My First!
Sure, from the title, you’d think this is about my first love. And to a certain extent, you’re right. But let me clear my wife’s mind of the question, “Why is he all of a sudden writing about his first love, aren’t I all that matters?” Yes, my love you are all that matters when it comes to love and support and all that good stuff. This first love is something that I’ve lived with and loved for nearly 30 years. Yes. I’m talking about guitars.
Someone posted on an internet forum asking about the forum members’ first guitars. I was originally planning on replying. But after I had a few paragraphs detailed, I figured I would expand it and then post it here.
“What was your first guitar?” It’s a simple question, however my answer is pretty complex. When I think about my first guitar, while I can certainly blurt out the very first one I ever owned, I feel remiss to ignore other firsts when it came to guitars. I have to delve into a lot of those firsts. However, let’s go ahead and start with the basic answer.
My very first guitar ever was a no-name, nylon-string acoustic that I stole from my older brother. Whenever he would go out with his friends, I’d pull the case out from under his bed, open it up and strum the strings. My mother would come into the room after hearing it and tell me to close the case before my brother got home. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t. When I didn’t… Well, for any of you who have older siblings, or are one yourself, you know the penalty. So after a while, he apparently got tired of beating me every time I touched it and just gave it to me. So where is it now? Sad to say, I think I sold the guitar in a garage sale. To this day, I regret doing it.
While taking lessons at Karnes Music in Hammond, IN with that guitar, my guitar teacher would hint to my mother every week about buying me an electric guitar. He slowly wore her down and for a few months she rented my very first bass guitar. A canary yellow Hondo Precison Bass copy. For reasons not disclosed to me (probably because of my parents’ divorce, money became real tight), the Hondo had to go back to the store. However, this didn’t quench my desire for an electric guitar. I just went back to the acoustic and started chirping louder about an electric guitar.
Whenever I’d go to lessons I’d always go to the guitars on the wall. Whenever we went to Century Mall in Merrillville, IN, I’d demand we go to Globe Music so I could look at the guitars. Little did I know, my parents were setting me up with my very first electric guitar. Globe Music was a small store in the mall that lined it’s walls with plenty of guitars. If my memory serves me correctly, they catered primarily to the beginner. I had no way of knowing that at the time, I just knew that I wanted one. The guitar I would finally end up with was a sunburs Harmony H802. It was part of a package deal, the guitar and the amp for 99.00. I think picks and a strap were included in the deal, but I don’t completely remember. One thing was for sure, I had an electric guitar!
I played that guitar for several years. As my playing progressed and I was buying magazines with guitars in them, I realized that I wanted more. I wanted a better guitar. So I started working. I got a job with my mother as a bus-boy at the country club in which she managed. Being a teenager (started working when I was 14) I would waste my money on frivolities, but the one thing that I wanted was at a music store in downtown Highland, IN called Midwest Music. The very first guitar I ever bought with my own money was a surgical green Series 10. It had a humbucker and two single coils and this one even had a tremolo! I remember riding my bike out there and riding back home with it in my hand. (no case)
Some time after that I was in wood shop and we were given our choice on what we wanted to work on for a project. I chose to build a guitar body. I took the neck off the Harmony and modified it to look more like the BC Rich headstocks of that era. The body I built was reminiscent of the guitar that I obsessed over, a BC Rich Mockingbird. I painted it white with a black jagged line going through the middle. (look up “Steve Lynch – Autograph” and you’ll get the idea) This was obviously, the first guitar I built. (despite it’s lack of any real functionality)
My obsession with guitars was taking hold and I began to learn more and more about them. I think the body that I built in shop class was the culmination of the fact that I knew guitars were made of either a solid block of wood, or two or even three blocks of wood joined together. The guitars that I had owned up until that point were all laminant (aka plywood) bodies. I guess they served my needs at the time. Besides the Series 10, I had also obtained a blueburst Dean Z (pawned), and a hot-pink Kramer Striker 310. (parts, body sold long ago, neck broken) I knew they were laminant-bodied guitars, but that was what I could afford at the time. I had toyed with buying a “real” guitar. I had a friend’s BC Rich Assassin that I was considering purchasing, but it was just too rich for my blood. (I regret that to this day, that guitar was sweet!!)
It wasn’t until my 20s that I actually bought a guitar that I would consider “real”. Shortly after my ex-fiance left me, I went into a little funk. I was hanging out with friends from time to time and befriended a girl that I had a crush on. She obviously didn’t have as much interest in me but I didn’t know any better. Sadly, she was really just using me for a ride to her job in Oak Lawn, IL. Me being in the depressed state that I was, let it happen. My thinking was that maybe she’d see my caring and generosity and consider something more than a friendship. One day I was dropping her off at the store she worked at. She was working a short day so I decided to hang around the area, I knew that Guitar Center was just down the street in Burbank, IL so I was going to go over there and browse. Fortunately/unfortunately when I left to go to Guitar Center she said the magic words to me that I’ll never forget as long as I live… “Buy something cool!”
I walked out of Guitar Center more than $1000 later with my very first “real” guitar, a Jackson Dinky Reverse. (which I still have to this day) It was my first solid-body non-laminant guitar. The Dinky Reverse was made from 1992 to 1995 in Japan. It had two humbucking pickups (a J85 in the bridge and a J80-C in the neck) and a Floyd Rose licensed tremolo. (not my first, that distinction would be with the Dean Z) It was/is black with a maple fretboard. It is the first guitar I had that sported a maple fretboard and would become the standard by which most of the guitars I own today are judged by.
I can continue this story (and maybe someday I will) with how each of the other guitars I own were firsts in their own ways. But let’s just say that when it comes to firsts… you never forget.