i was talking to ghordo the other day about our very first pieces of gear we ever got and it was something i hadn't thought of in many years. i mean, we're talking over 25 years ago at this point so going back to the very beginning was a trip. the landscape of music gear was much different than it is today and at 14-15 years old you basically had to take what you could get. and what you got was always garbage. but it was our garbage and we had no basis for comparison so we thought it was awesome.
when i was in 8th grade i bought an acoustic guitar at a tag sale for $5. i'm pretty sure it was a silvertone. i sprinted home on my 10-speed to get the money, and yes it was up hill... for real, thinking this thing was a hot ticket item and if i didn't hurry it was going to get poached. needless to say it was still there when i got back. it was a total piece of trash and completely unplayable, though i tried. i distinctly remember the tuning machines didn't really work so playing anything in tune was off the table. i had taken it to the local guitar shop, at that time it was called Unlimited Music, to get the strings changed because i had no idea how to do it. of course, i was 13 and the last thing i wanted was an acoustic guitar. i wanted to rock. i had probably 4 cd's at that time: jimi hendrix, pearl jam, nirvana, and mazzy star. okay, that last one doesn't rock but is oddly more in-line with my tastes now than any of the other stuff. ah, the good old days of columbia house and BMG fraud.
my next piece of gear was a grand prix p-bass knock-off. some kid at school must have heard i wanted a bass and told me his neighbor was selling one. i think i paid $75 for it and it was just the worst. the neck was warped and everything above the 12th fret was useless. the strings were so dead, but what did i know? i also didn't have an amp so i figured out how to use a Realistic tape/radio/record player in the meantime. ah, it was a simple time, indeed. i played that bass for months and i finally broke the E string, actually one of the few times in my entire life i've broken a bass string, and had to go buy a new set. i'm pretty sure they were boomers. i recall when i finally got it strung up and plugged in i was blown away at that "new string sound"... actually sounded like a bass! that was one of those unforgettable ah-ha! moments, for sure. i don't know what happened to that bass, it just sort of fell off the face of the earth. my guess is it was used as trading fodder at daddy's junky music at some point.
as is the way it goes when you're just starting out, you fall into one instrument or another, and i had turned my attention to guitar. at Unlimited Music i had spotted a red fender squier japanese strat of some sort. it was an HSS with toggles for pickup selection rather than the traditional rocker. the neck had the skunk strip on the back which i though was super cool... and still do, really. i think it was going for about $300, used, which in retrospect was damn expensive. but i lusted over it. i put money down on it and went back every week and paid towards it until it was mine several months later.
i played that guitar for quite a while. it had 6 strings and made sound. it had a humbucker which all i knew was it was bigger and looked cooler than single coils, so it worked for me. i don't even like red but for some reason this thing had caught my eye. down the road i sold it to a friend for whatever reason. i think he needed one and i wasn't using it at that point and that was that. i ended up buying it back a few years later and i still have it. i don't play it and it just sits in a gig bag in the closet. it's one of those things that selling it is off the table. i won't even consider it. it seems to be the only vestige of my earliest foray into music and certainly holds some sort of sentimental attachment. in it's current state it's not exactly playable... some of the knobs have seized and the toggles may be suspect. i'm sure the strings are a good way to get tetanus and i'm unmotivated to change them. i'm sure with a little effort it would play and sound fine. it's funny because 25 years later my A guitar is essentially the same thing. it can't possibly be anything other than coincidence.
