my_guitar raze there are more stringed things around here than any sane person could justify holding onto. most of them are old enough to be my grandparents. if i could only keep one, it would be the late-war martin with fourteen frets. tapered bracing. ebony truss rod. solid mahogany all the way through. it was in pieces when i bought it. broken neck and all. i don't know if it got drunk and fell down the stairs or if someone threw it at a wall when it went out of tune. i didn't ask, and i wasn't told. a master luthier named mark put it back together. he added a new bone nut and saddle, bent and cut fresh wire to fit into the fretboard's slots, glued some loose braces, repaired some structural damage, and hoped for the best. it was finished the day before my birthday seventeen years ago. as soon as i sat the guitar on my lap and strummed an open chord, i knew i'd found a friend for life. whenever i pick it up and play, rare as those moments are now, it always feels like coming home. some of the scars still show. i wouldn't want it any other way. 260726 ... alceda my guitar is too special to name though maybe one day it will be revealed to me, well, a martin triple 0, a little smaller than usual, to rhyme with this taller than usual woman, womanly with darkwood sapele so warm and a touch quiet to rhyme with my quiet and the warmth to which i aspire my guitar is the most valuable thing i own and in the obvious way yes but financially, too, i bought her maybe four years ago around 900 pounds, new, it's the most money i have ever spent at once - disregarding rent, and all that kind of empty thing, and there is something there too about the darkwood like as far from the peeling chipboard MDF laminate crap in the houses of my landlords is my darkwood window yes, my guitar, now, with scuffs and marks from bangs and bumps and all round where the saddle sits from when i fished it out, amateur, to sand it down - i keep the action low catch two strings with one finger keep my melody open and the fine threading on the pickguard a little from when i still used a pick a lot from the nail of my anchor and movements percussive and sure, i would also like to play a dreadnought, imagine an open E minor like god's very thunder or a 12-string, banjo, resonator, you know, it's not as if i have even tried many others - but i just don't think any other guitar than this, my guitar, could ever be so much a part of me, and i know i will love her even more when she's old weathered like Neil's Hank i will be, too, and we'll get there together 260727 what's it to you? who go blather from