New Guitar Day

It’s been a while since the last time, but I bought a new guitar today.

It’s a used Yamaha AC3M.

The AC3M concert body cutaway guitar, features all-solid mahogany back and sides with sitka spruce top with Yamaha’s original A.R.E. wood-torrefaction technology. Natural, dynamic plugged-in tone from the SRT2 pickup system perfectly suit your performance on the stage.

Yamaha

It’s in great condition, and even has an aftermarket additional pickup (the silver thing you can see across the sound hole). I picked it up at Long and McQuade this morning. As Tammy rightly pointed out when I brought it home, it didn’t take very long once I’d made my mind up. I consider it most providential that this guitar was there for me to find.

It started when I bought a looper pedal. It’s the kind of pedal that can record a short bit of playing, and then plays it back infinitely. You can then layer more parts on top of it.

Having the looper was having the intended effect: I was playing more (i.e. more than zero) and having fun. But the issue was you can only loop what comes in from a pickup: my old BC Rich acoustic guitar does not have one. I was playing my Stratocaster and my Yamaha electric guitars (which was good, especially for blues licks) but I wanted to loop an acoustic guitar.

I started looking for an acoustic-electric guitar. They are acoustic guitars with a pickup for plugging into an amplifier. And just like with bikes, there are budget guitars, there are midrange guitars and there are high end guitars. I didn’t want a budget guitar, and I am not a good enough player to look at multi-thousand dollar high-end ones. I was looking at guitars between $500 and $700, and there were a few I was interested in, including some by Yamaha. Yamaha has an F-series that seemed a good match, but L&M didn’t have any in stock. Carl at the store was showing me a $499 Epiphone EL-00 in a tobacco burst that was a contender, but then he pointed out this guitar. He actually said “There’s that used Fender up there you might be interested in.” I looked and looked, feeling dumb because I couldn’t spot it, and finally he pointed at the guitar and we had a laugh because it was a Yamaha, and not a Fender. He’d misspoken. When I looked closer, I realized that this was an A-series, the top of the line from Yamaha. It had all the bells and whistles, came with a case, and it played well. I have nothing against buying used guitars: Tammy bought me my Strat used, and I bought my classical guitar used as well. This one was $599.

I’ve brought it home and showed Tammy. At this point, I don’t have a lot more to say. I’ve hooked it up and played some songs with it. I’m very happy with it and am looking forward to playing it a lot more. My fingers are sore: need to build my calluses back up again.