I don't know how many of you out there play a musical instrument (or for that matter, if any of you actually bother to read this blog, which I fear is spiralling downwards in a diminuendo of wit and relevance). However, my estimates tell me that for every ten of you, approximately 9.3 will play the guitar. To which embarrassingly mundane list I add myself.
It wasn't always this way, you know. I once played the recorder. I used to dabble on the piano. I even got a couple of grades in that one. But generally, I like my own musical pastimes to be easy, so I'm reduced to simply bashing out a few thunderous chords as fancy takes me. To hell with this coordinated hand motion crap, I'll just arrange my fingers in a claw-like shape and then moronically mash my paws on the keys like Chris Martin. Its easier.
Then, about 18 months ago, I decided that I wanted an instrument that was more painful to play, and would constantly, infuriatingly drift out of key. So, after a brief fling with an ancient nylon-string that constantly found new and exciting ways to break both itself and the skin on my fingers, I bought a steel-string acoustic.
Now the guitar itself is very nice, plays well. But good grief, who decided it would be a good idea to make such a dangerous, awkward instrument?
When a piano gets too much (or too little) use, its strings become warped, some of the felt will harden, you may lose the odd note. They develop a sort of honky-tonk charm as they lose their tuning, and if you ever do need to adjust anything, its perfectly acceptable to get a professional out. These wonderful little gremlins will arrive, toolbox in hand, open it up, play it for half an hour, twiddle this and polish that and - presto - you're done.
Not so with a guitar. Firstly, it is socially unacceptable to get someone else to replace your strings for you. What are you, a girl? Secondly, it goes out of tune about every 25 minutes, and sounds crap when it does. After carefully tuning the thing for 12 months, careful never to put too much strain on it, my G-string finally snapped. Oh, the excitement. Forget the fact that the bloody thing nearly took my eye out when it went, and just consider the emotional, physical and financial pain I went through to get the little bastard ship-shape again.
Firstly, I took the decision to replace all the strings, since they'd been on there a while and had collected a repulsive amount of my dead skin, which is apparently green. So first up was to identify the correct strings (80/20 Bronze Lights), order them from Amazon (just over a fiver) and wait for them to turn up. When finally they did, I had to remove the old strings (though not all at once, or the guitar will snap or something) which is where I started to run into problems.
So, you have to loosen the string at the tuning end, fine. Once that's free, you need to 'gently pull out the bridge pin' at the other end and then you're done. Gently pull? Ha, I think not. Pin, I think, is a misleading term here. Perhaps "nail" would be better. Or those things that you put into drilled holes to screw stuff into, the self-expanding impossible-to-remove ones.
A herculean struggle or five later, involving two pairs of pliers, several wedge-shaped bits of card, two bleeding fingers and a pile of bloody tissues to match, and about two hours of fruitless googling to find some sort of insider's trick, I'd managed to change the first five strings. Putting the new strings on had proved easy enough, if a bit tedious (imagine winding down the window on your car, only it takes you ten minutes) and I was all set for a victory lap on the final string, with my guitar miraculously unharmed.
Well, after much teasing, tweaking, ramming my hand into the inside of the guitar (cutting my arm on the 5th string in the process) to try and push it out, the final pin began to budge slightly.... and then snapped in two. I let out a scream of rage something along the lines of "AeeeaaauuuuuaagggghHHRGHH!" and fought back tears. So close, only to fall at the final hurdle.
New set of bridge pins, about £3, in a lovely pack including a completely and utterly useless bridge pin remover. As effective as a chocolate fireguard. I was still in quite a pickle though, as the bottom half of the pin remained wedged in the hole, about half an inch in, and with nothing for me to grab hold of to pull it out. They're the wrong shape to push through into the guitar, so it was a case of loosen some of the strings, reach in and push it out with a penny. A neat trick learnt from several how-to websites, and completely useless.
After about half an hour of trying this, I reached some sort of "damn it all to hell" moment (though perhaps not in those words). Keys, garage, dig around in the back. Power tools. The drill. Drill bit, plug, turn it on. About four good attacks and the little pin, my arch nemesis, crumbles into the inside of the guitar. The new pin fits nicely, and thankfully not quite so snugly. Victory is mine.
It wasn't always this way, you know. I once played the recorder. I used to dabble on the piano. I even got a couple of grades in that one. But generally, I like my own musical pastimes to be easy, so I'm reduced to simply bashing out a few thunderous chords as fancy takes me. To hell with this coordinated hand motion crap, I'll just arrange my fingers in a claw-like shape and then moronically mash my paws on the keys like Chris Martin. Its easier.
Then, about 18 months ago, I decided that I wanted an instrument that was more painful to play, and would constantly, infuriatingly drift out of key. So, after a brief fling with an ancient nylon-string that constantly found new and exciting ways to break both itself and the skin on my fingers, I bought a steel-string acoustic.
Now the guitar itself is very nice, plays well. But good grief, who decided it would be a good idea to make such a dangerous, awkward instrument?
When a piano gets too much (or too little) use, its strings become warped, some of the felt will harden, you may lose the odd note. They develop a sort of honky-tonk charm as they lose their tuning, and if you ever do need to adjust anything, its perfectly acceptable to get a professional out. These wonderful little gremlins will arrive, toolbox in hand, open it up, play it for half an hour, twiddle this and polish that and - presto - you're done.
Not so with a guitar. Firstly, it is socially unacceptable to get someone else to replace your strings for you. What are you, a girl? Secondly, it goes out of tune about every 25 minutes, and sounds crap when it does. After carefully tuning the thing for 12 months, careful never to put too much strain on it, my G-string finally snapped. Oh, the excitement. Forget the fact that the bloody thing nearly took my eye out when it went, and just consider the emotional, physical and financial pain I went through to get the little bastard ship-shape again.
Firstly, I took the decision to replace all the strings, since they'd been on there a while and had collected a repulsive amount of my dead skin, which is apparently green. So first up was to identify the correct strings (80/20 Bronze Lights), order them from Amazon (just over a fiver) and wait for them to turn up. When finally they did, I had to remove the old strings (though not all at once, or the guitar will snap or something) which is where I started to run into problems.
So, you have to loosen the string at the tuning end, fine. Once that's free, you need to 'gently pull out the bridge pin' at the other end and then you're done. Gently pull? Ha, I think not. Pin, I think, is a misleading term here. Perhaps "nail" would be better. Or those things that you put into drilled holes to screw stuff into, the self-expanding impossible-to-remove ones.
A herculean struggle or five later, involving two pairs of pliers, several wedge-shaped bits of card, two bleeding fingers and a pile of bloody tissues to match, and about two hours of fruitless googling to find some sort of insider's trick, I'd managed to change the first five strings. Putting the new strings on had proved easy enough, if a bit tedious (imagine winding down the window on your car, only it takes you ten minutes) and I was all set for a victory lap on the final string, with my guitar miraculously unharmed.
Well, after much teasing, tweaking, ramming my hand into the inside of the guitar (cutting my arm on the 5th string in the process) to try and push it out, the final pin began to budge slightly.... and then snapped in two. I let out a scream of rage something along the lines of "AeeeaaauuuuuaagggghHHRGHH!" and fought back tears. So close, only to fall at the final hurdle.
New set of bridge pins, about £3, in a lovely pack including a completely and utterly useless bridge pin remover. As effective as a chocolate fireguard. I was still in quite a pickle though, as the bottom half of the pin remained wedged in the hole, about half an inch in, and with nothing for me to grab hold of to pull it out. They're the wrong shape to push through into the guitar, so it was a case of loosen some of the strings, reach in and push it out with a penny. A neat trick learnt from several how-to websites, and completely useless.
After about half an hour of trying this, I reached some sort of "damn it all to hell" moment (though perhaps not in those words). Keys, garage, dig around in the back. Power tools. The drill. Drill bit, plug, turn it on. About four good attacks and the little pin, my arch nemesis, crumbles into the inside of the guitar. The new pin fits nicely, and thankfully not quite so snugly. Victory is mine.
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