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How NOT to buy your first guitar

People often ask, "How did you buy your first guitar?"


My answer: very carefully.


Ah, the guitar…with its feminine shape, portability, and relatively easy learning curve, it's probably the one instrument you'll find in every home.


We Filipinos inherited our love for the guitar from the Spanish. It became a fixture in the now-dead courtship ritual of "harana" or serenade, now replaced by mixtapes and tequila shots. But, I digress…


Upright pianos can still be found in many homes as well but let's face it: for many kids who had to endure years of enforced lessons, it's a torture device disguised as a dignified musical instrument wielded by a tormentor known as your piano teacher. You may have survived the parent-imposed lessons, but only a therapist (or a lawyer) can undo the embarrassment, sarcasm, and memory of your teacher swatting at your fingers as if they were mosquitoes to kill at any cost.


'Do as I didn't'

It was different with the humble guitar. The shame and embarrassment of playing badly fall squarely on exercising your own free will.


I'm kidding, of course. (Or am I?)


So how DO you buy your first guitar?


Do as I didn't, which is to seek out a guitarist-friend and ask for help.


My first was an acoustic guitar that vaguely said "Gibson" on the headstock. I picked it out all by my lonesome from a family friend's general merchandise store, a place where everyone in Lipa City brought their guitars back in the ol' days.


Reality bites

Proud of my purchase, I brought it to school and showed it to a proficient guitar-playing friend who had a "Gibson" that looked and sounded better than mine.


He took one look, strummed chords up and down the neck and, just as a proud smile was rearranging my pimples into constellations, he declared:


"Ang PANGET! Fake!"


My "ta-dah" moment turned into a "duh!" minute that seemed to stretch into an hour. He explained that the distance of the strings from the fretboard ("action") was too high and playing was torturous even for him. In addition, the strings did not change pitch immediately when the tuning pegs were turned.


Of course, I didn't think of playing the guitar before I bought it. I chose it because I liked that it was reddish-brown and shiny.


A better fake

My more informed friend got his guitar and just scoffed when I admired his playing. His guitar was actually as fake as mine, but a much better fake. In the mid-80s, fake-branded guitars were as widely sold as bangketa Nikes and tiangge designer bags today. But, we were kids and didn't know any better. My friend said that his guitar was the real thing.


I loved my runty guitar anyway just because it was mine. I struggled with the guitar's high action to hold down painful barre chords, re-tuning every so often…too often. The high action also hid the fact that there were a few dead spots on the neck: hold down a note and it gives a quick "meow" or just "tck." I ignored it best as I could and kept lying to myself that, well, all I wanted to play were chords. Yeah, right.


I don't know where that first guitar went; somebody must have borrowed it as my brother and I poured our attention on an electric guitar an uncle from Canada had given us. (Maybe the guitar in every Pinoy home is permanently borrowed?)


Bad guitars build character

I didn't miss my first guitar. It was, honestly, shitty, purchased with enthusiasm and joyful ignorance.


It did build character as I had to make the most of what I had since I couldn't afford anything else. But I could have chosen better.


Or, I just chose to wallow in my masochism.


Come to think of it, it was a torture device.


Bring me that piano.


Francis "Brew" Reyes wears many hats: guitarist, producer, arranger, music journalist, photographer and TV host. He once played guitar for the Dawn and was a DJ for NU107. In short, he is legendary. Like him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and check out his Tumblr.


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