h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In a conversation about guitar playing in the pub tonight, a friend asserted that there was a famous guitarist who, irked by people saying he was only as good as he was due to playing an expensive guitar, went through a phase of buying a second hand guitar in each city he played on the day of the gig, and playing it that night to prove his quality.

Is this true and, if so, who was the guitarist in question?

I can't answer either part with certainty, but I *can* say the story rings a bell...

A one-handed guitarist would not need a second hand guitar.

It's a daft thing to do. A great musician will make any guitar sound good, but will want to have the most suitable instrument to hand, in order to best allow their talent to shine. Why give the audience any less?

Well, true - but musicians aren't immune to doing daft things. I've seen some of them on stage so drunk they could hardly find the fretboard, never mind the right fret. Using a different guitar can't be as bad as that.

"It's a daft thing to do. A great musician will make any guitar sound good, but will want to have the most suitable instrument to hand, in order to best allow their talent to shine. Why give the audience any less? "

If the audience are going for the gear, they're doing it wrong. Unless you're at the extremes of guitar build quality, as long as it's the right sort of guitar for the person playing it the instrument will be the most suitable regardless of where it came from, what badge it carries, etc.There are only a finite number of ways one can put together a couple of bits of wood, some metal hardware and a few bits of electronics, and a lot of what you hear about the relative quality of these components is either advertising or myths.

At least a guitar is portable. Imagine being a pianist who accompanies a chorus that sings at retirement homes. There's always a danger that the house piano won't be all that great. The alternative is a high-end electric keyboard. They do build good ones now, but cheap they're not.

I notice that much is being made of Mozart's violin and viola, which have been brought from their secure locations in Salzburg to Boston for a performance. Maybe someone thinks the ghost of Mozart somehow inhabits the instruments?

>>Unless you're at the extremes of guitar build quality,../

Well the OP states it was 'an expensive guitar'.

>>There are only a finite number of ways one can put together a couple of bits of wood, some metal hardware and a few bits of electronics,../

There are infinite ways to put them together.

>>...a lot of what you hear about the relative quality of these components is either advertising or myths.

We're talking about secondhand guitars, with the possibility of wear on the fretboards, warped necks and dodgy electronics.

It occurs to me that the 'famous guitarist' might be someone like The Edge, in which case it really wouldn't matter what he was playing, because he ,ahem, chooses not to exploit the maximum potential of the instrument...

Oh, is this going to turn into one one of those threads for hi-fi obsessives, where someone says knowingly "of course, the law of diminishing returns applies"?

Cos if it is, paulh's piano sounds more interesting.

>>Oh, is this going to turn into one one

One, one, one, two.
One two.
Two.

Aye thengyo.

"Oh, is this going to turn into one one of those threads for hi-fi obsessives, where someone says knowingly "of course, the law of diminishing returns applies"? Cos if it is, paulh's piano sounds more interesting."[KB]

Touring as a musician of any kind has its special features. You never know when you'll be sharing the stage with an Italian gospel choir . Things happen. I can't relate very well to wrestling with the quirks of an unfamiliar guitar when you walk up to the microphone, but improvising is a skill that you don't discover you have until you're there and something must be done right away.

If the musician in question likes to buy expensive secondhand guitars and perform on them immediately, I suspect that he is trying to keep his spontaneity alive. No getting into ruts with an instrument he has played thousands of times before.

You remind me of a poem http://rosemck1.tripod.com/touch-of-the-masters-hand.html

It is not so much the instrument, but the musician - forgive the religious undertones if you like.

F S

It is often said that violins improve with age. Something to do with the wood hardening over the years. So a violin made in Mozart's day might sound better than one made now.

Organs, pianos, etc, tend to fall apart with age. The only reason for buying a piano that once belonged to Beethoven would be to measure it to see what way it behaved. The sound would be rubbish.

A good guitarist should be able to get a good sound out of any reasonable instrument. (I had to accompany a sing song last week using the "house guitar" which was missing the 5th string, making it difficult but not impossible to play some songs). But he'll get a better sound out of an expensive one which he has chosen for its quality.

I think I just got fisked...

And, because I am completely not An Adult I'm going to bite.

">>Unless you're at the extremes of guitar build quality,../

Well the OP states it was 'an expensive guitar'."

Expense is subjective; to me £500 is 'an expensive guitar', to others a guitar doesn't get expensive until you have to insure it by itself... it's also possible to get excellent custom built instruments for the same price you'd pay for a so-called 'budget guitar' if you know where to look and who to ask. Expense also does NOT imply quality (Gibson, Rickenbacker, et al) so the argument kind of falls flat.

">>There are only a finite number of ways one can put together a couple of bits of wood, some metal hardware and a few bits of electronics,../

There are infinite ways to put them together."

Actually, no there aren't. There are finite ways, and even fewer good ways, anything else is just splitting hairs over measurements.

">>...a lot of what you hear about the relative quality of these components is either advertising or myths.

We're talking about secondhand guitars, with the possibility of wear on the fretboards, warped necks and dodgy electronics."

I somehow doubt this is a guy who just went into Cash Converters and bought the first guitar he saw each time, fretwear and neck warping are easy to spot and no guitarist worth their salt buys without trying.

"It occurs to me that the 'famous guitarist' might be someone like The Edge, in which case it really wouldn't matter what he was playing, because he ,ahem, chooses not to exploit the maximum potential of the instrument..."

Okay, so are you basically just a gear snob?

"It is often said that violins improve with age. Something to do with the wood hardening over the years. So a violin made in Mozart's day might sound better than one made now. "

Violins are another instrument that's fallen foul of received wisdom about how to build them and what with... apparently Stradivarius used wood that nowadays would be rejected as entirely unsuitable.

That's interesting, Mr D. I know very little about violins. They're one of the instruments I'm not really able to play.

>>Okay, so are you basically just a gear snob?

?

Expensive = good, assuming all second hand instruments are bad, "not realising the full potential of the instrument, so the quality doesn't matter"...

Sorry, that says 'gear snob' to me. As in, snobby about gear.

The same thinking has been applied to guitars of course, the laquers becomong more brittle with time and the woods taking on a new tonal quality as it dries further.

I'm quite happy to buy into that, but suspect that the nuances really are so subtle that by the time the signal has passed through a cable to a tubescreamer and another cable to an amp, and then possibly through the air to a mike in front of the cab and then through another cable to a mixer, through the mixer and the PA amp and along another cable to a PA cab before being unleased on an audience, it would just get lost.

Us gear spotters can enjoy it though.

Myself? I play mostly Fenders and Teles at that. I have a few - I collect and just don't sell them on. I have four Fenders (1xS, 3xT) and a number of Squiers. My favourite? A 3 year old Squier Classic Vibe Tele. It cost me just under £300 I think, and feels (to my hands) fantastic to play, I love the sound (to my ears - brilliant, everything a tele should be) and it looks (to my eye) fantastic.

Would I pay £4,500 for a guitar? No, but I would pay that for a collection and would get more pleasure from it too.

Would any audience that I play to ever notice? I shouldn't think so.

They are more likely to get trampled in the rush for the exits.

PP.