My First Guitar - Chiquita Travel
Believe it or not, I’ve been trying to play the guitar since I was six years old. After a few years of playing old school rock band—a baseball bat for a guitar and lunch boxes and dinner trays for drums (pots and pans are so cliché)—my older brother and I had perhaps the most awesome (early) Christmas ever. I received a Chiquita travel guitar, red, very much like the picture to the right—and equally as awesome as the one Michael J. Fox used to blow up Doc’s massive speaker in Back to the Future—and my brother got a practice pad drum kit. And we started our second band, or the first with real instruments, which ever way you want to look at it.
Fast forward twenty-six years…now I run an I.T. department and my brother still beats on pots and pans (literally) and anything else that makes a sound when you hit it, including real drums. And he gets paid! That’s crazy, right? I mean, people actually fly him around so he can play drums for an hour or so. Get a job, man!
Over the last twenty-six years I’ve owned quite a few crappy guitars. I’ve had a Silvertone acoustic (my Dad’s old guitar), Fender Squire II, Yamaha acoustic, Yamaha nylon string classical and an electric Epiphone Special. All of them equally tawdry, inferior touch and sound, but good enough for me to barrel my way through fake books and what not to amuse myself.
My Gibson ES-137c
I’ve always wanted that one good guitar. A guitar that excites me, that stares me down and messes with my head. A guitar that I can’t put down. A guitar technically well-built with good intonation, electronics that don’t flake out, nice action and a unique warm sound. A guitar that will make me want to practice scales!
After a little inspiration (a viewing of It Might Get Loud), I decided now was the time to go get myself a real guitar. My dream guitar is a Gibson ES-335, but even used they are still very expensive and more than I’m willing to pay for a hobby. I searched local guitar stores for other semi-hollow bodies that fit my budget.
My older brother found my next guitar at a local shop. I’m not going to mention the name, because quite frankly, I think they really suck. He SMS’d me a picture and price, so I researched the model and put it in the back of my head. I continued to research other guitars.
Then last Friday evening, after dinner, I visited the guitar shop to see if the guitar my brother found was still there. It was, so I asked to take a closer look. I plugged into a Fender Blues DeVille and began noodling. I was sold. The guitar felt really good in my hands. It had great action and a big silky warm blues sound. After thirty minutes of the worst guitar-store riffing you’ll ever hear, I bought it.
It’s a 2003 Gibson ES-137 Classic. Lisa asked me if I was going to name it. The first name that came to my mind was Maud because it has a big fat butt just like the elephant Alex and I saw at the zoo earlier in the day. But really, who names their guitar these days? That’s cheeky.
