I now own and play a ton of musical instruments, mostly with strings,
all sorts, mostly inexpensive, all fun, not a single one with as much as
a pick-up in it (that may change this week).  Almost all of them make
nice music, and many have the added attraction of causing a "What the
!@#$%^*& was that" effect.

Far as I know, none of them but the Laskin are Canadian built, which is
coincidental but sad. Mostly I find them on eBay.  It is not a
reflection of my feelings about Canadian luthierie.  Funny Sean should
mention Peter Cox ...

> A few years ago, I traded my high school euphonium and a webpage to Peter Cox of Midhurst for one of his first f-hole archtop guitars.  It's a beaut.  It's made of all Canadian woods and has a soft, clear tone.

A certain store in Toronto currently has one of Peter's instruments on
sale/consignment (I won't name the store because I'm still hoping to be
the first to afford the instrument <grin>) -- it's a 12-string cittern,
though if you asked me, I'd tell you it's really a teardrop-shaped
laud.  Kinda like a Celtic bouzouki with too many strings.  I just
happened yesterday to be wandering around the Web looking for a point of
contact for Peter Cox when I stumbled upon the page Sean made for him,
which includes a picture of Sean playing a Peter Cox guitar.

I won't bore y'awl with the details of my collection.  Suffice to say,
if I were still playing clubs, my set list would look like it came from
the board game Clue -- song name, first three words, instrument, capo,
key -- "Jay killed Mr. Boddy on the tenor guitar in the key of D, capo
2". But I had to tell someone this -- I'm going to pick up a beat-up old
12-string I bought new for $50 about 30 years ago.  Today it's become
what may be the world's first acoustic fretless 12-string.  Can't wait
to see what and whether I can do with it that you'd call "music" <grin>.
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