It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a thief appeared on the horizon. But this was no ordinary thief. This was the thief who stole my guitar amp off of the stage at church. Lightning flashed all around the thief.

“Wow! A guitar amp!” Said the thief.

“Holy crap! That dude’s gonna steal me!” Said the guitar amp.

And the rest is history.

And, in fact, here’s the history:

I play guitar. Actually, I should modify that sentence, because what I really mean is I “play” guitar. I pretty much suck since I’ve played it so inconsistently over the past 8 years. Truth be told, there was about two years where I didn’t even touch a guitar. I might have taunted a guitar out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t touch it. I swear.

I started playing guitar the summer after my junior year of high school. I think 3/4 of all guys “play” guitar or drums at some point in their life. I happened to do it right about the same time most of my friends did. (Strange coincidence, right?) Well, some of them were actually good. And a few of them kept playing. One of them, Evan Gross, is now a great guitarist and songwriter. (You can hear some of his stuff here.)

I remember my first guitar. In fact, I remember it because I have it sitting here. It was (and is) a cherry red Lotus strat copy. Not a bad guitar, at all, but very cheap. I picked up a little Marshall Mini-Stack with it - just like the one Jack Black walks around with clipped to his belt in School of Rock. That thing was great! But I wanted more. I wanted an amp that would destroy my hearing! Not some little cute thing.

So I went for the Fender Performer 650, which was a very cheap floor model. I spilt my blood to get that amp. No, really, I did. My brother and I got offered a one-day job cutting down Russian Olive trees, which have very stout thorns about two to five inches long. My amp was on layaway, and my brother wanted me to get it just as much as I did, so he could play drums with me. At the end of the day, we had pierced all of our duct-tape armor, had at least three thorns through our feet apiece, and we were covered in blood. But we had just enough to go get the amp. The only downside would be that I would owe Ryan 200 bucks for his share of the work. No problem, I thought.

I loved that amp. I played my guitar day and night for months and months. My brother and I would have “jam sessions” late at night and sometimes we’d invite other friends to come play with us. It was a good time.

I had problems with my Lotus. Not surprising given how cheap it was. It sounded fine, but the darn thing would not stay in tune for five minutes. I kept having Ted Brown’s music store adjust it, but even afterward, I couldn’t play it for five minutes without going out of tune. After a while, they said that it was the difference in humidity between where it was made (humid Japan) and where it was played (arid Tri-Cities). I was told it could take several years of regular adjustments before it would stay in tune. Ouch!

As you can imagine, it becomes increasingly frustrating to play a guitar that won’t stay in tune. So I started looking for a new guitar. I stumbled into a deal and a half! My friend Beau had a friend who was selling his guitar about the time I graduated from high school. It played great - plus it had a locking Floyd Rose tremelo and it stayed in tune practically for EVER by comparison to the Lotus.

Now, this guitar was a real find. It turns out it was a prototype model that Gibson made in the 80s. It’s an American Gibson strat. But it’s really thin and light. It has three knobs, four switches, and four pickups. The finish was thrashed because the guy I bought it from covered it with stickers which stripped the paint. I sold my Lotus and bought the Gibson. Then I took some graduation money and had it repainted. It looked awesome and played fantastically.

Eventually, things about it started to go wrong. The wiring was very flaky. (And when I fixed that, it buzzed like crazy.) The Floyd Rose tremelo that got me so excited was rusting and some of the tuners wouldn’t turn without pliers! And then I locked the case and forgot the combination. Shortly after, my brother demanded that I give him the money for his share that he paid for my amp. I didn’t have it, so I told him he could have my amp and give me 100 bucks, thinking I would just go buy a newer bigger one I had my eyes on. Ryan thought that sounded fine, so he took the amp and gave it to a friend of his. When that happened, I didn’t play the Gibson for almost two years!

When my father in law loaned me a little old guitar amp, I started playing again (I somehow remember the combination.) I then discovered that my brother’s friend had sold my old amp to another friend, who wanted to sell it again. I ended up very excited to be buying back my old amp. I was back in business!

But pretty soon, the crusty tremelo got to me and I became sick of the guitar. I borrowed my old Lotus from Eric and started playing it with my amp (I still have it and it’s like six months later!) I had a friend from church who was interested in buying my Gibson. I was so sick of it, I sold it to him for a song. He says he did a bunch of work on it and now he loves it and says it’s his favorite guitar. I feel a little sad about selling it because it was so unique, but at least he’s very happy with it.

So I was back with my old amp and my old guitar. It was just like I was in high school again. Except I’m not in high school. Having my old amp back was wonderful, but it was a little too loud for our apartment, so I took it to church where some of our musicians could use it instead of dragging theirs to and from church all the time. I had the cool old Kalamazoo Model 2 tube amp that my father in law gave me, so I was happy with that as an amp. And my wife gave me a great little acoustic for Christmas.

And then it happened. Well, not then, a couple months later. It was late February. There was a massive break in at the church, and one of the things they stole was my good old original Fender Performer 650. I sobbed for days. Okay, I didn’t. I shrugged my shoulders and figured it wasn’t meant to be. We were too different, he and I. I was a person. He was a guitar amp.

Anyway, a few weeks later, I show up at church, and there’s a huge package from my in-laws. They had said they were sending something for Kristi’s birthday. But this was a gigantic box! And it had my name on it! It turned out to be an Ampeg Reverberocket Reissue. Almost totally brand new! My father in law got it and decided he wanted something different, so he sent it my way instead of selling it. It’s an amazing amp! It’s a tube amp with two 12’s. The sound is very clean. The drive channel has a It has excellent And it weighs more than my car.

I figured that was it. But last month, when my in-laws rolled into town, they handed me a birthday card with little paper guitar in it. Then they tell me they picked out a Fender American Deluxe that they think I would like. I’m sort of dumbfounded. And then they tell me that it will be here when I get back from California. So, as you might guess, I was a little excited.

And my excitement was justified. This is one great guitar. I have been playing it like crazy and there isn’t a thing I don’t love about it. It was in tune out of the case and I have only needed to tune it once! It has a modified switching system called “S-1″ that gives you double the number of settings available on choosing pickup selection. It plays so quiet! Not a bit of buzz, not an ounce of static, not a touch of noise. The clean is great. It sounds like a dream with reverb. It’s not hard to get that great “crunch” from the drive. And it’s gorgeous.

Now if only I could play…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 18th, 2004 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.