A few weeks ago, in the
"You know you've got bad GAS when..." thread, I made the following foolish (but true) statement:
"...
you're walking home with a guitar case you didn't have when you left the house and you can't really remember how it came to be in your hands..."
Well, yesterday was one such day - my Roadworn 60s strat now has a Roadworn 50s strat as a friend... :roll:
There are a number of people/factors that I blame for this:
- Philly Q and PPPMAT, for dissing the fretboard "finishing" of these particular buggers in PPPMAT's pickup thread (although you guys are top of this list, it doesn't actually mean that you're the worst offenders :lol:)
- The guitar itself - it looked at me longingly a couple of months ago
- The shop - for not managing to shift it in that couple of months, encouraging me to think that the guitar was either a) a dog, or b) mine, and had been waiting for me...
- The guitar itself - for being a stunner when I decided to try it yesterday
- The lovely Mrs R, for suggesting that I had the appropriate funds while I had the guitar in my hands (and there was I thinking I'd already used all of my 2010 budget)
- The lovely Mrs R, (when I said to the assistant "I'm almost 100%, I think we'll go and have a coffee and discuss whether I should be buying another guitar..."), for saying "why don't you just buy it and then we'll go and get a coffee..."
- er... me, I suppose, for not having any willpower or sense...
I think the 60s one is far prettier and more "me" (the red in the sunburst, my preference for the three-ply 11 hole guard on strats, my preference for the look of rosewood boards on strats), but this new one is lovely to play, and the "look" in the mirror is growing on me. I also have a sneaking feeling that this one is an even better guitar.
This is the first time (in nearly 30 years) that I've owned a maple-board strat, and I'm starting to discover what I've been missing. The difference is not huge (the change from stock 10s to my 11s made a much bigger difference in tone), but there's this indefinable extra "something", an air of "rightness" when I attack certain things on this guitar... Jimi Hendrix, Ritchie Blackmore, Mark Knopfler, or 70s/80s Eric Clapton stuff... they just seem to bubble, bounce, and bite more than on a rosewood board.
:D
(And btw, Philly, while we were prowling and "window" shopping, Mrs R, looking at a Jaguar and some strats, said "why on earth do they paint the headstocks of some of them, it looks dreadful..." - what a gem this woman is :lol:, I'm continually finding more good reasons as to why I married her...!)
