Lepus Lepidus

Since I have no good guitar store near me on the Peninsula (no, B Street does not count), going to Guitar Center is always something of a treat. I was visiting friends in the East Bay on Saturday, and those friends live very close to a Guitar Center. So after seeing them, I found that GC was staying open late for a “midnight madness” event and I checked it out.

Mostly, I was looking for a case for a hard-to-fit guitar (they were very accomodating and tried three different models to no avail — it’s not their fault, it’s the guitar). I was also there to window shop and look to see if there was anything I would kick myself for passing on. Some floor models (including one stompbox I probably should have snagged), some accessories deals…a good sale, really.

I am starting to think about selling my existing 12-string and getting a new one. This 1974 Epiphone Bard been in my family for several years and has some battle damage but still sounds lovely. Unfortunately it doesn’t match me — I have small hands, it has a huge 70s neck…hard to overcome that physical limitation. The instrument should match the player, and I don’t believe in owning guitars I won’t play. I haven’t played it in a year. I do love Taylors, so that’s my obvious replacement…but they’re spendy and I haven’t fallen in love with one yet. So, I’m browsing and thinking and collecting information on both Taylor acoustics and the 12-string T5. And maybe I’ll ultimately find something awesome by another manufacturer and go with that. I’m open.

Dude working the acoustic room at Guitar Center greeted me warmly, then got caught up with other customers. I looked around and tried a few things for about 10 minutes, then made my way back to the electrics. He came out after me, apologizing for ignoring me (he didn’t, I was just browsing), and asked if there was anything I needed. Well, I was looking for a Taylor 12-string, I said. He then informed me that he had a great Martin 12-string for me to try and that he played on Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue.”

This would make him Chris Weber, which could be entirely true — there are tons of excellent guitarists in the Bay Area with professional experience — but it’s also entirely irrelevant. I see this as the first sign of a bad salesman: When he wants you to know how cool he is. I immediately asked him what the hell he was doing in Guitar Center in Concord, but followed him back to the acoustics anyway. He went to the guitar — a D12X1 — took it off the wall, and played it for me in the little fancy room where the pricey acoustics live. He then showed off his mad fingerpicking skills…for longer than I expected.

This is the second sign of a bad salesman. I don’t care how it sounds and feels in your hands; I care how it sounds and feels in mine. If you want me to buy it, let me try it.

I patiently wait for him to stop, then pick up the guitar myself. I am not really in the Martin camp; I respect the brand and I’ve tried a few (I considered buying a friend’s D-28 a few years back), but I haven’t played one that made me go “oh my god this is mine” yet, the way most of my guitars have spoken to me. And 12-strings are always more expensive because of the engineering that goes into them; that’s a lot of tension on a little wood, and of course it still has to sound good. It’s tough.

I’m thinking I’m looking at around $2K for my budget, selling my existing one as vintage (since it is) and saving for the rest. The price tag on this model: $600. It’s a Mexican import, which isn’t inherently a problem, but isn’t an heirloom, and that’s what I’m shopping for.

Kat instantly knows this is not my next guitar. “There’s no way that’s real wood,” she says. “Oh, it’s real wood!” assures the salesman. “That’s solid spruce on the top, and that’s the most important part to have, because all the tone comes from this area back here, behind the bridge.” That’s true. I know this; Kat knows this. Anybody who knows anything about guitars and shops for four-figure-price-tag instruments knows how the physics and resonance of an acoustic guitar works. Even the entry-level acoustics have solid spruce tops for this reason. It’s only worthy of note if they don’t.

But Kat is not to be fooled; even she knows high-pressure laminate when she sees it. “Yeah, but the rest is laminate.” “Uh…yes,” he admits. “The rest is laminate but it sounds great. And you know, it’s Martin; they’re not going to put their name on something that isn’t good.” Martin describes the back and sides as “Mahogany Pattern HPL Textured Finish,” which is to say the wood grain on this guitar is basically a big laser-printed texture. I notice that the bottom strap button is missing, but I keep my mouth shut.

I also notice that the neck is too wide for my tastes. This is entirely a personal ergonomic judgement; it might be built wonderfully, but if it doesn’t feel right in your hands, a lot of guitarists simply say “Sorry, no.” I play short-scale guitars and thin necks, because my hands are small. I avoid 70s Fenders and 50s Gibsons and Hamers and things like that just because of the neck shapes; I go for modern Fender C-shapes and Taylor’s neck profiles generally feel very good to me. I know pretty much as soon as I hold the neck if a guitar will work for me or not. I tell the salesman that it does sound nice but I don’t like the neck because my hands are too small. (Not that I’m not even blaming the instrument; I’m blaming Darwin.)

He sniffs and mumbles something. I couldn’t hear him, so I ask him to repeat. “That’s a cop-out,” he says louder.

This is the third sign of a bad salesman: The customer may not technically always be right, but the customer is absofuckinglutely right when it comes to their own physiology. It’s great that you played with Dylan, douchebag; my experience to counterbalance that is 38 years of owning the same two hands. Am I supposed to take that as some sort of challenge and buy the guitar to prove you wrong? I know what feels comfortable to me, and your insults will not change that. In this context, “that’s a cop-out” is possibly the stupidest thing a guitar salesman has ever said to me.

I guess I’ve been lucky; he’s the first jackass I’ve found in a guitar store in a while, and he was actually my first bad sales experience in that particular Guitar Center. I have bought guitars and gear there before; I like shopping there instead of the closer San Francisco location because Concord is generally not staffed by guys like him. If I spot him next time, I’m avoiding him.

Note to guitar shops: Don’t fuck with me. You’re only fucking your commission.

In high school, I told my parents I wanted to learn how to play guitar. Of course, that means getting a guitar — but they called my bluff and said “use your sister’s.” It was a nylon-string folk guitar by Framus, thoroughly inadequate for rocking. I said I wanted an electric. “If you want an electric, you’re going to have to save up and buy it yourself.”

Mom didn’t think I’d do it. To scratch the itch, I borrowed a friend’s Strat copy — a little-known but well-built Asian brand called Yakima — for about seven months while saving up my cash from my job at the record store. My goal was to get a bright red, real Fender Stratocaster — albeit a 1957 reissue from Japan, but at least it would a new one ordered just for me. I’d visited Chet’s Music Store, which was a Fender dealer but didn’t regularly stock anything, and was told to come in when I had $600, which would be enough up front for them to order the $1000 model. Chet was a friend of the family, and while there was no deal to be cut, he was friendly and understood my enthusiasm.

The day after I graduated high school in 1989, I took my $600 in savings and asked my parents to go with me to Chet’s — it was a special moment and I wanted them to be there. Partly that was to rub their noses in it, but my parents didn’t even seem to care that I’d called their bluff; they were happy that I had saved my money and kept focused on a goal for such a long time.

Chet said “Today’s the day, huh? Okay, but before we place the order, I have something I want to show you…” And this is what he pulled out:

A 1979 Les Paul Custom, all original, in a hardshell case. Now, I knew the name, and I’d read by battered copy of the UK instructional manual Play Rock Guitar enough to know what a Les Paul was, but…well, it was almost perfectly wrong. Stratocasters were light and hourglassy and had stinging, biting tone. Les Pauls were chunky and heavy and sounded similarly fat. It was exactly the opposite of what I wanted, of everything I’d been saving for.

“Ooh, that’s pretty,” said my mom. She knew Les Paul from his hits with Mary Ford, and their television and radio appearances. I just knew him as the guy who made the Les Paul. And I had to admit, the wine red finish with the gold hardware was pretty.

We went into one of the student rooms and plugged it into an ancient Fender combo amp. I had meager skills at this point, but my mom asked if I could play Chet Atkins’ version of “Snowbird.” My dad commented that it was lovely and that Chet wouldn’t steer me wrong; if I liked it, I could trust him. I knew I was holding something valuable, but again…it wasn’t my guitar, was it? It had a tiny little bit of buckle rash but otherwise looked perfect. It had barely been played. Chet said he’d sold it to a customer some years back who wound up keeping it in his closet and, when that guy needed money, Chet was a pal and bought it back from him. But Chet wasn’t a high-priced guitar dealer; he made money from lessons. He wanted this thing out of his store for the insurance reasons alone. If I bought it for $700, I’d be doing him a favor, he said.

I looked at my dad. “I don’t think you should pass this up,” he said. He knew nothing about guitars, but as a veteran bargain hunter, he knew a good deal when he saw it. “If you don’t like it, you can always sell it or trade it for something else.” So in the back of my mind, that’s always what I’ve considered doing. I mean, who keeps their first guitar, right?

My parents loaned me the extra $100 — “you saved up the first $600, so we know you’re good for it,” said my mom — and I walked out with it in its heavy hardshell case, almost in shock. I didn’t have that “OMG this is the guitar I’ve always dreamed of” feeling. I had that “what have I done?” feeling. And a little voice in the back of my head said, “This had better go up in value, because I want to get a really nice Strat for it.”

Friends said they’d never seen a guitar like it. It was actually not that uncommon; wine red was a standard Gibson finish and it was pretty popular at the time. But not in Trenton, New Jersey, apparently, because I got nothing but suggestions that it was unique or rare. That summer I did a stage production of Hair, and my hippie costume included a gold-colored airborne insignia with big wings on it. I pinned that to my guitar strap and dubbed the guitar Amelia.

It’s with no small amount of terror that I realized that was 20 years ago this month. Chet’s Music Store was destroyed in a fire some years back; I understand that Chet himself has passed on now too.

The gold on the hardware has worn away in places, the white binding has turned yellow/orange, and there are more than a few buckle scrapes on the back now. Still, it’s in great shape overall; no damage, all original hardware (except for the strap pegs — Chet was the one who turned me on to strap locks as well as “the toothpick trick”), and the pickups still have strong output. I figure the guitar is worth about $2000 on the current market, and will only go up. Guess my dad was right.

Kat took some photos of all my guitars recently. Her shots, especially the ones of the scrapes and dings and wear and tear, made me appreciate everything I have learned on and from this Les Paul.

I think I’ll keep it.