My Dad bought me a guitar when I was 4. This around 1967. I have no idea why. He never did tell me. I must've seen Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix because I just smashed it to pieces. Whether it was fun I cannot say. This is what my Mum told me years later. I have no memory of it.
The first guitar I bought was a bass when I was 18. It was a 4th hand Kay.
I wanted to learn bass, it was there in a second hand shop, I bought it. I didn't know anything about brands. It was pretty crap, the G string broke early on and I used it as a 3 string for a couple of years. I still think that way now, with low B and G string variations !
After a couple of years, I bought a Fender musicmaster bass.
I chose it because it said 'Fender' and I figured I'd get a 'proper' instrument. A few months later I bought a V shape Hondo as a back up bass. It was never a good instrument, no punch, really flabby and floomy. I learned early on that looking cool doesn't cut it if the sound is unsatisfactory. But man, did it look cool, the flying V bass equivalent.
I actually bought it for it's look and my mate George {the first bass player I'd ever known and watched live} had a Hondo so I figured it would be OK.
Wrong !
I took a break from playing for a year {sold the Musicmaster, gave the Hondo to a kid who promptly began a life of crime ! Last I heard, he was a producer but this was 20 years ago} and when I resumed playing, I bought another Hondo. It had problems staying in tune though and I swapped it for another Fender Musicmaster. For some reason, it wasn't the same as the last time. I'd loved my first one. Second time round it felt like something was missing.
But I persevered for 3 years then got it converted to a fretless and had to relearn it as all the notes changed ! That came as a shock.
Meanwhile, I thought I'd learn guitar, something I'd wanted to do for the previous 12 years. My first was a £29 acoustic guitar.
I can't even remember the name or if it had one. It was a frustrating but worthwhile journey and it did so hurt my fingers as I taught myself chords. One day, I went for a music practice with friends and when I opened the case, it came out in pieces and shavings ! I did wood glue it together but the strings just never stayed in tune.
I hadn't heard of Muttley in 1990 !
The church I was with at the time gave me £100 to buy a new one so I bought an Ozark electro acoustic. I'd never heard of Ozark
and you barely hear of them now, but I thought, mistakenly, that an electro acoustic meant that if you plugged it in, it sounded like a miked acoustic but with volume. Ha ! It did not. I hate the sound of it plugged in, I always have. But I still have it, 22 years on. The acoustic sound is OK and I still use it regularly. I've probably recorded more on it than any other single artifact I've ever had. I've certainly played live with it more than anything I've had.
About three years after converting the Fender to a fretless I swapped it for a fretted Aria which I had for the next 12 years.
It wasn't that I thought Aria were any great shakes, just that I'd bought the bass at the end of 1990 for the playground I worked on and I knew it well.
In 1999, having seen me break G strings so regularly that I became known as the string breaking man, my mate gave me a load of money and said "get yourself a guitar". I didn't really want one as I was happy with the 6 string and the string breaking was because of my heavy handed style. So I thought I'd buy a 12 string and I got the shop guy to fit a pick up. It's a Yamaha.
I still have it, I still use it regularly and it's the only guitar that I actually went to the shop and played for a while. So I thought it would do. It cost me £300 and more for the pick up which, for me, is crazy money.
A few years before this, I bought my first electric, a Peavey reactor. I knew they made amps, I had no idea they made guitars. It's shaped like a Telecaster. It does what I want it to and I like it. There was no careful choice or studying it ~ it was what I could afford and I've never felt any particular brand was going to make my noise better or worse. I'd been using a couple of the playground's guitars in the period leading up to my buying the peavey, one of which needed a battery. That was an eye opener !
In '91 I bought a mandolin with a pick up, a Samick, because I'd gotten into Irish folk and loved particularly what Charles O'Connor of Horslips used to do with electric mandolin.
The most Irish sounding of the band, ironically, he was the only one that wasn't Irish, being English ! I had never even touched a mandolin let alone having any knowledge of a good one from a bad one. But I thought that £70 was a good price for a cheapskate so I took the plunge. I still use it regularly now. I love both the acoustic and electric sound.
Then in 2005 I felt I needed to go further on the bass so I sold the Aria and bought a Wesley 5 string. I got it on ebay. It's got a tough chunky feel and I like the sound of it. I use it all the time. A few years later, I bought an acoustic fretless bass guitar, hoping to cultivate a more double bass sound.
Well, it doesn't do that, but with some tweaking, it has a sound of it's own that I've grown to really dig. Because it has a little equalizer and can be plugged into an amp or DI, it doubles as a kind of electric fretless.
I generally have only what I need for variation {eg, 5 string bass, double bass, acoustic bass guitar}
So I don't really fit any of the above categiories. Only with my first fender bass {it was short scale and right at the bottom of the gene pool} and my Fender Rhodes electric piano and Hammond organ have I specifically gone after well known brand names. Only with the 12 string have I actively sat down for half an hour and played an instrument and said "OK, I'll go for this one". I have always taken gambles and only with the V shape Hondo back in ’84 have I actually been disappointed. I couldn't differentiate between a Les Paul, a Ron Paul and a St Paul.
