50 years

The Guilds of Grot

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52 years. Started playing guitar in 1967.


Me-02-24-67.jpg


If you're really interested you can read the whole story here: http://www.guildsofgrot.com/history.html

Still have the guitar!

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Switched to Bass as my main instrument about 30 years ago.

Still at it! (Center on Bass)

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dreadnut

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No old photos, unfortunately. But here's a fairly recent one I've posted here before:


4E9iepI.jpg
 

Quantum Strummer

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I got my first guitar, a crappy no-name acoustic, in summer 1974. (I think…coulda been '73.) I was losing interest in the pieces my piano teacher was pushing me to play—Bartók & such—and getting more interested in the singer/songwriter music on the radio. (All the stuff Robert Christgau hated basically.) Figured out some basic chords from a John Pearce book and have been playing ever since.

-Dave-
 

steve488

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Summer 1966 saw the arrival of the TPC - TiJuana Potato Chip - so named because if pretty much folded itself in half after a couple months in Denver. One could place their fingers between the fretboard and the strings at the 12th fret and have room to spare!
Someplace in 67 or 68 saw the arrival of a Silvertone dread.... yellow stained top with grain similar to a sheet of CDx plywood and a flat wide fretboard (maybe originally a 1x3?) This one was playable but brutal, but that was the real start. Christmas 1970 brought the first real player n the form of a Yamaha Red Label FG-230 12 string that became the main player till Chazmo graced me with his G312 a year or so back. Two six strings came and left over the years - one small bodied Yammie in 1972 and a 74 Martin D-18. The D-18 and I never bonded so I sold it and eventually replaced it with a D150 as the "token six string" (every 12 string player has to have one six string - right?).
 

dreadnut

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My Mom bought a crappy no-name acoustic classical for $15 from a waitress she worked with in '69, that was my 1st guitar for a year or so, and I put steel strings on it. The action was, shall we say, "high."
 

bobouz

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Born in ‘51, started playing in ‘71.

Started with a Yamaha FG-160, but soon wanted something with a slimmer neck porfile. Started hitting flea markets & within no time was up to ten instruments! Fixed them up & worked trades for better guitars, including a Guild F-20, F-30, F-40, & D-40.

Fun stuff!
 

dreadnut

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Started at age 9. 58 years ago...

Hey Mark, my cousin started at age 10 in 1958 when his Grampa bought him a new Les Paul Jr. Jr. and amp. He still has them. This is the guitar:


i4TggvN.jpg
 

dreadnut

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He told me his Grampa spent $120 on the guitar. He'd have to spend more than that to replace the one missing knob with an original, I bet.
 

dougdnh

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since my dad was a guitarist, he always had guitars laying around. I started banging on a cheezy Stella when i was about 14, in 1960. My first real guitar was a Harmony acoustic. I was in my first band about a year later on a borrowed Fender Duo-Sonic. For Christmas I got my own electric, a Danelectro 59. The band scene was a lot different back then - we did mostly sax driven instrumentals, standards, and a few vocals like Hound dog and Long Tall Sally on a tape recorder mike attached to a music stand, into a guitar amp. So I've been playing a loooong time, but I gave it up in the 70's when I got married, got back into it in the early '90s.
Guilds of Grot - I also played the Stone Pony, Mrs J's, Dew Drop, Parrot Club, Jack Hennesy's on the Jersey Shore back in the late '60's.
 

dreadnut

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Sounds like great memories, Doug! Mic attached to a music stand, you were multi-tasking before it was a thing.:pride:
 

learnintoplay62

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This is fun to see and hear about everyone’s journey. I started at 48 ! Quite a few guitars have come and gone but I’m happy with the 2 acoustics I have know. I’m saving for something special but just not sure what it is yet �� it’s probably going to be a slope shoulder and I’d want a guild so I’m limited.
 

davismanLV

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Tom, a D65S is a pretty impressive "first guitar"!

walrus
That's true, walrus! But I was playing Don's Goya (a smaller bodied guitar, and I think made in Sweden?) and also his 1968 Martin D-35. Which was also a pretty decent guitar to start playing on. I sure wish he still had that one!!

I'm sure you remember the story on the Guild. I did a blind test between three different guitars I was considering and the sales guy was really GOOD and each time, I picked the Guild. But at $1100, I wussed out at the last minute and took home a D-4. Put it on the guitar stand downstairs. Next morning I walked downstairs to make coffee and saw that plain little D-4 and thought, "OH HELL NO!!" Nothing wrong with a D-4. It's a super decent guitar. I finished my coffee and drove down the hill and said, "Hey, give me the blonde one..... that's the one I'm supposed to have." Never regretted that decision!!

I was looking at a D-25 locally for someone to buy and the guy brought it to my house. I was sitting there playing it and he motioned to the Guild D65S and said, "May I?" I said sure. After he was done playing I asked, "What did you think?" He said, "Let's put it this way, if the one I'm selling sounded like this, I sure as hell wouldn't be selling it!"

That's what I like to hear...... :encouragement:
 

Rayk

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I got my first guitar in 1969, I was 15 years old.

Borrowing a line from "Amanda:" "I got my first guitar when I was fifteen, now I'm half past sixty and still wearing jeans..."

Cool , you rock brother ! 😁
 

adorshki

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Do the viola lessons I took for 2 months in 4th grade (1966, I was ten) count?
Was actually taking 'em in my grade school, because my buddy and I were enamored of Tijuana Brass, but he got to take the cornet 'cause he had a better lip for it.
Then the music teacher looks at me and says my hands are big enough to handle a viola.
Little did I know that he just needed another string to fill out his string section.
To add insult to injury, one day I had to take a test in one class which overlapped with the music class, which made me late (normally the homeroom teacher let me out early for the music class, no penalty).
I figured "No big deal, not my fault, he'll understand." (I even finished the test early)
But no.
Like the stereotypical martinet of a music teacher he upbraided me and made me go back to the other class:
"No soup for you!!!"
Upon hearing of this my mother went to the school and upbraided him, and then complained to the district board to boot.
No more music lessons at Earl Warren Elementary School.
Fortunately my fragile young psyche was naïve enough to be blissfully unaware of the emotional damage inflicted upon it, and I caught a healthy dose of guitar lust in about 7th grade.
As my folks were deathly afraid of the pitfalls associated with playing an electric guitar, they let me get started on a classical guitar, into the soundhole of which I promptly taped the speaker from an electronics experimenter's kit, and fed the wires into the input jack of a Webcor tape recorder Grampa'd handed down to me.
Instant distortion, suitable for trying to figure out how to play like Jorma Kaukonen on "Spare Chaynge" on After Bathing At Baxter's.
Which was also my first rock music book.
 
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walrus

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Do the viola lessons I took for 2 months in 4th grade (1966) count?
Was actually taking 'em in my grade school, because my buddy and I were enamored of Tijuana Brass, but he got to take the cornet 'cause he had a better lip for it.
Then the music teacher looks at me and says my hands are big enough to handle a viola.
Little did I know that he just needed another string to fill out his string section.
To add insult to injury, one day I had to take a test in one class which overlapped with the music class, which made me late (normally the homeroom teacher let me out early for the music class, no penalty).
I figured "No big deal, not my fault, he'll understand." (I even finished the test early)
But no.
Like the stereotypical martinet of a music teacher he upbraided me and made me go back to the other class:
"No soup for you!!!"
Upon hearing of this my mother went to the school and upbraided him, and then complained to the district board to boot.
No more music lessons at Earl Warren Elementary School.
Fortunately my fragile young psyche was naïve enough to be blissfully unaware of the damage inflicted on it, and I caught a healthy dose of guitar lust in about 7th grade.
As my folks were deathly afraid of the pitfalls associated with playing an electric guitar, they let me get started on a classical guitar into which I promptly taped the speaker from an electronics experimenter's kit, and fed the wires into the input jack of a Webcor tape recorder Grampa'd handed down to me.
Instant distortion, suitable for trying to figure out how to play like Jorma Kaukonen on "Spare Chaynge" on After Bathing At Baxter's.
Which was also my first rock music book.

Al, the most amazing part of your story is that there was a music book dedicated to "After Bathing At Baxter's"! Sheet music with guitar chords? Hal Leonard?That's a pretty "off the wall" album for that!

walrus
 
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