Guitar war stories

[michelew]

Forget battle of the bands. Have you ever wondered how your guitar would fare in a battle against ...well anything else ... the world. One of the boys in my family likes to run thought experiments that go something like this, “If the Predator and the mother alien from Alien were matched against each other, who do you think would win... and the like. I think they’ve made a movie of that one now.

Well, it seems I’ve been the unwilling participant in a series of experiments that have my Larrivee competing in the Guitar Wars. So I’ve got some results for your just in case some of you are tempted to run similar trials.

Battle scenario 1 - Larrivee vs corner of the coffee table

Battle conditions:
- sitting in front of the tele battling my own personal dragon (previously described) - yes the bridge in Diamond and Rust; my dragon and I are slowly coming to a mutual understanding - conquered she is not, but she’s not so tough and scary these days - we’re getting friendlier
- chatting, laughing and distracted I took off my guitar and went to rest her against the couch when the coffee table jumped in with a quick undercut/jab under the belt - dirty tactics no less
- guitar yells, I curse and well ... Larrivee now wears a battle scar.



Coffee table 1; - Larrivee - 0 - (she can’t really be said to have put up much of a fight).


Battle scenario 2 - Larrivee vs bathroom floor

Battle conditions:
-after midnight, on an extremely busy work day and playing for a while; tired brain
-moving in a room dark, which is crowded because I now have a uninvited water feature in one end; not much room between the computer desk and two guitars on stands
- moving quietly trying not to wake up the house, after VERY specific instructions not to be woken up
- on my way to bed I decide to load a new song into the Amazing Slow Downer application on my iPad - well... so I can sing it at the top of my lungs in the shower the next morning while noone is at home
- I must have brushed the play icon because next thing I know the song is BLARING out of the iPad and I can’t for the life of me stop it, nothing works, it gets louder, PANIC STATIONS! SHUT UP! SHIT SHIT! I loose focus, trip over the guitar stand, which then falls in a furious arc towards the on-suite bathroom floor, which then comes up at great speed to hit the Larrivee in the head stock, bits of tuning peg go flying, an almighty crash rings throughout the house, the light goes on, my rescuers comes rushing in with bleary eyes asking if I’m OK. ... the volume is still up. Tail between my legs. Bad dog! Am I OK?? Me... yes... my guitar..... ..... needs a trip to the guitar hospital in the WWWAAAAAMMBulance.

I now have a non-operational machine head on the D-string (well Dd at the time of the accident/biffo). I guess I’m be doing relative tuning until it goes to the shop for a machine heads transplant. The only saving grace is that the B-string machine head was already worn and needed to be replaced anyway.

Bloody idiot! It was all sort of ridiculous actually, more inconvenient than crushing; real comedy of errors. Perhaps the Goddess just wanted me the get the B-string tuner fixed. She works in mysterious ways.



Bathroom floor 1; Larrivee 0 (-1)

I guess I’ll be playing my nylon string and bass for a while.


So while my Larrivee sure can be tough on my hands. She’s a softy and hopeless in a fight when it comes to the tough world.



Got any war stories?

[daryl]

Ouch.

[neverfoundthetime]

Tollpatsch! :laugh:
Poor girl, poor guitar!

My nylon suffered a similar fate a couple of years back and the G string machine-head got hammered... as they do when they timbeeeeeer to the floor every now and then. It also acquired a sizeable split/gauge where the body meets the side and although this is quite a bit of damage (would prevent me ever selling it successfully) I have no idea how or when that happened... which is even odder (more odd?) than the damage itself. Must have stepped on it. If I were Chas, I'd immediately have to think it was after a hard days wine tasting but seeing as I don't indulge (much!), can't quite explain it! A good friend said it was a shame I didn't play the nylon any more and offered to get it repaired, which was done but all of the machine heads had to be replaced (they are on a bar each side) to make it match but they used a silver coloured bar and white knobs (what are they called?) which was a crying shame as the original was gold coloured. Well, it plays. Oh, and at the sound hole edge, my finger nails have worn away much of the wood when strumming so there's a bit a wear and tear there.. not quite Tommy Emanuel though!

[suziko]

Wow, Shel! Those are some serious war stories!! Although I have banged my guitar a few times against the table (or once, when Cori and Ness were here, against the iron fireplace tool set, while en route to turn off the camera), the biggest "damage" that my guitars take is the sweat and grease that that seems to always be all over them. I never thought of myself as a particularly sweaty/greasy person, but the surface of my guitars tell a different story!!

[dennisg]

Wow, I'm so sorry, Michele. But you really should stay away from hard liquor if you're going to be around your guitars.

I had a scary thing happen with my then-new custom Taylor. I was giving my friend Heather a guitar lesson one day, and I asked her if she wanted to try the new Taylor. She put the strap on, strummed a few chords, then lifted the guitar over her head to take it off. Unfortunately, Heather is about 6'-2", and my ceiling at that spot is about 8 feet. So she jammed the headstock into the ceiling and small bits of plaster came down -- but, fortunately, no damage to the guitar. Scare the hell out of me. Her, too.

With our wet, cold winters, the heater is always on, so I keep my good guitars in their cases so that I can properly humidify them. It also has the unintended benefit of protecting them against drunken stumbling.

[Hydroman52]

Hi Michele,

Sorry about the trashing your Larrivee has been taking. Try to look at it in a good light. Up until this happened, you had a pristine guitar like it came out of the factory that looked just like a thousand other Larrivees that were ground out of the guitar making mill. Now you have a unique one-of-a-kind Michele Signature Model. Next year, when you become embarrassingly famous, Larrivee will be paying you royalties so they can duplicate these nicks and dings to give people all over the world the opportunity to buy a Limited Edition MSM guitar.

My first guitar war story:

I was 14 or 15 years old and had just bought my first brand new decent quality guitar; an Ovation Legend. A week or so after I bought it, my neighbor came over to jam with me. He was a year younger than me and we were both in a neighborhood garage band. He had a crappy Epiphone guitar that would make your fingers bleed and he asked if we could switch guitars so he could see how it played. I said “Sure.” (me stoopid) and we traded. We began noodling around and then he started playing some power cords, launching into some sort of weird trance like he was channeling a famous dead musician. He was sweating and jumping around while doing a Pete Townsend windmill move as I watched in horror. It only took a few seconds, and, before I could tell him to knock it off, he had worn a 2”x 4” scrape in the finish on the face of the guitar almost through to the wood (this Ovation guitar had no pick guard). When I said “Hey, look what you did to my new guitar!”, he replied “Oh, I guess I got a little carried away.” Needless to say, I wanted to give him a one-way ticket to rock-and-roll heaven right there . . . . . but I didn’t.

I was so distraught that I couldn’t even take it out of the case for a week or two. I had spent all the money in my savings to get that guitar and I was so proud of it. Eventually, I pulled it out and played it again. And then something very fortunate happened. A small hairline crack developed in the finish on the back of the neck at the peghead. This was a defect that was known to happen in this particular run of Ovations. Since it had a lifetime warrantee, I sent it back to the factory for repair. They had it for a month or so, and, when it came back, they had refinished the whole guitar. No more scrape . . . . it looked like new again. Happy ending.

I still have this guitar. It still looks almost like new, although it has developed a bit of a “bulge” in the face in the 35 (or so) years that I have owned it. Guess it’s time to see if that lifetime warrantee is still good . . . . . after all . . . . I’m still alive and it’s still got a bit of life left in it, too.

Hydroman52

[dtaylor]

I had my first scare with my Martin 000 the other day, I put it on a leather armchair and sat back down just in time to watch it cartwheel sideways, it landed on the headstock and fell onto a tiled floor.
Expected a crack to have opened up at least, but the tuner clipped to the headstock had taken the brunt and there was no visible damage. There's no finish on my guitar so I guess that helps.
Makes you wonder what you're buying if you go the second-hand route!

[willem]

Not YET... :laugh: :laugh: B)

[Chasplaya]

Now mostly my guitars are in good condition, apart from the odd dent here and there and on the two second hand ones there are dings and scrapes which were there when purchased. Also as my guitars generally are always hanging on their hangers in my guitar room they are very difficult to stand on... even after a wine tasting session... but never say never lol!

But... two dings I do know off; the first, my Mother in Law decided one day to vacuum and I was on edge as my latest and newest acquisition, my Alhambra, was sitting on her stand in the lounge, now much to my initial relief she negotiated my guitar very carefully phew sighs of relief, then once finished Mum in Law unplugged the vacuum cleaner separated the extension cord and walked past the guitar with the plug in hand and at the crucial moment dropped the plug right on the top of my guitar a resounding note filled the room (might have been Eb) followed by deathly silence. Battle scar and a unique signature guitar!

Ding number two was all my fault... I was setting up my guitar room in the current house and had already put the guitars on wall hangers... safe... or so I thought! Now I also have a small collection of inert military objects which soldiers tend to throw at the enemy for the purpose of doing them harm. These objects generally (used to) sit on the top of my computer desk; now I noted the desk was not exactly centered in the room between two guitars, my 12string Tak and my Cole Clark, so I decided to move the desk all of the 2 centimeters required to center it... Mistake, one of the heaviest of my inert military objects decided to roll off the top of the desk and get intimate with the top of the Cole Clark Battle scarred and unique signature guitar number 2.

[michelew]

Ahhhhh.... Great stories. it's good to see that I'm not the only clutz.

Actually, my guitar was not pristine when I got it (at least third hand that we know of). It already had a split in the face, which had been repaired and a split in the neck which I didn't notice until I took it in to get it set up for me. Apparently the fist owner replace the nut, but when the original was removed they chiselled it off in such a way that a crack initiated from the nut down the length of the neck.. It seems to be stable for the moment and can't be fixed until it opens up. So it's fine.

Believe it or not, I can get too precious about things and then not use then because I don't want to damage them. Fortunately, I decided to lose that trait some time ago. What's the point of having a guitar that you don't play much because it's too good and you're afraid of damaging it right...?

So a signature guitar it is. . Noone has a guitar like mine.

Thanks for the stories, the empathy and support.

Shel