My first guitar

My first guitar in the 1980s was acoustic guitar. Even that was keen on expressing how it's not acoustic but half acoustic guitar. Well it was acoustic. :) But as child with growing passion for heavy metal stuff it was important that it wasn't "just" acoustic guitar which every family had lying around (my family, too) and which wasn't "metal". Well to my defence it wasn't your most typical Landola out there, but it was a nod more "exciting" model. Which was certainly enough for me as a kid at that point.

My dad bought the guitar from one older cousin of mine, who was back in the 1980s into playing all kinds of instruments from what I remember - this guitar was actually broken to some extent so dad bought it cheap. Really cheap. But the guitar wasn't broken as I got it, because dad had it repaired as good as it was possible (without breaking the bank with repairs) and I received the guitar as christmas present in 1985. There was one serious problem in the guitar though; I wasn't a tall kid, more the opposite - and the guitar was really large one for my size. It killed a lot of my interest for playing it after initial interest, but nevertheless I played that guitar quite some, after all. The playability wasn't good though, mainly because of one severe fault ... action was really high, partially because of that fault. And this was a fault which could not be repaired unfortunately - the guitar always had neck somewhat twisted / tilted (large crack in the root of the neck, put together with glue) so ... well, apart from that, it was ok and I was happy about it initially. Check out a picture below from the moment when I've just received the guitar for present.

Me in 1985 with my first guitar :)

So, yeah ... I played around with this guitar for the next few years. There were some events that carved my kind of path about playing guitar. Mainly the thing that I always strongly disliked "learning to play guitar the proper way" as a kid, don't ask me why but that's the way it was. Well, thinking afterwards one factor was that the guitar was really large and I was really small in comparison. Anyway, my big sister was trying to teach me chords and stuff but ... nope. I think partially it was just kids' hands are small, some chords are difficult to reach even with adults' hands so with kids' size hands it was really frustrating. There was something else boiling under the surface though; I remember how I had understood that "to be able to play metal you have to know how to play chords, learn music theory etc" ... yeah. Well, after some month or two of trying to learn chords and stuff I was like no thanks, I rather quit this "school" lead by my sister. So I did quit ... and instead I started just playing by myself and jamming without trying to learn chords or any stuff like that. No music theory, nothing. Instead just having fun ... and BAM! suddenly I was having fun with power chords, palm muting, tremolo picking ... yeah, very basic heavy metal things. And that's how it went ahead and I can't say I'd have technically speaking progressed quite far from those basics either. Basics work well for my music creations and my playing style has always been quite coarse indeed. But that's the way I like it. :)

As a little sidenote to composing music: For me music is ... very much a feeling, energy, certainly not theory, nor really planned either. People are different of course; while some musicians might plan and then compose according to the plans - I am not like that, not at all. I don't and can't plan anything when it's about music, that's what I've learned about myself during the years. If I try going the planning way, my musical plans get trashed when inspiration hits me. The best music I've done is definitely music I've not planned at all, but simply let the inspiration flow ... and back in the past when I've sometimes genuinely planned some music and then strictly tried following the plan, I've ended up with music I really disliked myself. Funny but true. So yeah, people are different. Luckily so, would be a boring world indeed if everyone was the same.

Well, I was having fun with that first guitar up until turn of the 1990s ... as in 1990/1991 dad bought me  a very cheap, entry level electric bassguitar as used one, from a music store. That brought me much more inspiration. No band stuff though, just entertaining myself. Then in rather short timeline, after lots of talk and beggin' he bought me also entry level electric guitar (V-shaped which was epic thing in my mind!) in 1992 as birthday gift as I turned 18 years old. Perhaps I'll write some more about those later, but for now since this is about that very first guitar I got as present ...

After I got those forementioned two instruments, entry level electric bass and guitar, this first acoustic guitar of mine soon went into our family's summer cottage. I used to play it there in the summertimes occasionally but as you can guess, very rarely. Then as time passed I stopped visiting the parents' summer cottage in around 1996 or so (studies, life, etc) and ... the guitar remained there, hanging on the wall and gathering dust for a long time ...

.. and there it was, nothing but collecting dust until I returned to the summer cottage in 2010 summer and "rescued" the guitar from there. I cleaned it myself completely, restringed it, and played it during the early summer just for nostalgy trip itself. But I had decided that I'll get rid of it - just not in the shape it was. So then I did lots of surface work for it, removed the components, got rid of the tens of years old lacquer, grinding ... garage stuff you know ... and then I repainted it myself into mat black. Restringed it again and so on ... the problem with neck remained. I played  the thing some weeks more and was like oh yeah, what if this was like this when I got it as a child, feels so much better now (I don't mean just the black color but all in all, I guess I made it more "mine" than it ever was) ... and then I sold the guitar. I am not pro at all in reworking guitars like this, just a hobbyist, but I think I did pretty good job. My dad still lived back in those days, and so I asked how the price I got compared to price he paid and the repairs - I got some more money from selling the guitar if compared to how much dad paid for it plus the repairs about 25 years earlier. Not bad. :) And the guitar got a new life, which felt really good, too. Below pair of pictures from summer 2010; taken soon after I rescued the guitar and then soon after I had reworked the guitar into its' final condition with me.

Me with the very first guitar in 2010 Summer