guitar 2

Continuing with the guitar series...

This is my second ever guitar; I was lucky enough to get this for my 11th birthday (after spending the first year playing on the 3/4 size nylon strung Encore; see here) making it 28 this year.

I'm not sure where it actually came from; a music shop in Glasgow is all I know. The label states it's a Grant, model 6001 and made in Japan; other than that I don't know anything else. Japan has long had a great reputation for guitar luthiery, especially so during the 80s when the US manufacturers were banging out very poor quality instruments that were over priced (post-CBS Fender, Gibson) and the now excellent manufacturing plants in Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam didn't yet exist.

I used to take this guitar with me everywhere and it's in a pretty sorry state now. The head has been broken off at least 4 times and finally the head had to be completely replaced. Of course my father (being rather technically minded) decided that he could indeed fix this himself. Which he did. The only slight drawback was finding a suitable source of mahogany; cue scrap wood from the (then) double glazing craze that was sweeping Scotland.

It's recently (within the last 10 years!) had new tuners, a bone nut and bridge and actually sounds pretty good all things considered. There's some life left yet in this old dog.