Sunday, December 28, 2008

A Christmas to Remember

Part Four- A Meteorological Casualty

What you see is a composite of snaps I took of my 1989 Guild GF-55 "mini-jumbo"-- a fairly rare acoustic guitar that was designed and manufactured under the tutelage of George Gruhn, when he headed up product development at Guild. I bought the guitar at Voltage in Hollywood in 1998. I've had this guitar longer than any of my others. It, along with its older,bigger, and fairer brother (a 1974 F50) have been on the no-sell list since acquiring them. Oh, I got close with both of them at various moments. And now, the GF-55 shares another trait with the F50--finish crazing. I got the F50 already crazed. The GF-55 got crazed during the power outage. I hesitate calling it damage-- it is superficial, and occurs on guitars with certain lacquer finishes during extreme temperature changes. The sound and tone is not affected. In fact, some guitar people like the crazing-- kind of a vintage thing. All things being equal, I would have preferred not having such marking, but there they are. Thankfully, only the Guild got it-- the others were spared.

Ah, the Christmas gift that keeps on giving... and giving and giving.

1 comment:

Davaudian said...

Not much to say here my friend. It's happened to us all with nitrocellulose lacquer guitars. When I left Nashville for New England, I got the same surprise, but I still had gigs to play so not much time to mourn. I just wish I had all of the guitars that I sold back then in my collection now. It's just so expensive to try to reassemble it these days.