GAS

For the last couple of months, I've been suffering from GAS. I don't mean intestinal gas but rather Guitar Acquisition Syndrome. In other words, I've been thinking about buying a new guitar. This is not to say that I want to replace my Washburn semi-acoustic; the opposite is true as I very much like this guitar and the range of tones that I am able to achieve.

Originally the first pains of GAS started whilst looking at the offerings of the store from which I bought my bass guitar. I remembered how easy it was to play a real Telecaster guitar (which I tried when I bought the 12 string) so I thought that I might buy a T-style guitar, for the same reason that I bought the bass. This is how things stood until a few weeks ago.

When I asked my wife what she thought about buying a new guitar, her first reaction was to say that there was no room left in the music room for hanging another guitar on the wall. I then told her that the SG copy has pickup problems and that I won't be using it any more, so that guitar can be stored under our bed and the new guitar hung in its place. Last night I saw a possible extra place on a wall in the music room, so maybe the SG won't get retired after all.

My original thinking was that the new guitar would be little more than an ornament, but in the past few weeks I've been playing guitar more and more often, culminating in the swimming pool performance, with further appearances guaranteed (and I notice that I have hardly played the piano in the past few months, whereas I have been practicing frequently on the guitar). I realised that my semi-acoustic, as good as it is, is somewhat large and heavy. Maybe it would be better to use a T-style guitar when I play standing up. After last night's practice, a smaller guitar would also be better when playing sitting down.

So I looked again at the first store's catalogue and saw that they had a T-style thin-line guitar priced at 1,950 NIS. This is a bit more than I wanted to pay (and the colour is somewhat off-putting) but maybe the advantages that accrue from the thin-line are worth the extra cost, whereas the more standard T-style model costs 1,552 NIS. My 'friend' Shmulik Budagov has comparable models priced at 2,800 NIS (thin-line) and 1,400 NIS (regular) – I wonder why the thin-line model costs exactly twice as much as the regular model.

At this stage, it occurred to me that it would be worthwhile looking for videos on YouTube about these various guitars. The first compared a regular T-style with a thin-line model; the sounds from these guitars were identical. In other words, the difference between the two types would be aesthetic only, and so there seems to be no reason to pay the extra cost.

Then I started looking at regular T-style guitars available in Israel: each shop seems to sell a different brand and at different prices. It was only when I looked closely at the specifications of these guitars did I notice that all feature two single coil pickups. I am not a gear head, but I prefer the warm sound of the humbuckers on the Washburn to the bright and treble sound of single coil pickups. Then I noticed that one guitar, the Stagg SET-PLUS, pictured left, has one single coil pickup and one humbucker, albeit at an additional cost of 110 NIS – a small price to pay for what promises to be an important upgrade (the basic model costs 880 NIS, the PLUS 990 NIS).

I spent some time looking for YouTube videos reviewing this guitar, and all of them say that this guitar is very good value for money; here's one review and here's another, albeit in German. The guitar comes in three finishes: white, black and natural. I was mentally debating between the black and natural finish, so I asked my wife which finish she thought was better from an aesthetic point of view. She also considered the black and natural, plumping eventually for the black. I concurred with her and pointed out that this seems to be the only colour available from the store where I intend to buy this so it's just as well that she chose this colour.

I do not intend to order this guitar via the Internet, as I did with the bass. First I want to play it and see what it feels like before purchasing (one video taught me about something called 'neck dive' that I want to check out). This won't be for another week as the shop from which I intend to buy the guitar is situated in the middle of Jerusalem, and my next trip there will only be in another week's time.

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