Guitars that get better with age and more importantly Love

I showed my Yamaha Pacifica (112) to my guitar teacher today and he said it was the best Pacifica he'd seen, by a long shot.

He asked me what I'd done to it: varnished the body?; cut the neck? etc...

I haven't done anything to it. I just told him that I just pay her attention and give her a whole lotta love.

He reckons that people can get guitars and cherish them and they end up being better than when they first got them (with no obvious, physiological explaination). He also said that someone can get a gorgeous guitar like a Strat or Les Paul for thousands of pounds and not love them and they end up crap (this has a slightly more obvious explaination).

Anyway, on a different note.

I went to the shop where I did work experience and they told me that they'd give me a 20% discount for the Dean Icon I want. Basically they dropped the price from £600 to £480!

I have to get her.

Blessings

Sebbi

 

Nice; I'll have a Pacifica myself in just a week from now, and I just know I'm gunna play her loads and love her to bits!

 

Dean guitars are the shit!I play an'82 babyv,before that,I had a '79 babyv..I would reccomend a u.s. made tho.all of the vintage dean's were made here in the states,& you cant say anything but good about them!my first was a $250 pawn shop special..the one I own now was $350 on ebay

 

I have a takamine i have been playing for 6 years now, and i believe i've givin it a whole lotta love. The guitar was rather cheap, like 200 dollars or something, but man, it sounds incredable when i play it. Not the best i have played, but just my favorite,

 

I love my guitars, too. Once I get one, I can't get rid of it. Even if I don't think the guitar is all that great, I can't part with it. I got rid of a guitar once and I hated doin' it, even though I was just tradin' it in. No more of that for me!

 

Guitars/instruments made with solid wood (don't think yamahas have solid wood, but I don't know) do sound noticeably better the older they get, and the more they are played. As the wood dries out it resonates better. Nobody is quite sure why instruments that are played sound better just yet, but they do. Alot of people will put guitars right by their speakers so that they resonate will not being played.

 

In my collection I have a few guitars that either I played into the ground, or got played to death before I got them, they are the ones I always reach for first.

I have a 50's RI Strat that looks like a cross between an unmade bed and a mile of bad road that I would'nt trade for a Custom Shop guitar.

I've seen some pretty nice Pacificas in my time too.

 

Yahamas definately are made with solid wood.

 

I might get me a Pacifica. I wanted an inexpensive guitar just to have sittin' around, and I was gonna get another Peavey Raptor to replace the one I busted, but those Pacificas seem better now that I've checked into 'em...

 

Ahh they're solid bodies, I thought we were talking about acoustics.


At any rate those guitars are finished with a polyurethane which does not let the wood breath at all, so its not going to get better with age. The wood might get better from being played, but not alot.

Guitars in this price range get less than top quality wood. It has not been dried very long, and is likely heavy and not resonant.
Keeping a guitar looking new will never make it sound better.

Change the strings, clean the fretboard every 3 months, oil it about every 8 months and the guitar will last forever.

Your teacher doesn't sound very experienced, old, played out guitars are very very very popular because of the way they feel and sound. They certainly do not turn to crap. In fact many people actually pay to have "aged" and "relic'd" guitars, which I don't understand, but none the less they do.

Get an MIJ strat from the early 80s, or an 80s Tokai.

 

You're talking about the 012 series, which is in every possible way shit.

I'm talking about a 112.

The 012s are covered and they don't play half as nicely in anyway.

The 112s are normally natural wood. Just the wood, so you can see the grain. Sometimes the wood has been stained for colour.

Old played out guitar which haven't been loved do tend to turn out crap. It's very obvious why.

Oh yeah, my guitar teacher has 30 years under his belt. Do not think about saying anything offensive about him again. In feudal Japan, not only could I kill you for that, but I WOULD kill you for it as well.

Blessings

Sebbi

 

You don't just stain a guitar... and I would shoot myself if I ever put a natural finish on an Alder bodied guitar like the 112. It's either going to be poly or nitro and always has a clear coat. There are a few exceptions in the 50s and 60s where fender put a rush on the assembly line and never clearcoated, which, if you got the guitar in white, it wouldn't yellow with age and it would stay its normal color. It just doesn't happen in factory assemblies like Yamaha. If you want to tell me an that an old played out guitar which hasn't been loved turns out to crap, please buy Stevie Ray Vaughan's Live at Montreaux and tell me what his tone sounds like on Number One.

I had a guitar teacher who was also the tech I was apprenticing under who worked for 25 years... I ended up teaching him things and his half-assed work and bullshitting finally irritated me till I walked out without paying one day and never came back.

He actually RESTORED a '54 strat. RESTORED. Anybody who will charge someone who knows nothing about guitars and wants a '54 strat restored and will do the work is a sorry sack of shit... once he strips that finish, it might as well be a Squier or a Pacifica. If I were a tech or a luthier, I'd refuse.

I had a '57 strat that I inherited from my uncle... the wiring harness, pickups, capacitors, pots etc. were all '57s... the rest was mix and match stuff, and it looked like the guitar had been through a woodchipper, and I have never played a guitar like it. I also had a '67 Martin D-35 with that I used an L.R. Baggs Para D.I. on that never opened up as nobody played it hard enough for it to open up. I have a '74 Martin D-35 with gouges that cost three times less what I paid for the '67 because of the low QC rep that Martin had during the company strike in the 70s. I bought it from Randy Wood, the former master luthier for GTR (now Gruhn) guitars of Nashville, TN... I've played pre-war brazillian D-28s that don't sound or play nearly as good as it does. My D-35 has gouges in the spruce top, two sealed back cracks in the center rosewood piece, and a pickguard crack. It also has the most weird ass pickup system I've ever seen (Stereo Fraps)... nobody uses the Stereo Fraps system really, outside of Crosby, Stills, Nash and sometimes Young.

All it barrels down to is what sounds good to you, sounds good to you. I'd take anyone elses word except my own with a grain of salt.

 

Not only that, but I just remembered... the most asked question I've ever heard about strings is that why do jazz muscicians prefer to play flatwound telephone cables? It's all a matter of physics. They can actually play faster although they may need a harder attack and a strong fretting hand. Think John McLaughlin or SRV.

Sometimes things just don't make sense...

 

Orsino you are right on about SRVs strat, great example. What happened to your inherited strat?
SRV didn't play flatwounds I don't think. I'm pretty sure he played 12s with a wound G. Then again Page, Hendrix, Clapton all played 9s, its just a matter of taste. The Jazzers I knowuse flatwounds for the tone and so you don't hear the buzz when you slide up or down the string moreso than for speed.

Sebbi, Im sorry but your guitar is a POS, it is not getting better with age. I tried so subtly explain that its not really getting better with age, but that didn't work. It is the equivilant of a 50s Kay guitar, guess what, they still suck. It is made by sweatshop labor in some Asian country where the bottom line is production quotas, not great sound. Your lack of knowledge on guitars is apparent, so please don't tell me you'd kill me, that's just ludicrous.

Your teacher is a moron for saying played out guitars turn to crap, I don't care how many years he has under his belt. If that were the case vintage guitars would not fetch insane prices. Same goes for ALL finely crafted instruments. I'm not saying leave it in the rain or something, but guitars with dings, severe wear, etc. still are amazing.

 

hahah i get so confused listening to jorge talk about guitars.

 

Pacificas are nice guitars. I've playe done only once, but they are indeed nice guitars.

but a guitar is an item that you do love and cherish, and if you play it often, it grows on you, it takes damage and it becomes an extension of you. I've recently bough ta new guitar, and it's a simon & patrick cedar fronted dreadnought thingy. it has a thin coast of non-solid varnish on it, which strumming is starting to scratch off. but i have a feeling that it will age gracefully and become a very nice guitar. It's already quite nice. It's very simply built, such a simple guitar, but there's beauty in simplicity. (I generally like more extravagant looking guitars) I cannot see it aging gracefully if it is never played. it would just gather dust, and that wouldn't be very good at all.

Ok, it may be an irrational belief, but the more love you put into a guitar, the greater it gets. And as for pre-aged guitars, they're nowhere near as good as a well-used guitar which has a whole history behind it.

 

Actually, SRV, to my knowledge, was a big fan of GHS strings... and he did use flatwound occasionally, but Rene Martinez, his tech, convinced him to lower his string guage down to a .013. He was playing .016 guage strings which often shredded his fingers. I play .013 Ernie Ball strings. Most people play .009 strings, which is probably the average guage for most guitarists. I think, at one point, Hendrix was using custom sets and sets that he mixed and matched that were pretty heavy. Most guitarists changed as they played. Clapton uses Ernie Ball regular slinkies, I believe.

 

The thing is, don't be afraid to play it. Your guitar has a solid cedar top which will age, but only if played. Other than that, it's laminate, but it will still age well. Simon and Patrick and all the other members of the Godin guitar family make great low priced guitars.

 

I just fell in love with my guitar. It was the first guitar I ever played, I walked into the store and it was love at first sight. Then I played it and it was the best, really, I never felt anything like that on any other guitar. It's a Washburn D10S btw.

 

"somethingwitty" you said to change the strings and clean the fretboard once every three months... now i don't know about the rest of you but i personally change my 2 main guitars strings (acoustic and electric) once a week and i completely clean and polish the guitars at the same time. i couldn't live with 2 week old strings let alone 3 months. i was just wondering how often everyone else do these things? (sorry i know its a lil off topic )
toodles