Signature acoustic guitar:
I bought this in 2004. It is a black matte finish acoustic guitar made by a company called Signature (local company smaler than Givson I presume). This was one of the cheapest guitars available at the time and the only one in the price range that had a single cutaway to access higher frets. It also had a built-in pickup inside the body of the guitar that was not visible from the outside.
Yamaha RGX121Z electric:
I was totally into rock music and loved the sound of sweet distortion blazing out of the speakers at full volume. After a couple of years of learning and practice on my good ol' Signature acoustic, I was yearning for an electric guitar. I was in third year of engineering, the time had come to ask my folks for an electric guitar. My mom was supportive as always, but Dad wouldnt budge. After a lot of pushing and anger and pushing, I got him to agree to get me a Jackson Dinky electric guitar. This was one of the affordable variants of Jackson (DK1 I think). Calls were placed and I was to get my guitar from Dubai through a relative of mine when he visits Bangalore.
Well, the guitar never came, but yes my cousin did. I had failed in DBMS exam in that sem and the results came just after the order for the guitar was placed. Learning about this, my dad canceled the order and did not tell me. Well, I did clear the paper in re-evaluation, but the guitar was gone forever.
So later I decided to get a decent guitar from Bangalore itself and I went scouting for guitars in my budget. I came across a lot of Ibanez Gxx series guitars which came with floyd rose bridges and were a little out of my budget. My budget was 12k, so that I can save the rest for a processor. There were some unexciting guitars like Johnson, Squire, Samick and Java. Not that these are bad guitars, just that I did not get a good feeling about it. Then there was this Kramer 424 with Floyd Rose and killer looks. George, my guitar tutor had one and I loved it. Getting this guitar meant that I spend everything I had on a super guitar and not have any money for a processor. So I decided against any 'super guitar' out there and focused on the basics instead. I convinced myslef that a few years down the line when I have a kick ass job (yes, I had high hopes back then), Ill get myself a 'super guitar'.
I ended up in Shiva musicals one day with George. He had come to help me buy a good guitar. There was this black Yamaha guitar hanging in the showcase. When I saw that I thought 'Oh, Yamaha makes guitars??'. He showed that piece to us and George had a good opinion on it. It was 16k, way out of my budget. But there was a twist, the guitar body had a little dent and a small piece was chipped off. The manager explained that an earlier customer had dropped the guitar by mistake and damaged a little paint and since he had already recovered the cost of damages, he was willing to sell the guitar for a mere 12k. I was like 'Now we're talking'. A couple of days later, I came back with Jeff, a friend of Prony's, who inspected the guitar and told me that one of the pickup positions did not sound right. That was ok with me and I went ahead and bought it. Yeah! My first electric guitar. And this was almost a 'super guitar', it sounded good and ony lacked a floyd rose bridge.
More to come....
