Guitar Musings

I’m sure, at one time or another, you have watched Esteban pimping out his “$800 dollar value” guitar for $200 or so bucks on Home Shopping Network.  Now is your chance to try it out or just get the opinions of guitarists around the world via the “Esteban World Tour!”  I discovered this clever idea on the Acoustic Guitar Magazine forum and think it’s great.  The jist of the whole idea is to get as many people involved to play the guitar, make a video and upload it.   The guy who started it, “Omaha,” manages the blog that tracks the videos and there seems to be about 10 or so videos posted as of today.  So check out this world tour to see if the Esteban guitar is really all that it’s hyped up to be.  According to some of the videos, it’s not but it can sure take a beating.

I’m a “how’s that work” or “Let’s see the guts” type of guy when I see new gadgets.  This now includes the Gibson “Robot Guitar” and it’s self tuning mechanism.  I have heard about this new gadget and haven’t looked into it too much until news.com had an interesting pictorial with descriptions on “Taking apart the robot guitar.”   I’ve seen similar contraptions that can be installed on existing guitar but it’s nothing like the robot and requires some serious routing.   It was pretty cool to see how Gibson hid the electronics to keep the guitar looking authentic.   The machine heads are pretty bulky in the back and looks like you will need a bit of training on how to use it. Pretty cool but seems like a gadget that I can do without.

I’ve seen on twitter and other forums that guitarist (including myself) lament over [ad#125-125-floatright] the fact that they don’t have their guitar with them.  Well, your lonely days are over!  All you need is buy an iPhone and jailbreak it.  Below, is a video of someone doing their best to play us a Beatles medley with their new guitarpod and I’m sure that you can see that our steal and nylon stringed companions won’t have to worry about getting replaced by this “Guitar Hero” for the iPhone.  Anyway,  I could see someone eventually getting pretty good at playing the iGuitar and will have a nice little gimmick in an act or at parties.  I also see a nice little tool that could help you work out a melody that was stuck in your head or working on chords.  Will this be enough for me to hack my iPhone? I think not.  My iTouch….. well…..  Nah.  I’ll just stick to playing the real thing.

I just purchased “The Acoustic Guitar: Adjustment, Care, Maintenance, and Repair,” (thoughts on book in upcoming posts).  Mainly because I want to be able to make the necessary adjustments to my instrument without having to take it into a shop all the time.   Some might want to work on their own guitar as well but others would rather give it to a professional but how can you find a good repair shop in your area?

I have a new friend through Twitter who provides great help in finding such guitar repair shops.  It is repairmyguitar.com, which is a searchable database of repair shops throughout the United States.  All you need to do is visit the site, choose your city, state and you will be given a list of local repair shops.  I would say the list is pretty decent for the areas that I looked up and I’m sure that it is growing everyday.  In the future, I hope to see an option to search for luthiers.

If you are looking to repair, setup or just do some standard maintenance on your guitar, check out repairmyguitar.com and find a local shop.  They currently have a promotion where if you can win $50 if you submit a review of a shop that you used.  Reviews will give us even more confidence in using this search tool.  If you own a shop or repair guitars, visit the site and get listed, it’s free and a invaluable tool to promote your business.

Links:
www.repairmyguitar.com

Natural, picks, manicures, acrylics, etc…. What do you use?  I have tried many things to keep my nails healthy and happy because when I lose a nail, I’m not playing guitar as much because it throws off my timing and more importantly, my fingering becomes less effective. 

What Hasn’t Worked for Me:

• I read an interview with Bruce Cockburn where he said that he used to super glue his nails to reinforce them.  Even went as far as getting tissue or toilet paper and cutting them into small strips and glue them onto his nails.  Kind of a type of wallpaper or fiberglass type feel. I tried this and at first it seems to work but overtime it weekend my nails to the point where they would break and chip more often.  Bruce now uses a product called Nail Envy that he’s been using for a long time and swears by it.  I haven’t tried it myself.
• Haven’t tried acrylics but I did try the trick of cutting up a ping pong ball and shaping a fake nail and then gluing it to my finger.  It worked fairly well but you still run into the weakening of your organic nail because of the glue and I didn’t like the feel of fake nails because I felt a disconnect between me and the string.  It just didn’t feel right.  I didn’t think that acrylics would be any better so I didn’t try.  Plus I was a struggling college student and couldn’t afford them.

What Has Worked:

For me to have healthy nails was really more a lifestyle change rather than a quick fix gadget. 

• I changed the way I do things with my hands.  For example, I wear gloves a lot to protect my hands or when I’m opening doors or drawers, I make sure I have a good grip because I have some of my worst breaks when opening a door or drawer and my hand slips and my nail catches.  That really pisses me off when I break a nail that way.
• I learned how to manicure my own hands with a nail file and I never use nail clippers.  I can’t remember where I read it but I read that  your nails get stronger if you file them down.  It has worked bunches for me.  I also keep a nail file everywhere I am; car, work, bathroom, etc…
• When I break a nail, I resist the urge to bite it and I can go all day, if I have to until I get to a nail file.  This one was hard for me since I used to be a chronic nail biter.  If the nail isn’t to bad I use a band-aid to re-enforce the nail until it grows out enough or finally breaks.  This works very well and I can usually buy a couple of weeks with this.
• I take a good multivitamin, it’s a Costco equivalent of Centrum.  Had to try 3 or 4 different brands until I found one that worked for me.

With all that said, I feel the constant use of a nail file is what has helped the most for me.  I don’t go more than a day or two before I use it.  It keeps my nails clean from snags, chips and I do believe that it has made my nails stronger.   What do you do, please leave a comment and let me know. 

Update (10.27.08):  Recently purchased Nail Envy from amazon and have been using it for about a week.  So far, I have been impressed with the results.  More details in a future post.