TUNING UP
What Was I Thinking?
BY SHAWN HAMMOND
Life is full of too many “What was I thinking?”
moments to chronicle on a single magazine page—and, doubtless, they’d be far too personal
and/or incriminating for mass
consumption. But tales of guitar-gear regret? I think we could all
go on for hours about those.
I’ve recently been thinking
about my own gear goofs over
the years. In some cases, the
screwups were pretty innocuous—I was new to guitardom
and didn’t know any better—but
some are pretty cringe-inducing
and depressing. As you’ll see,
left to my own devices growing
up in a town with practically
no music scene, I didn’t always
make the greatest choices. Here
are some of the lowlights.
Tubes? Cut the crap, Mr.
Salesman. I was 13, I’d been
playing for a year, and I’d saved
enough money to buy my first
electric. Not knowing anyone
else who played guitar (except
my classically trained nazi of an
instructor, who practically spat
in my face when he learned of
my plans to buy a solidbody),
I was at the mercy of my mom
and the salesman at the big
annual sale at Herger Music
in Provo, Utah. I settled on a
sunburst 1983 Fender Strat.
Naturally, I needed an amp,
too, but when the salesperson
said a lot of players prefer amps
with vacuum tubes, mom saw
red flags and her mother-bear
instincts kicked in: How dare
that weasel try to pass off yester-
day’s technology on her innocent
little son?! We’ll take the solid-
state Peavey Backstage Plus,
thank you. In the end, I couldn’t
complain too much:—I won the
door prize at the end of the sale:
a Marshall Master Lead Combo,
which I kept in lieu of the
Peavey. Mom must’ve breathed
two sighs of relief. A) It was
free, and B) it didn’t have any of
those pesky glowing bottles.
musiciansfriend.com and bought
it. According to Matchless reps,
fewer than 10 of these partial
PC-board amps were made
before the company went out
of business for a bit. Despite
what purist snobs may say, the
amp ruled—and I finally owned
something that could give me
that power-tube glory. I’m still
kicking myself for selling it a
couple of years later to finance a
hard-disk recording setup that is
probably now rotting in a pawnshop somewhere.
I could go on, of course,
but I’m out of space. I have
to admit, this trip down bad-memory lane was pretty fun,
though. If there’s a single lesson here, I’d say it’s that you
should always find an experienced mentor to guide you into
unfamiliar gear territory. Good
guitar journalism like what PG
strives to offer is a start, but you
should also supplement that
with real-time dialogue with a
trusted mentor.
We’d love to hear your
tales of guitar-gear regret. So
send them via email to me at
shawn@premierguitar.com or
comment on this article at
premierguitar.com.
Later!
Shawn Hammond
shawn@premierguitar.com
