Friday, January 02, 2009

A Late Happy New Year to All



First, Happy New Year to all of you. God bless you all and give you a wonderful 2009!

Several years ago, Number Two Daughter decided she'd like to learn to play the guitar.

But if you're left-handed and want to learn guitar, your options are limited. You can either learn to play guitar right-handed, or pay a lot extra for a left-handed guitar (it's absurd how much more a left-handed guitar costs than the equivalent right-handed guitar), or you can convert a right-handed guitar to be playable by a left-handed person.

Number Two Daughter is very left-handed, so I searched for a reasonably priced left-handed guitar, and in the meantime, I looked for an inexpensive electric that I could convert to being left-handed (I remembered that Jimi Hendrix seemed to do pretty well on a right-handed guitar that had been converted for left-handed use).

Turns out that a guy I knew at work had a nice Samick brand electric guitar that he only wanted $50 for. But when I went to his condo to look at it to see if it was a guitar I thought I could work with, I was blown away by this lovely cherry sunburst, stratocaster-styled guitar. Of course I bought it.

I took it home and played it a bit, and looked it over again and fell in love with the grain and color of the mahogany body of the guitar.

But, the guitar wasn't for me, so that night, I took off the strings, removed and reversed the nut, put on new strings and intonated the guitar so that it would play in tune for a left-handed person.

I left it sitting out in her room that night where she could see it when she woke up in the morning.

Later that year, for her birthday, we bought her a nice, true left-handed guitar from an online store called Rondo Music. (They have a great selection of good quality left-handed guitars for incredibly low prices. I own several of their electric guitars and an electric bass from there.)

After she got the new, left-handed guitar, I took the Samick and re-converted it to right-handed playing, and I've played it since then.

With my back being so screwed up the past few years, I'd almost completely stopped playing guitar, and a few weeks ago, I started leaving one of my electrics beside my recliner in the living room. So now when I watch TV, I can practice chords and scales and whatnot on an unplugged electric which is quiet enough that I don't bother others in the room.

Many mornings my back wakes me up pretty early and I go sit in my chair, leaning on a heating pad to help relive the pain. Right now, the early morning sunlight comes into the room and shines for a few minutes right where I stand the guitar.

One morning I went and grabbed my camera because I loved how the warm morning sunlight enhanced the grain and beautiful colors of this $50 guitar.

3 comments:

Big Doofus (Roger) said...

The electrics are all about the hardware and the electronics. Otherwise, it's just a chunk of wood or plastic. However, that chunk of wood looks pretty nice...but YOU could probably take a good picture of a mound of horse poop.

Happy New Year!

photowannabe said...

Great story about the guitar. Hope it continues to be therapy for you and that 2009 will give you some back relief.

Qtpies7 said...

You SO have a crush on a guitar!

So does my daughter. It's cute.