Gear Talk and Painful Admissions

Over the past few weeks I have been both downsizing and upgrading my music-making gear. Instead of a dozen middle-of-the-road guitars, I have swapped, bartered and sold to come up with a solid roster of unique, excellent-sounding instruments. I'll post more about them as I begin to upload videos. Today, I wanted to focus on my acoustic-electric nylon string guitar and make an amusing confession.

My final "rearrangement" of instruments saw me acquire a gently-used, sweet-sounding, Cordoba GK Studio nylon string acoustic-electric guitar. I have always loved playing "classical" guitar, but I could never rationalize spending more than a couple hundred dollars on one because of how seldom it might get used. Consequently, I was never satisfied with the sound or playability of any of the half-dozen or so classical guitars I've owned over the years. When I came across the used Cordoba GK, I was blown away by it's sound -- both acoustically and amplified -- and by how well it played. I got a very good deal on it and I've been playing it to death for the past few days.

Now, for the painful -- but somewhat humorous -- confession. I knew I would be replacing the strings on the "new" guitar within minutes of it coming home with me. It is at this point I must confess that prior to yesterday, I had always used ball-end classical strings. (Pauses while my fellow musicians roll their eyes in disgust...)

With this new guitar, I was determined to finally take the time to learn to tie classical strings. I was mostly successful. You can see that as I started with the low E, I got better as I went along. I am happy to report that 24-hours later the strings have not slipped and it plays and sounds fantastic! I promise to never-ever use ball-end classical strings again! (And yes, it really was just about as easy as it looks. Now, I just need to master the art of making the restring "pretty" by looping the ends consecutively. Next time!)