Leaderboard

Hey guys, Noob to the forum here but quite an experienced player so hoping I can have something to offer. I thought I would start by expressing frustration at what seems like a glaring ommission to me in most online guitar photography. Now firstly, it's obviously not ideal to buy a guitar online without playing it. However, many of us do and I suspect those numbers wil only rise in the future. I'm a neck man - if a guitar has a nice neck I can put up with almost anything else, so my humble request (spread the word!) is when it comes to online guitar photography, can we please include this angle (screen shot form a YouTube video by Truetone lounge because as I was watching it I was like, 'that's the angle!'). Look at the Sea Foam Green guitar below. This is almost like a player's eye view of the neck and gives you at least some idea what it would be like to wrap your dirty mitts around that bad boy, especially when you compare it to the Candy Apple Red guitar on the left - a much girthier prospect!. Is it just me?? I suspect it's because it is an odd angle and most photographs are very symmetrical but personally it gives me a better understanding of the neck profile and also makes me want to pick the thing up and play it!

Off topic, and just for 'fun', a short anecdote entitled 'The Stupidity of Youth'... My very first guitar was a steel-strung Russian horror of a classical guitar; wide, flat fingerboard, high action... A real cheese-wire trap for unwary fingers. A visit to the 'shop' (really just the front room of their house...), Mrs Nicholls, Hampton Hill had a sort of 'junk-yard' of guitars, basses, amps piles up all around. I was an apprentice, on apprentice wages, but on one visit there, I found a splendid guitar that it seemed I could afford : a Hofner Thin President, florentine cutaway. I broke the bank and bought it, with its case; I don't remember the sum, but it must have been less than £50, which would have been a fortune to me at the time. All well and good; I now had a guitar that was actually playable (albeit in need of an amp, but that would come later...). With the Russian guitar, I had bought the Mickey Baker Jazz Guitar method (excellent, by the way; highly recommended, and still available at a very low cost...). I could now practice the chords in there without risking losing a finger or two. Happy daze. In fact, I played the Hofner at my very first gig with the Martin Spicer Band, at a pub in Hounslow, playing the bass part on just the lower four strings. Now for the sad part... I have a younger brother (in fact I have several; we're a large family...) who, despite being a hard 'lefty', had acquired a Hofner Verithin, on which he became rapidly highly proficient. Not wishing to go down the Mickey Baker rabbit hole, he just played along to whatever he fancied, and made stuff up with a unique picking and fingering style, in my opinion thanks to his 'lefty' 'handicap'. With the music we were listening to, and the direction that the Band was heading, I thought it better to have a guitar lending itself more to a 'lead' role than the Hofner. In a music shop somewhere (no idea where...), I came across a Burns Bison which the shopkeeper was willing to exchange for my Hofner. The deal was done, and I refinished the Bison in bright Canary Yellow over its original colour of Dull Green. Ignorance..? Here's one tell-tale sign, at least : I strung it with a '7' gauge set, so as to be able to 'bend' like the masters on the radio. Don't try this at home; trust me when I tell you that '7' gauge strings are as useful on an electric guitar as cobwebs. They will not stay in tune, they break like buggery and have no 'feel' to them whatever. As cherry on the cake, I turned out to be a less-than-competent lead guitarist in any case. My musical career switched to higher grounds when this became evident, even to me, and I turned to drums (handy, as that was what the Band lacked, too...). I used the Burns for another deal, to get a lowly set of disparate drums (Edgeware, Beverly, Ajax and whatever...) and Life took on a new meaning. Why the Stupidity..? I have been on the look-out since for a Hofner Thin President, florentine cutaway. They are quite (or even very...) rare, and, although I now have several excellent Hofners, guitars and bass, that President was a Cracker, a Doozy, a Gem that I didn't recognise at the time, and let slip away. What little style of play I now have on guitar is so far from the Burns Bison ethic, and so aligned to the 'jazz box' stuff, but the guitar that should have stayed with me is now elsewhere. If only I could wind back the tape, borrow a DeLorean, visit myself, just for a few minutes to explain to myself what a mistake I was making... Alas, no, I can't (well, not until I finish building my Time Machine and clear any flies from the room...). If anyone reading this tale of woe comes across a tobacco-burst Hofner Thin President, florentine cutaway, I'd like to know. Thanks in advance. Here's a picture of one, as illustration, and a turn of the knife in the wound...