Garbage Guitar

Turned out my neighbor's son stepped on his guitar and snapped the headstock off. We were at curbside where he was putting it with the rest of his garbage. Would he mind if I took it? I can't bear to see a musical instrument thrown away. "You really can't fix that," he said. But he was throwing it out, after all. And I'd seen him strumming a Martin on his stoop, so it wasn't like he was hurting for an axe. What could he say? I took the crippled six-string home.

I took it out of the case and looked it over. The decoration was really nice, and the workmanship seemed good. The case was solid and I ran my fingers through the plush lining. When I flipped open the storage compartment I recognized that I'd stumbled into private territory. I found some seeds, tiny bits of weed and one of those tiny ziplock bags - no doubt the remnants of my neighbor's teenage stash.

What was garbage a moment earlier suddenly became invested with meaning; this guitar part of someone's life, an emotional piece of this guy's coming of age. I could imagine him jamming with his buddies and the good times he must have associated with the guitar. I understood why he might have been hesitant to let me take it. I doubt he remembered what was tucked deep inside, but no doubt he wanted to move on, and I bet it took some doing to let the guitar go.

The guitar is a Cortley copy of a Gibson Dove, and it looks like the actual Gibson that Elvis is playing in the picture. I even found a website dedicated to the copy guitar! People said nice things about it online, and I was inspired to fix it. I got me some Gorilla Glue and a clamp, did as good a job as I could gluing it back together. A bit cruder of a repair than I'd hoped. But when I strung the guitar up, it held.

And when I tuned it up and began to play, the guitar sounded with a warmth that made me smile.

BOSS ME-30

Let's face it, after a bit of practice, any 12 year old can hit an Em power chord on their Chinese built Stratocaster and sound reasonably cool. A soup of distortion will forgive a plethora of sloppy fingering sins. And these days lots of effects pedals are available to give you an incredible palette of ear candy on the cheap.

Hardly a guitarist, I truly appreciate playing by someone who does it well, but lean heavily on sonic enhancement when I play and record guitar myself. My stomp box chain eventually grew to compressor-distortion-chorus-delay-noise gate and required scores of deep knee bends to tweak those knobs and hundreds of 9-volt batteries a month. Arthritis kicked, my tongue became numb from checking batteries and I grew frustrated searching for that combination of knob positions that sounded so good 2 minutes ago.

The BOSS-ME30 seemed plasticy but promised a dozen or more Boss pedal effects under the hood, and was totally programable. Once home, it was actually more solid than it looked in the pictures. It's not idea for performance since tremolo, chorus, flanger pitch shifter — all the timebased effect, as I recall, were under one switch, all the distortions under another, and so on. It wasn't exactly like having all 22 effects (or whatever the number was) strung together; you weren't free to turn one off or on as you wanted as if you actually had all the pedals hooked up in a chain.. But you could make the combinations you needed and just switch up to another patch.

For me it was great. My crappy Fernandes suddenly had 100 personalities (well, 30 anyway) and recordings sounded better. Mostly it was really fun to play.

Eventually I bought a Roland VS-880 digital multitrack and the effects board in there had great patches for guitar along with the added value of them being saved into your song files and being programable in the mix. (Actually I'd recommend an old VS880 with the effects board, or VS880ex, fx built in, as a great effects unit, that happens to have 8 track digital recording included).

I decided I didn't need the ME30 anymore and thought I try that ebay aution site I'd been hearing about to get back some of the $200+ I'd paid for the Boss. To my utter astonishment the ME30 went for almost $400 at auction, far more than I'd paid for it (and I became an instant ebay fanatic).

Gearchild why?

Photo by Dad

From the moment we run to the candy store with our first nickel of allowance, through our working years, and hopefully into a "comfortable" retirement, we are doing it. Buying stuff. More than we need to get by, and frankly, a lot stuff we don't need at all.

It's no secret constant consumption is bad for the earth — with the pollution and waste endless manufacture creates, who could argue it isn't? All goes into the land fill. Where is that going to lead?

Is it some kind of addiction? Is constantly buying anew an attempt to drown out the horrible inevitability of death and decay? Are we just avoiding the larger questions, like: Why are we here? God? What happens (if anything) when you die? And, Gearchild, why?

Well, consumption has always bothered me. I've had many a fantasy of the ultimate monastic uncluttering. Some clothes, a book to draw and write in and that's it. I would be free of the burden of my things, open to life unfolding around me, with the mental space to go deep within and engage in meaningful self-discovery. And outside-of-self exploration would be all the more simple without all that baggage! Oh, to simplify!

Um, wait a second.

My wallet, my keys, I need them. A watch. Um, a cell phone is really a necessity these days. I guess I need a car, to get around, where I live. And, oh without this laptop, I'm screwed. But that's it. I'm done.

I do read on occasion. So some books.

Oh yea, a camera, to keep a record of it all, you know, and well, let's not forget all that other gear. I mean, I'm a musician of sorts. I need my instrument. Instruments, plural, that is. And to keep a record of what I do with those instruments. . . well, I guess I need a recording setup, a mixer, some cables, I/O, etc, etc... And suddenly I'm in the thick of it. I'm guilty of gathering stuff.

And it's a burden. It is. To afford it, to keep it working, keep it clean and to give the stuff your time. Here, the monk fantasy comes creeping back. Oh, to just be free of it all!

Stuff owns you, it sometimes seems.

But over time, I've become reasonably self aware. I've not broken free from the clutches of the urge to possess, but I'm clearer on why I appreciate this or that, why I want it.

Ultimately it comes down to a person. Someone, some actual human, designed that guitar, or beer bottle or software program. There is humanity inside my stuff. And it's a wonderful thing when the person who dreamed that beautiful thing up can connect with me with their creation.

At least with my gear, I own it serially. Get one, sell one. Like that. There is less waste because doesn't go into the dump right away, but rather finds a second life with someone else. Or I save it from the dump. And I buy used. In these ways I try and stay green. And really, how many guitars can ten fingers focus on anyway?

My beloved gear serves to help answer, not avoid the big questions. Because in music, art, and all things creative, you evoke the divine from within, you meld into the participatory, creative moment where "what's it all about?" doesn't exist, because you're in the middle of "it." Beauty exists, or another kind of expression. One that connects you to life, and keeps you in discovery mode, expanding, growing. As a child.

A gearchild.