Guitars That Changed Your Life:

The FIRST guitar to impact my life for ever was the one my Uncle Ralph owned. He was the person who gave me the bug for guitars. He was legally blind, and would spend hours learning old jazz standards to play in his trio. That fine instrument was the famous Silvertone / Danaelectro amp in case guitar.

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I had always dreamed of owning that particular guitar someday, but my aunt had other ideas. Oh well.
 
chilipeppermaniac said:
Robert what are specs on a DT400CS neck back, fret board radius, and scale length?
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The DT400CS is the destroyer upon which all others were based. This is a full size body - not a mini-destroyer - like the DTX-120 and any destroyer referred to as a "millennial. "

On the DT400/420/520/555, All use a set neck. The neck is 20mm thick @ 1st fret, 22mm thick @ 12th fret, the nut width is 43mm, the neck width at 22nd fret is 57mm, and the fretboard radius is 305mm with a 24.70" scale length...
 
ChasFred said:
The FIRST guitar to impact my life for ever was the one my Uncle Ralph owned. He was the person who gave me the bug for guitars. He was legally blind, and would spend hours learning old jazz standards to play in his trio. That fine instrument was the famous Silvertone / Danaelectro amp in case guitar.

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I had always dreamed of owning that particular guitar someday, but my aunt had other ideas. Oh well.
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Wow!
 
Col, I re read your story and another thing jumped to mind about you and Dan Erlewine. I don't know how much contact you kept with him over the years, but I bet he would really like to hear from you and how your first Bass is still with you and how much it meant that he took good care of it for you way back when you bought it and sought him out to go over it for you.

Many years have passed since your purchase and I know if you were to drop a thank you card or snail mail to Dan, hearing your story and how Sluggo has done you well would mean the world to him.
 
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Some cool stories. Wood, wire and electricity have touched us all in an irreversible way I guess.

I guess the guitar that changed my life was my first guitar got it when I was 15 and it got me in a band at the same age. I was and still am hooked.
It was a "Stinger X-15".

Rock and Roll!
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My main axes in chronological order of acquisition and usage. The Mosrite served me very well for the first couple of professional years and is still one of my favorite axes to play around with. The ES225 changed everything I thought about playing guitar and was so accurate at reproducing all of my mistakes that I made marked progress in very short order. It was the first guitar that I didn't need to see the fretboard to know where I was playing. Every note laid out perfectly for me. The Strat was my recovery guitar. I crushed my left wrist in a work related accident. My Gibson suddenly was cramping my recovering hand too badly to use and my jazz trio was just starting to get work. A fellow from a band called The New Blue Moon Boys gave me his spare strat to try out and it was great to play, if not as intuitive as my Gibson. It was also my excuse to start using effects to boost its anemic output. The wine red, above is the only new guitar I have purchased from GC. It was traded to a fellow for his Epi LP and I missed it so much I found and purchased Noche a couple of days later.
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these days, since I don't work with large machinery around hazardous sites, my hand health is pretty good and I play just about any scale comfortably, but the Strat is still one of my faves.
 
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chilipeppermaniac said:
Col, I re read your story and another thing jumped to mind about you and Dan Erlewine. I don't know how much contact you kept with him over the years, but I bet he would really like to hear from you and how your first Bass is still with you and how much it meant that he took good care of it for you way back when you bought it and sought him out to go over it for you.

Many years have passed since your purchase and I know if you were to drop a thank you card or snail mail to Dan, hearing your story and how Sluggo has done you well would mean the world to him.
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Yes I talked with him about this episode, maybe five years ago. ...and thanked him as you suggest.
My Mossman dred needed a lot of work, having been gigged steadily since I bought it in 1978. I'd had frets leveled and polished, and the action adjusted... fairly minor tweaks. By about 2010 I could see it was going to need new frets, new saddle, maybe a neck reset. And likely need expert work on the bridge plate, which gets all chewed up on hardworking acoustics...
mostly by careless or hurried string changing.

So, having read two of Erlewine's books, and bought two of his how-to-do-it videos,
I knew that there was only one guy I wanted to do the work on my main guitar. I drove down
to Athens with my Mossman, to visit his shop and speak with him while he looked at my guitar.

I believe that he had not been in business long when I brought my Fender bass to him.
That's one of the reasons he gave excellent service for small money... he was trying to build himself
a clientele. Which he did. His early shop in Ann Arbor was just the beginning of his career as
a luthier and writer, and video maker.

Needless to say, he did excellent work on my '75 Mossman Flint Hills dreadnought... and gave the
instrument a whole new life. He reset the neck, made a new bridge, new bone nut, replaced the frets, and did some of his magic on the bridge plate, which is a critical part for tone, but takes a beating from
strings and their ball ends.

For this work, I paid him more than I paid to buy the guitar in '78, but the instrument is worth it.
That acoustic has gone with me everywhere, I've worn out four cases (at least) in all the
years, and the guitar sounds better than ever. That thing about old guitars has some truth
in it. Anyway, I regard him as a national treasure, and was very willing to pay his fees.
That's one good way to thank him.

And it's a good way to acknowledge that my Mossman dred is another guitar that changed my life... by expressing my music as best it could be, and enhancing everything I played. I was already a "Journeyman Pro" when I bought it, and this handmade guitar from a small factory in Winfield Kansas gave me the edge that I needed to perform in demanding arenas. Everyone else seemed to be playing Martins and Taylors (and for good reason) but my Mossman gives up nothing... if I do my part.
 
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Frank, that is a lot of how my roots went except the juke joint part.

From the time I was in elementary school to about the 8th grade, my ears always loved music.
Y'all will have to forgive some of my initial influences, but I guess it is why I am a man with varied tastes.
Some of my initial likes go all the way back to How Much is that Doggie In the Window, to Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend, to Tom Jones' What's New Pussycat, to Elton John, Bowie, Grand Funk, BTO, Steely Dan, Brownsville Station, Three Dog Night, and even Roy Clark and Buck Owens. Then like I said in a prior post, I went from riding in the back of the car with Dad drivin, to Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier when I first heard Eddie Van Halen and Ted Nugent, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Rock n Roll guitar virus infected me for life.

Here is a little ZZ Top for Frank from one of my favorite DVD's called Double Down Live
 
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So, glad I remembered to include Roy above.
As I watch these couple clips, I can honestly say Roy was my first guitar God to blow my little kid mind.


 
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