What a step forward, especially in playability. I remember opening the case for the first time in my bedroom at my parent's house on Ardmore Street. The inside was plush dark blue velour and filled with the scent of guitar polish.  This instrument set me back $60. Hell, the case was worth 60 bucks. The previous owner had even left a can of String-Eze in there.

Now doesn't your guitar sound great?  Don't you wish you'd done this years ago?

Yes, the Mustang was a quantum leap in quality and playability, although I didn't keep it that long.  Within a year I found myself sitting on a stool in the guitar room of a Wichita music store picking out a dreamsickle-colored, maple necked Fender Telecaster. 

I traded the Mustang in on this Tele.  (Sitting here writing this in April 1998, I'd gladly give $60 to have this guitar back.) At the time, the Tele wasn't the cool rock instrument it was to become—-Keith Richard and Pete Townshend wouldn't start using them for another few years.  Maybe I was ahead of my time. What I really wanted was a Les Paul. I loved the way they looked, and in your hands the quality was obvious. Solid, heavy, and a dream to play.  Like butter.  But a new Les Paul cost more than I thought I could afford. What I didn't know then is that buying a guitar isn't like buying a car, a stereo or a tennis racket. Guitars retain value—they don't wear out. If you buy quality instruments, with a little luck, they'll even increase in value.  So you can really never spend too much on a guitar, or have too many. 

Accessorize! For starters, there's the One True Pick: Fender Mediums, celluloid, in the traditional teardrop shape and dark red color.

Get yourself a capo or two—-you're never going to play Here Comes the Sun or You Can't Always Get What You Want in the right key without one.  (Every capo I ever bought has been unique—-people have too much time on their hands, I suppose. Warning: they're easy to lose.)  Today's cheap electronic tuners are the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Strings: Super Slinkies or equivalent—-also known as 9's. 10s sound better, but they're a bitch to bend. That silly 0.001 inch makes a big difference.

Effects:  Over the years I've spent thousands on stomp boxes: distortions, choruses, phase shifters/flangers, wa-wa pedals, delays, equalizers, and all-in-one DSP units. They can't play your instrument for you, but they sound cool, at least until your ear tires of the novelty.  Delays and distortions are the most important.

The Telecaster lasted me until the end of college when I swapped it straight up for an entry-level Gibson guitar, the SG-wannabe Melody Maker. In retrospect, this guitar wasn't the instrument that the Tele was, but it looked like an SG and I figured was just that much closer to the Les Paul that I really wanted.

Around 1980, I finally got my Les Paul. I was at Houston's biggest music store, Evans Music on Westheimer, browsing the used Pauls—all beautiful and all priced between $500 and $1000.  I overheard a kid trying to sell his Les Paul to the store. The salesperson wasn't that interested, so I jumped into the conversation, and pretty soon was driving the kid to my bank (Plaza del Oro Commerce Bank, near the Astrodome) to seal the deal for $275 in cash.  He needed the money to get his car back from the mechanic (clutch work, as I recall).  It was a beautiful 1972 Deluxe Gold Top. I still have this guitar and I wouldn't sell it for $275 (at least, not unless I really needed the money). 

On the electric guitar, the A chord played on the second fret sounds great and is wonderfully easy to play with either one or three fingers. Starting at A makes D your IV chord—and a big distorted D sounds amazing.  The mother of all guitar chords, the six string base position E, is the V chord in this setting.

In the mid-80s I bought a black Ovation medium bowl acoustic, also from the Evans Music. This was the acoustic guitar I'd always wanted.  It played great (for an acoustic).  And it looked great.  It was an acoustic guitar, yet it was high-tech—for me, an irresistible combination.

While it's true that a good-sounding Fender or Marshall amp is a macho buddy, at least until it breaks down, an amp can never have a place in your heart like a guitar.  For one thing, you don't hold them in your hands day after day for hours at a time.  For another, it's hard to love something that's such a heavy pain in the ass. Before buying a big amp, picture usage scenarios: will the amp fit in your car? Your living room? Can you carry it up a flight of stairs?  Anything bigger than a twin is big trouble. 

Without a guitar plugged in, an amp just sits there and buzzes.  Kind of like a PC without software.

I came to California with an aching in my heart and two guitars in the wayback of my '87 Acura—the Les Paul gold top and the black Ovation acoustic. I sold the Ovation to Paul Rekieta a few years ago after buying its big brother, an Ovation Elite—I was and remain a sucker for these bright-sounding, cool-looking Ovation guitars.  Electrified, they sound terrible, but straight, as acoustic as you'd ever want to hear. The Elite came from Santa Cruz's fine downtown music store, Union Grove. Donovan had been in the store a month before and bought one just like it, only a different color, my salesman told me.

I bought my first and only Fender Stratocaster in 1988 from Union Grove, a $225 pale yellow model with a maple neck much like my Tele from long ago.  It may be a cheap Mexican strat, but to my ear sounds just like Eric Clapton's or Mark Knopfler's.  It's cool because you just don't have to baby a $225 guitar.  

Another recent acquisition is a Taylor 12 string. It's a real beauty, and sounds fabulous, but since it's a 12 string, it doesn't get played that much.  Too hard to tune, too hard to play.  But when you have a new set of strings on this thing, a simple open G chord sounds like the Mormon Frigging Tabernacle Choir. 

The Taylor Company insists on sending me their quarterly newsletter—it's a predictable mix of ads for Taylor logo wear, articles on guitar construction, and tips on how to keep your instrument at the proper humidity and the bad things that happen if you don't—always, humidity, humidity, humidity. If I'd known all the ways one of these things could break, I wouldn't have bought one! Anyway, mine has been trouble free for the three years I've owned it  (and I don't even own a humidity meter!)

For a quicker change, simply tune the low E down a full step to a D.   Now fret a normal D chord—only now you can strum all six strings.

My newest guitar is a Paul Reed Smith Custom 24, with a cherry sunburst finish. It's a little like a cross between a Strat and a Les Paul. I love mine--it's relegated my Goldtop to closet status. 24 frets! Two full octaves, and plays great everywhere on the neck.  The wide, thin neck makes it easier to bend notes, and the electronics articulate each string cleanly. 

What a blast playing at the great Bike Shop Grand Opening party—kicking off the second set with our patented slow version of Sheena Is A Punk Rocker. Or the long cowbell-accented buildup to the climax of the Chambers Brother's Time. Yow!  Sadly, No Clue is no more—last I heard, George was living with a viola player in Milan, Italy. (A quick aside: someone should do a movie someday about George's life—-he's a real character.) 

I swear by my 10 year old Alesis. You hook this baby up to your stereo, dial in a heavy beat with some reverb, and boom, you are rocking.  With a couple of foot switches you can do fills, start and stop, set tempo, and generally sound like a band.

I've been playing music with Ken Emerick now for a few years.  By day, he's a mild-mannered satellite engineer at Loral in Palo Alto. He's also a fine singer, guitarist,  bass player, and drum machine programmer. Ken has lots of cool gear, and best of all, he's up in the mountains where there aren't many neighbors to offend.  He and I get together and make a mighty noise every couple of weeks.  We're playing a lot of Neil Young and Tom Petty tunes and starting to work into the Beatles.   If you need a two-piece rock and roll band for your special party, give us a call.