Bill Roper's Journal

I ran down to Tobias Music and picked up two of my guitars from their shop. The Guild 12-string is now repaired, having gotten a partial refret job and the bridge reglued. It sounds much better than it has in a long time.

The Guild 6-string needs to go to a different shop for the neck reset, because the shop at Tobias doesn't currently have a spray booth to fix the finish after the reset. That will be a project for a slightly later date, but not *too* much later, I hope.

Tomorrow, it will be back to working on the taxes. Right after I clean up the mess of tablet stuff on my desk from the filkbook experiment that got piled on them last week.

Speaking of filkish matters, I have become very fond lately of the Taylor 326ce that I picked up last year. It is currently the go-to guitar here in my office. I got a recommendation to try a heavier pick on it and have started playing with a 1.3 instead of a .88, which is sounding pretty good.

I think I will probably take it to the next convention with me. (Which means I needed to find the humidifier to go with me, which I finally located in the spot where I'd put it for safekeeping. :) )

Yesterday's count of guitars that I no longer own was actually off by one. I forgot about the Gibson Les Paul that I owned for several years. The problem was that when I played that guitar it never sounded like *me* playing the guitar; nor did it sound like the guitar was particularly happy about having me play it.

I eventually traded it in for a Godin Multiac Jazz, having been seduced by playing Barry's. That guitar *does* sound like my guitar when I'm playing it, which I have done far too little over the years. But having thought about this and knowing that Gretchen has been looking for an appropriate Christmas present for me, she is going to buy me a small practice amplifier that can sit in my office so that I can plug in the Godin and get reacquainted with it.

And that will be a good thing. :)

So I posted about the new baritone electric guitar that Gretchen is buying me for Christmas a few days ago. Well, when the guitar arrived in the mail, the first natural thing to do was to plug it in and make sure it was working properly, so Gretchen pulled my amplifier out of the library (which is currently full of debris from unpacking the house) into the family room so I could plug in there. And it turned out that the guitar was working fine.

Of course, I immediately put the amplifier back away in the library.

Ok, stop laughing. The amplifier was languishing in the family room this afternoon when Gretchen and Julie were off at a movie and Katie was over at the neighbors' house playing with their little girls. And it struck me that I had blown out my knee shortly after Katie was born, which was about a month before I acquired by Godin Multiac Jazz and that this might be a fine time to renew my acquaintance with it after all these years.

The Godin happily still sounded just fine, except there was an intonation problem on the bass strings so that A and C were not going to both be in tune at the same time on the fifth string. Grumble. Well, after this many years of neglect, the guitar needing a truss rod tweak wasn't a great surprise. This meant that I should probably take it over to The Guitar Works for a tune up. And maybe Terry could find a case or a gig bag for the new baritone electric guitar in the bargain if I were clever enough to take it along.

(I had been trying to locate an appropriate case on line. I could have bought the hard shell case from the manufacturer, but the shipping would have been an additional 40% on top of the price of the case. And the guitar is an odd enough size that it was hard to tell exactly what might fit it. Taking it somewhere that had cases seemed like a good idea.)

Katie was due home around 3 PM and was only about 20 minutes late when she finally showed up. So we piled into the car and headed east.

I called Gretchen to let her know what was happening. She said fine and that she was heading home, the movie now being over. Katie, who had not been entirely happy about having been drafted onto this mission, started to sulk, because she would really have preferred to have been home. I was not about to turn around and take her back.

So the sulk continued. "I'm hungry."

"Would you like some chicken nuggets from McDonald's?"

"No. I don't like their chicken nuggets."

This was a revelation to me, because she normally eats Chicken McNuggets like popcorn. "How about a McDouble, no cheese, ketchup only?"

"Ok." Except it was only "ok" until I got into the drive-thru line, at which point she wanted "Nothing." So I bought her a large unsweetened iced tea, which is functionally close to nothing except wet, and added a large diet for me.

And I continued east. Katie observed that it was a long way there. I agreed, but pointed out that we were nearly there. And eventually, this was true, I parked the car, and we carried the two guitars over to the store.

Terry was there and I asked if he could take a look at the Godin, which turned out only to need a minor tweak. While we were waiting at the repair shop window, this put Katie within easy access of the electric guitars. There was a cute little red Squier Mini Strat nearby, which she wanted to pick up and play with. I suggested that was a bad idea.

Terry gave me the guitar back to check on while he went to look for a case for the baritone. I carried it off to the acoustic room and determined that the intonation was now a happy thing, while Katie proceeded to try to look at more guitars. And as it happened, a little Fender MA-1 was sitting on a stand just inside the door. This is an inexpensive 3/4 size acoustic guitar, which is just about the perfect size for Katie and cheap enough that, well...

I checked it out and it seemed playable enough. I handed it to Katie sitting on a stool and it fit her correctly.

"So do you want this guitar as your big Christmas present?"

"Yes!"

"You will have to take care of it. And you will have to take lessons and you will have to practice."

"I'll practice!"

Yeah, we'll see about that. :)

When Terry arrived with the only thing in the store that would hold the baritone guitar (a Fender bass gig-bag that was only a bit too long), I asked him to snag one of the Fender acoustics for Katie from stock. And I also bought Katie a tuner in self-defense.

When we got home, Katie played a scale on the guitar from C to C as I told her where to put her fingers.

We will call this progress. :) We are now hunting down group guitar lessons.

To recap: because I got the baritone electric for Christmas, we pulled out the amplifier, which meant that I could pull out the Godin, which needed an intonation fix, which required going to the guitar store, which mission I dragged Katie along on because she had no one else to watch her at the moment, which gave her a chance to remember that she wanted a guitar and lessons, which eventually resulted in my buying her a guitar.

There is a moral to this story somewhere...

I went to the Taylor Guitars Road Show tonight to take a look at the new maple-bodied 600 series guitars. They were quite nice, but didn't really suit me.

I did find one absolutely lovely guitar there though. Some years ago, I was at a road show where I saw a 6-string guitar with a sinker redwood top and macassar ebony back and sides. I commented at the time that it was very pretty, but a bit deep-voiced for my taste. On the other hand, it would make a glorious 12-string guitar.

And there was a 12-string guitar there tonight which -- although it had a spruce top -- had the macassar ebony back and sides.

It was indeed glorious.

It was also just north of $7000, so it did not follow me home.

I must take my Guild 12-string out of the closet and play it some more. :)

I finally went down to the basement today to record "Dream Rider" and "Candy Tree". And the guitar said a bad word: "Buzz".

I finished recording the scratch tracks, loaded the guitar into the car (actually, I loaded three guitars into the car), and headed off for The Guitar Works. It turns out that Terry is off on Fridays and was out of town, but the handy fellow in the shop adjusted the shim under the saddle and the tension on the neck, and the evil buzz is now gone.

While I was there, I also asked him to install a strap peg on the new used guitar that I got earlier this year so that I can put a strap on it. And we checked and discovered that the new used guitar will fit in the case that the third guitar -- which had been my "flying on airplanes" guitar -- was in (it had been a bit balky about going in at home and I hadn't wanted to force the issue), so the new used guitar is now good for my next airplane trip with it.

It took nearly three hours by the time I drove there and back, but the guitars are much better now. :)

And after dinner, it will be back to working on Windycon...

I took a couple of years of guitar lessons when I was in the fifth and sixth grade. Then we moved to Guam, my amp developed a short, and I didn't play much after that until my junior year of high school when another guitar player (with a working amplifier) moved in next door. My original guitar was a red solid body Gibson Melody Maker.

By the time I was in college, I decided it was time to get an acoustic guitar. Though I lusted after a 12-string, I ended up trading in the Gibson on an Epiphone six-string acoustic. A decent 12-string guitar was just too expensive. And that was the guitar that I eventually started taking to filksings when I discovered filking. I'd learned Chet Atkins style fingerpicking when taking those long-ago guitar lessons which served me in good stead on the Epiphone, but I ended up playing without a pick when I had a song to strum. If nothing else, it was easier to sing over the guitar. :)

After I moved to Chicago and graduated with my MBA, I picked up a very lightly used Guild 12-string at The Guitar Works in Evanston, a store that I highly recommend. (The Guild is a story all its own.) And it went to filks with me for many years as I pretty much stopped playing the Epiphone. I eventually bought a six-string Guild to match the 12-string, thinking that I was playing the Guild 12 because it was much nicer than the Epiphone. The Guild 6 was quite nice (and flies to conventions with me today), but the Guild 12 was just a wonderful guitar. It was what I used to record The Grim Roper, still without a pick.

The Epiphone, meanwhile, I sold to Jane Haldeman, because it was now surplus. (Yes, I know. There is no such thing as a surplus guitar.)

While I was married to Carol, I picked up a lovely Gibson Les Paul Custom, because I wanted an electric guitar. And it turned out that I apparently had no business owning a Les Paul, because when I played it, it never sounded like me. I eventually traded it for a sorely underused (by me) Godin Multiac Jazz that I lusted after having seen min0taur's. I need to play it more, but it does sound like me when I play it.

But in the meantime, I had developed Taylor lust. And after daisy_knotwise's mom died, she said I could use a bit of the money that we'd inherited to buy a nice Taylor acoustic, so I got a lovely little cedar topped model. It sounds great and still sits next to my desk in my office.

Unfortunately, it didn't record really well, so I decided a few years later to get a spruce-top Taylor with electronics so I could plug it in. And that's the guitar that travels to conventions with me by car. :)

At one point during my travels, I was in a filk circle with Sam Baardman who suggested that I should try using a pick again. I dithered for a couple of years and decided to try it. And it worked out pretty well once I redeveloped the techniques. I still don't use finger picks, because I can't find anything that fits my fingers and sounds decent, but the finger picking is generally pretty clear anyway.

There's a point to all of this. When you're writing music with your guitar, the guitar shapes the music. Every guitar has its own voice and wants to write songs its way -- depending too on whether you're using a pick, or finger picking, or finger strumming.

Most of my songs are getting written either on the Taylor next to my desk here or at a con on my traveling Taylor.

But the Guild 12 is getting lonely in the closet and daisy_knotwise would like me to pull it out.

If things slow down, maybe I will. :)