petescully
april 2005 - april 2008

i look at the world and i notice it's turning

My guitar died last night.

I'm really upset; it was a freak accident. I put it onto its stand, but it fell onto the carpet, a very soft carpet, and I couldn't stop it. There was very little noise; it was if six strings cried out in terror, but were suddenly silenced. I turned around, and it was lying on the floor, and (I know this sounds funny but it really isn't) it's head had fallen off.

The head had completely broken away from the neck; it was still connected to the rest of the guitar, which I had kept pristine and spotless since I bought it in October, by the strings. It looked so sad, lying there on the floor; the guitar is a member of the family, like a pet, a black electro-acoustic Ibanez, always there when I needed to have a relaxing strum. It was the first thing I bought when I moved to America, a move that was naturally full of emotion and upheaval; the new guitar helped me deal with settling in, gave me a channel.

Why had it snapped so easily? My other acoustic, back in England, has fallen over many times without so much as a scratch to show for it. I thought it must have been the effects of the recent heat, that maybe it had caused the wood to become so dry that it was easier to break, a conclusion which made me resent the Central Valley climate even more; but I went to the local music store, Watermelon, and the guy there said that the heat had nothing to do with it. He said that, being the weakest part of the guitar, the top of the neck snaps more than you might think. He also showed me a couple of guitars whose necks had been fixed, glued and bolted back togeher, without affecting the sound of the guitar at all. Of course, one of them looked a lot like Frankenstein's Monster-Guitar, but the other actually looked pretty smooth.

So perhaps there is hope yet...but right now I'm pretty down about it. I'd just come up with a couple of new chords, too. 

1.8.06 23:55
 


To date 2 Comment(s)     TrackBack-URL


amillionpieces / Website (2.8.06 12:30)
Ohhh no, thats terrible! I really hope it can get fixed up! I've bashed mine a fair bit and its still in one piece mind, have you thought of e-mailling Ibanez to complain?


petescully / Website (2.8.06 16:27)
Not a bad idea... I have a one-year warranty, but it doesn't cover 'accidental damage'. I think this comes under that, unless it's proven that this is a flaw in the model (which by the account of the guy at Watermelon, it isn't, and there are other guitars which have a far worse problem with this, certain Gibsons for one thing).

See that's the thing that irks...my old guitar has been knocked about for years, without so much as a scratched scratchplate, while this one I have really looked after; just goes to show.

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