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What Is It About An Acoustic Guitar That Keeps You Playing One?


Opa John

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For me, it's simply the love of music and the abilitly to make my own.
 
I got my very first guitar for Christmas when I was just a teenager. I'm sure I got other things that Christmas, but the only thing I remember is that cheap, no-name, $15 guitar. It was the only thing I'd asked for.

I had others along the way and when I went into the Army, since I couldn't take my guitar with me, I gave my only guitar to the son of a friend of mine. I told him to learn to play it and I'd come back and listen to him. He learned to play it, but it was seven years later before I came back home to hear him. It made me feel good to think that I had inspired him to learn how to play. I had another guitar at the time, so naturally we got to play a couple of tunes together.

The only time I didn't have at least one guitar was the first year I was in the military. However, there were guitars at the service club and I was playing on those every chance I got.

I finally got another one after that first year. It was an old Gibson (1934, I believe) L-5 that I bought from someone in my unit. This would've been back in about 1966. It was beat to hell, and someone had cut a round sound hole in it, but it still played and sounded great to me. Back then it was "just an old guitar" and I was able to buy it for $17!! Wish I still had it today.

I've bought and sold a lot of guitars over the years. Right now I have four of 'em (not counting a 3/4 size Yamaha "pretend" classical) and I really can't imagine what life would've been like without music and a guitar to play it on.

I've been at it for a little over 53 years now, so I don't think anything's gonna change the way I feel about acoustic guitars. I play other musical instruments, but the acoustic guitar is, and will always be, my first love.

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lz4005 wrote:

 

None of that is intrinsic to an acoustic guitar as compared to a solidbody electric.

 

Actually, I find them very different instruments (I've only been playing the electric for a couple of years now so my experience is fairly limited).   In my humble, the electric doesn't like to play by itself (altho that is how I usually play it), where as the acoustic can be three parts of a song at the same time (I finger pick almost exclusively).    I can take the acoustic from my living room to the back porch to a camping trip - the electric is teathered to that big box.    The sound of the acoustic is the wood and my playing, the sound of the electric is pickups and effects and all that electronic stuff inbetween.

Learning to play the Lester is definitely making me a better musician - its teaching me about scales and to navigate the fretboard and all sorts of chords with names that I can't pronounce, but its also a lot more work.   With the acoutic all I need is three chords and the truth, and I'm pretty happy with that.

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