A conversation I had on Twitter got me to thinking of all of the guitars I’ve owned in my life. I started playing as a thirteen-year old, which means I’ve been playing for almost 20 years. In that time, I’ve owned quite a few guitars. The thing about being a guitarist is, it’s easy (if not natural) to become obsessed with these instruments. A(n apparently not-so) brief history:
Christmas, 1989: I received a Harmony Stratocaster copy as my first guitar. My parents probably bought it from the Fingerhut catalog. It came with a cheap little amplifier that sounded pretty awful. I was happy to get the instrument, but I had been saving up to buy an Epiphone Flying V from a neighbor kid. I remember wishing that my parents had just bought the Epiphone, even if it was used. The Harmony had horrible action and it wasn’t very much fun to play. But I learned the basics by playing the instrument, so I guess it served its purpose. A few years later, I sold it to a friend for something like $50.00. He later painted it black. I wonder whatever happened to that guitar?
January, 1991: One of the kindest (and probably dumbest) things my parents did was let both me and my sister cash in some savings bonds they had bought for us when we were born. My sister eventually put her money towards buying a car. I used some of my bond money to buy my second guitar and amp setup from Guitar Attic in Island Lake, IL. The guitar was another Strat copy, this time made by Lotus. The Lotus probably wasn’t much of an upgrade from the Harmony, but I did pick up a 75-watt Fender combo amp, and that was a big step up from the cheap little Harmony amp I had been using. In the following months, I really began to “get” the guitar. I spent hours almost every day, locked in my room, listening to albums and then trying to replicate the riffs I’d heard through my stereo. It was during that time that I began buying guitar magazines and playing along with the tablature sheets printed inside.
Spring, 1993: I was outgrowing the Lotus/Fender combination. Through reading guitar magazines, and playing other peoples’ guitars, I was beginning to have a better understanding of what I really wanted in an instrument. I eventually convinced my dad to take me to the Guitar Center that was then on the north side of Chicago. I wasn’t necessarily looking to get a new instrument. I just wanted to go to Guitar Center, as it seemed like this kind of mythical place I’d been hearing about. I went into the store and pulled a guitar off the rack and plugged it in to a nearby amp. My dad could tell that I was really enjoying the guitar and the amplifier, so he offered to buy them both. I had mixed emotions about this, as my dad had lost his job the previous year, and it seemed to me like this was a pretty frivolous expenditure. He didn’t seem too concerned about it, so I wound up taking the new gear home. This time, it was a slick Barrington (a short-lived instrument company, based out of Barrington, IL) electric guitar and a 60-watt Crate amplifier. This was a pretty big upgrade, as the guitar had a Gotoh locking tremolo system and (as I learned later) an EMG humbucker in the bridge. That, combined with the Crate’s pure solid-state gain made the metal riffs I was constantly hammering out sound pretty awesome. (As a side note, I had no idea at the time how much Guitar Center would figure into my future musical purchases.)
Summer, 1993: I had saved up some money and was taken by an ad in the paper for a “Strat-like guitar” someone was selling for only $100.00. The guitar wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great, either. It was a Harmony. Not a pure Strat copy – this one had an Igniter II (!) humbucker in the bridge. I grew tired of this guitar pretty quickly and eventually sold it at a flea market.
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