Oscar

Guitar, keys, percussion vocals

Keys….. Korg-N1 Originally used to record the CD “Oscar” in 2001…. More here: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/oscar

Guitars:

Lots of guitars. It’s a disease chasing after the perfect one. Of course we know that at the end of the day it’s all in the fingers. Clapton can make a $50 guitar sound good, but hey…. Not all gear stayed. I now have “preferred seller” status on Reverb.com getting rid of the instruments, pedals, sound gear and other things I tried and didn’t use after that. Here’s the lineage of my “main squeezes”……..

After starting out with a cheap Ibanez acoustic (long gone) I bought a Martin 000-15M Streetmaster. I liked the look, and when I played it in the store the sound was, and still is, amazing. Can’t push it too hard, but nice and quiet it is sweeter than honey. Something about that Mahogany. (Since re-homed)

Then I came across a bargain on Craigslist. Martin D-16 GT. Turns out there’s a reason it was a bargain. Martin had some trouble with the top coat on the top separating from the sealer in the early 2000’s. Told me so when I brought it in, but since I wasn’t the original owner they couldn’t fix it. Did give me a free tune up while I took the tour to make me feel better. But, it plays and sounds pretty darn Martin good, so a re-finish is in progress. (Note the white blotching)…..

Then I drifted towards nylon, a Martin 000C-Nylon crossover to be exact. A bit more spacing at the (radius) neck than a steel, but not the surf board that is the classic, and a lot easier on the fingers. (Also since gone to a new home….)

Liked it so much I had Martin build me one in all Mahogany. One of one in existence as far as I know…..VERY sweet instrument, and not going anywhere!

Still stuck with the nylon until I took the 00015SM with me for a weekend to an SCA event. By the time I got home I was, again, in love with steel. And still much in love with Mahogany. So I found a really nice D-15M on Reverb for a good price…. Put some K&K minis in there which, together with the Behringer ADI21 DI were the current main stay of the sound in the duo. (Also re-homed)

But like everyone I’m always a little apprehensive about taking these delicate wood instruments out of the house. They just don’t like to travel. Changing humidity and temperatures affect them a lot. In a way it’s a challenge to see how it will play at this 95º 90% relative humidity party, but in other ways it’s a “challenge”, if you get my drift. So then I found Carbon Fiber. To be honest I’d known about it for a long time as I know someone who gigs with one in very challenging conditions for just that reason. For some reason I had never considered them though. But, here I was killing time walking around Scottsdale AZ where there just happen to be a lot of guitar stores and I ended up sitting in one playing a Rainsong. And man, did I like it. So the short version of this story is that I now mostly play a H-WS1000N2…… and I LOVE it.

Update March 2021…… The herd is thinning. Many guitars getting Reverbed out. The custom nylon Martin is staying though….. The others are slowly leaving. And the only thing that gets played is the Rainsong….. It’s becoming THE guitar. Well, that and it’s sibling….. Someone made me an offer I couldn’t refuse on a CO-WSI00002T with a KILLER sunburst color scheme. It plays sooo nicely. Here shown sans strings and with a LAG-HyVibe peeking over its shoulders….

A what? yes, a Lag-Hyvibe. The Lag is a plain wood guitar. Didn’t care for it much. But I got it because of the HyVibe system…. THAT is amazing. Effects, looper and Bluetooth sound reproduction built into the guitar. But I needed to combine these things…. And then this happened.