My Guitar Collection

Nowadays, nothing puts a twinkle in my eyes more than seeing a guitar - being played or just being displayed in a store. My favorite pastime is to just go to a guitar store like Guitar Center where nobody bothers you and just pluck the most expensive guitars. And of course nothing pleases me more than the sound of great guitarists playing, whether it be classical, acoustic or electric: Andres Segovia, Julian Bream, John Williams, Pepe Romero, Eric Clapton, Tommy Emmanuel, Santana, George Harrison, Christopher Parkening are a few of my favorites. I like them all. I had a chance to watch classical guitarist Christopher Parkening at UCLA last summer - what an amazing experience. Especially since I was seated in the front row, about 6 feet away from him. I wish I could play like them, but who can? I started learning to play the guitar just last year, and what I can say is, remember that saying about it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. It is hard. Well, an offshoot of this interest in playing this musical instrument, is collecting them, and an offshoot of this is finding old guitars and restoring them. Other than playing the guitar, let me tell you, it's also lots of fun to restore these guitars which entails sanding, re-gluing, painting, varnishing, re-building parts, polishing and re-stringing. It's painting and sculpture. I now have quite a few in my collection, and my favorite to play is a vintage classical Suzuki, Japanese-made, circa the 50s, and a Fender acoustic, Japanese-made also, circa early 70s. I also have a brand-new Takamine Acoustic/Electric, a Cort, both made in Korea and a brand-new electric guitar by the band KISS, signed by Paul Stanley. Two guitars that I have successfully restored to it's former glory, maybe even better, are two vintage Regals, U.S.-made probably in Chicago around the 50s which I found in a thrift store for a song. I have other guitars to be restored, when time allows. I now have a modest collection of inexpensive but great-sounding guitars. To listen to my guitar playing, I have two guitar compositions that I've used to accompany my video postings in YouTube. You can listen to my music while reading the this blog. Click on the YouTube links to the left of this blog under Rod's Videos & Music.