This post is almost exclusively guitar related content. Four armed is four warned. Or something like that.
This morning I started the day listening/watching an instructional rockabilly guitar DVD by Damian Bacci. I’d seen some clips on the ole YouTube and his stuff was fluid and the lesson speed and content was right up my alley. I knew I was only going to have enough time to listen to a little and then hack away for a little bit.
I grabbed three different guitars over the course of noodling and noticed quite a difference between them. In fact, major differences. I remembered that I’d had some of these guitars worked on by Neil Sargent in Houston….which is funny because they’re the guitars that played the absolute best. For all the non-guitar players out there, buying a guitar is a lot like buying a suit. You really need to have it “tailored” how you like it. Unfortunately, I’ve never truly acquired the skill to do my own setups. I do the basics, but when it comes to the more extensive stuff, I leave it to a pro.
Once the pro has done it, it’s more or less a “set it and forget it” situation – except for the basic stuff. Since I picked up a few guitars in a rather short period of time AND my favorite guitar tech is now about four hours away from me, some of the setups that should have happened, didn’t.
Having realized this, I knew I need to start figuring out how I’m going to get this done, starting with my least played guitar.
Neil (long ago) recommended a place up in East Dallas that I’m going to try out soon (not Guitar Center).
Today, having made this realization, I headed over to Guitar Center to pick up some FastFret since I totally forgot that I ever used to use it . Today was an unusual day. An extreeeeemly unusual day.
I walked in, and there were two guys facing each other, one (the mohawked one) was single string picking a chord progression and the other guy was playing these beautiful, tasteful jazz and rock runs around the chords the other guy was playing. It was massively cool. I’ve never, EVER, experienced that in a Guitar Center before (and I suspect few have). I asked the guys at the parts counter who they were – they said, “They don’t know each other”. Apparently the guitar tech guy knew one of the guys and the other guy was a session player that lived nearby. They were suitably impressed too.
Having passed by my chance to say something to the other guy the other day, I told these two how much I dug what they were doing. They both said thanks and smiled.
If only every trip to Guitar Center could be as pleasant.