Musicians - seeking a new instrument?

Cafe Society
1

I’m not currently in the market (or - more accurately - I’m ALWAYS in the market ;)), but Wordman’s thread about Teles got me to wondering if folk would like to discuss the thought process of changing/upgrading instruments.

At base, I guess, do you seek a Holy Grail - the ONE instrument that will knock your socks off and/or take you to the next level? Or do you just look for something that is significantly better than what you play, and “good enough” for your needs within your budget?

I play with a cellist who is looking into replacing her 150 yr-old cello. It sounds good, but has a soundpost crack, and she could afford more. So she’s been looking at $3k cellos. Most sound/play better than hers, but comparing them is tough. And you can always imagine there is something better out there. My suggestion was that she step up another notch, and look in the $10k range, where the improvement over her current axe will be more profound. Of course, w/ acoustic string instruments, setup is almost as important as the quality of the instrument.

I’m often surprised when I go into music stores, just by the quantity of instruments available. When I see 20 Strats or Les Pauls in every imaginable color - how differently do they play? Or even 20 different Martin dreadnoughts?

Woodwind/percussion/whatever players feel free to chime in?

2

I’d love to get me a vintage Selmer Mark VI tenor saxophone, manufactured in France 1954-81.

My current horn is a Beuscher 400 from 1956, and I love it…paid $900 for it in 1993…got a REALLY wide flare to the bell which increases the sonority far above a Selmer, but I’ve walked into many a music shop with a mouthpiece and some reeds in my pocket and tested out old Selmers. There’s something about the action and the clean tone that makes me sound like twice the sax player I really am. Also it makes me sound like Lester Young instead of King Curtis, which is fine with me. I’m too old to “walk the bar.”

I’ve not found one in good shape under $4,000, though, and my financial situation is such these days that I hesitate before buying a slice of pizza.

3

Having noodled in music stores on varying prices of guitars from easy to put on my debit card to sell my car for the down payment I can say that , for me, it’s finding the instrument that speaks to you. My Seagull 12 string spoke to me more than the Martin, Tanglewood, and Rick I tried out despite being much less expensive than the other three. The same with the Gibson Hummingbirds I tried. Three different stores, same guitar, three vastly different experiences. One had the Voice!, one was just nice, and the last sounded like it was made of wet plywood.

More money is not always better. I want to add older is not always better, either but they do have that mystique that’s hard to beat in a new instrument.

4

I also want to get a true vintage “shepherd’s crook” cornet someday. I own about three trumpets and two cornets right now, but the cornets are the late-20th century type that were made to LOOK like trumpets, because everyone played trumpet and no one played cornet.

The “shepherd’s crook” has a great retro cool look that would be fantastic for playing old blues and rags.

5

Oh, dude - the stories I can tell! I even have a cheesy name for me: GuitarQuest!!!

(Not to be confused with the cheesiest of all possible names for one’s collection of guitars, even worse than one that is actually used - yes, actually cheesier than “my stable of guitars” or “my harem (groan!) of guitars” = My Guitarsenal.)

So, anyway - back to your question: my GuitarQuest.

In all seriousness, I went through a practical, long-term process to dial in my bestest-ever guitar-type-tool on the electric side, and am one step away from doing the same on the acoustic side, but will have skipped on step I did on the electric:

  • Start with a random guitar

  • Get a few more random guitars because they are shiny to me at the time. I.e., they have some feature I think is better than what I have and which I need. I got a locking-whammy super strat at one point because of this. Oy.

  • Get conversant with how the guitar is manufactured (much more with electric vs. acoustic) = take the electric apart and put it back together a few times. Figure out what the parts left over actually do :wink: Upgrade parts because they look shiny at the time and figure out which ones actually make it play/sound better.

  • Start the formal GuitarQuest: start checking out guitars with different features. E.g., Semi-hollow, Strat, Tele, Les Paul, P-90’s vs. Humbuckers vs. Fender single coils, different neck profiles, different scale lengths, inclusion of whammy, etc., etc, etc. - buy inexpensive-but-quality examples of the guitar, live with it for 3 - 12 months and then flip it for the next guitar. Build up a sense for what features matter to me. Same with acoustic - different body sizes, tone woods, neck profiles, etc.

  • Invest in quality examples of guitars that have the features I seem to value most. Does pricier seem to matter to me? Try with newer high-ends vs. vintage pricey examples. Live with, flip, take more notes. Have had some great 50’s Gibsons and old Fenders, etc.

  • Build my own (with acoustic, get one custom made) - with my two electrics, I assembled Telecasters with features I knew I cared about. Of the two, one is the bestest-fit electric I have ever played. I have yet to play a guitar since I got it just right that even comes close. I have stopped going to guitar stores with any eye to seriously consider other guitars. Very weird feeling over the past few years.

With my acoustic, I have some amazing, pricey old acoustics. I have stated many times on this thread that, to me, an older excellent acoustic guitar sounds better vs. an equivalent newer one. Having said that, I can imagine a guitar with a few features that I haven’t found in one guitar. If I got that guitar made without much bling and it responds the way I think it would, it would be my one and only acoustic. In a year or two, I will go after it.

6

By the way - the actual GuitarQuest part - living with a variety of guitars, then living with one or two high-end examples - took, oh, 10-15 years to do. Obviously worth it, but, yeah - a frikkin’ quest.

How anyone could go into, say, a Guitar Center, pull a guitar off the wall with features they have NEVER tried before or lived with over time, and decide if that is the guitar for them is beyond me.

7

Thanks for the responses. I guess I distinguish between the player and the collector/enthusiast. I’m sure you all know what I mean by that.

I’m more attuned to the string side of things. I play upright bass, and my wife makes fiddles. I’ve got a relatively cheap bass I bought when I wasn’t sure how much I would be with it. Romantically, I’d prefer an old Kay/Epiphone/American Standard/King. But at the time I didn’t want to spend $3k instead of $1k.

And don’t go dissing plywood - that’s basically what I play! :smiley:

So I got this decent bass, and my wife decides to set it up as best she can. Carving a new soundpost, a new bridge, dressing the neck, tuning the tailpiece. She’s got this damned piece of wet plywood sounding and playing so good, that I’ve played any number of outrageously priced ply and carved basses, and haven’t found one I really like better. So the question is whether I want to gamble to buy something with the hope that my wife could make it sound even better. Yeah, old basses LOOK cool, and some SOUND awesome, but I’m doing my best to stay true to my ears, and play what SOUNDS best.

At one point I had an opportunity to buy a really nice Kay 5-string, but I didn’t pull the trigger.

And, I’m at the point where I really know that simply spending money on a new instrument won’t improve my playing as much as putting in the hours practicing! :wink: Which I imagine is the case for many other musicians.

8

So Ike, my sole experience w/ woodwinds/reeds is buying my son a couple of student trumpets, buying my dtr a decent bassoon, and buying my dtr a decent flute. And a bunch of disposable clarinets and a sax or 2. With the flute, it was pretty easy to identify a price point, and compare the tone across the range.

I’m imagining old brass likely does not deteriorate like old wood, and you could rework any of the mechanicals. But with old string instruments, older does not necessarily mean better. A lot of people don’t like admitting that the Chinese are mass producing some pretty incredible instruments at ridiculously low prices these days.

Gotta admit Wordman - your thread had me thinking of the music store’s wall-o-axes!

One final thing - I LOVE folk who buy wonderful old instruments AND PLAY THEM! That’s what they are meant for!

9

Dins, if your wife can make a plywood box sing, think of what she can do with a real quality instrument.

Figuring out setups was key for me - in living with any of the guitars mentioned above for the few months I did, a LOT of the time was spent adjusting the setup as I learned with live with and exploit the features of the guitar within my playing style. It was only after getting it set up optimally for me that I could step back and say “yeah, even at its best, this (feature x) is not right for me. Moving on.”

Can you rent a next-level-up-or-two bass for a couple of months??

10

Believe me, I’ve played a ton of pricey basses. One big problem is that I have to haul this thing around, which causes some wear and tear no matter how careful you are. And I’m not eager to pay $15k for something I need to pack in a heavy hard case…

Plus, I play bluegrass/folk/Americana. I didn’t spend my 10k hours in the conservatory. A fully carved bass is simply more that this thumper will ever be able to play. And it would be embarrassing to show up with some ridiculously nice bass, and not be able to do it justice. You know what I mean?

So the real next step would be to buy an old plywood. That is really the standard for the type of music I play. But old wood tends to have issues. A little while back, I attended a concert at a fiddle shop, followed by a jam. The owner said I could pick out any bass I wanted. The $15k bass was pretty nice, but I preferred to play a $7500 plywood. (Didn’t like the $30k one at all!) Now - I could afford either of them if I wanted. But I really couldn’t convince myself I liked either of them 7-15x better than mine.

So now I’m casually keeping my eyes open for something in the $3-5k window. But it is astounding when you go to play something, and it sounds/plays like crap. Or is set up so badly you can’t even evaluate it.

Then there is the issue of whether I like my bass so much because I’m so used to it…

I imagine eventually I’ll have 2 basses - one pricier one that never travels, and a beater/player that stays in its bag. But I tell you - it almost pisses me off, how frequently I am playing, and folk make a point of telling me how nice my bass sounds/projects! Darn that wife! :wink:

I’m kinda reminded about what I’ve read about pro golfers - or any pro. You hear them testing 100 identical putters, and saying only 1 is any good. Whereas most darned good golfers couldn’t tell any difference.

You ever hear about the musician’s nightmare? That he dies, and his wife sells all of his gear for what he TOLD her he paid for it! :smiley:

11

Oh, I totally know what you mean. While I was GuitarQuesting, I was ending up with guitars with varying degrees of bling, and which sent different messaging based on their shape and music associations.

I realized I wanted an efficient, plain tool-type guitar. No surprise at all that path led to a Tele or Martin 21 series guitars (21 = Rosewood, but the minimal appointments available).

So yeah, picking the right jalopy of a bass makes perfect sense, good on ya. Keeping your eyes peeled and trying everything is the way to go. You really should make it out to Steve Swan’s right by SFO in NorCal. Secret, unmarked shop with 3 dozen basses in it at any given time and usually a heap of cool old guitars. ETA: https://steveswanstringbass.com

12

I could have perhaps chosen a better metaphor as I’ve played a '68 Hofner Club 50 that is essentially a plywood top guitar and it was magic!

My point was that the Hummingbirds I played sounded incredibly different despite being the same guitar! Once you’ve settled on feature sets the trick isn’t to just buy the the first one you find at the right price. It can be very worthwhile to try a few out. That wall o’ guitars at the music shop is only going to get a cursory glance if I know that I’m looking for a Tele, or a P90 Gretsch. If you don’t know what you want then that same wall becomes pretty intimidating. Now take harmonicas, which I also play, badly. The problem there is you can’t really try them before you buy them so it’s a crap shoot. Charlie Musselwhite could go through cases of the things to get the one he wants, me not so much.

13

IMHO, old brass and woodwind instruments just mellow and improve with age. My tuba is a Conn CC upright that sounds better to me every year. And when my son, little Banjo, started on saxophone ten years ago we sprung for a Beuscher Tru-Tone from 1930 – it is truly an art piece, with none of the flaps and guards and trappings of a contemporary sax, just clean, simple lines. His high school music teacher made excuses to borrow Banjo’s horn to play example passages for the class.

My hope was that he would quit after a few years (big sister Little Pianola quit piano, guitar, trumpet, and electric bass in fairly quick succession) and that I would have me a fine 1930 Beuscher Tru-Tone. Unfortunately for me, he loves it like a brother, and won’t let me even touch it.

PS: People who buy wonderful old instruments and DON’T play them should be taken out and shot like rabid dogs.

14

Oh, and about China…I bought a Chinese cornet with a SORTA shepherd’s crook about ten years ago, on EBay, while drunk.

It had gorgeous nickel plating when it arrived, and played fairly decently. After a couple years, though, the plating corroded and now it looks like shit. It didn’t help that somebody knocked it off the piano (I was going through a Bix Beiderbecke phase where I played the piano with my left hand while playing the cornet in my right), and gave the bell a big dent.

15

A Monday bump - more stories about how you’ve figured out what instrument worked best for you?

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Man - you’ve got a tuba Ike? I’d LOVE a tuba, but al that brass is a tad pricey for a lark. A while back when I swore off NPR and the CD player in my car was broken, I got hooked on the local banda stations. So now at times I play bluegrass bass like a Mexican tuba player! :smiley:

I’m such a bad influence. I just talked my friend into upping her price range. She was looking at cellos in the $3k range. My wife and I told her she was a good enough player that she should go up a step to the $7-10k range. The ones she was playing were not enough better than her old one. She said she had already reached that decision. Today she called to tell us she has a 15k cello for try out! Always fun to spend someone else's !

17

If this woman is self aware in her playing and can produce a good tone, she’s one of the few folks who can truly take advantage of a top-shelf instrument. You’re right to encourage her to check some out.

18

We played together tonight - MAN what a fucking amazing sound from that cello! And beautiful wood as well. Kinda weird, it is such an amazing instrument, she probably will never get everything out of it. But she was grinning ear to ear all the time she was playing. (And she wouldn’t tell me the exact price, but i know the maker, and figure it has to be closer to $20k.)

If she’s gonna sound THAT good, the rest of us have to elevate our games! :wink:

19

What did you hear? Different tone/voice? Did it cut well / stand out / sit in the mix differently? Did she play cleaner / better?

20

Practiced again last night - she pulled the trigger and bought it! The tone was extremely warm and full - at both low and high registers. Interesting that you ask if she played better, because she said with the way it felt/sounded, it encouraged her to play with more emotion.

We practice entirely acoustic - and prefer to play w/ only 1 mike (if at all). In the acoustic mix, it projected better w/o dominating. Hard to explain, but I LOVE the sound of cello. Even the sound of my wife’s $600 student cello. This is just closer to what I’d consider an ideal cello sound. Does that make sense?

Plus, it is so cool seeing a friend play with a huge grin just about splitting her face all the time. She’s a pretty accomplished cellist - used to play orchestral, and now is working primarily on bluegrass/folk. Traded in her #1 mando towards this purchase. I’m figuring that since she loves it so much, she’ll be taking her game to a higher level. Which will be good for our group’s sound.

Even last night, she was more aggressive in taking leads. Which gives us a really cool sound, to have cello leads in the type of traditional tunes we play, or her cello and or fiddler playing in harmony.

Our mando/banjo player (already probably our strongest player)has been taking lessons and is improving by leaps and bounds. Made my head spin yesterday when he told me the passing chords he was playing. Looks like this old thumper is gonna have to put in some work! The more I can play off him, the more solid we’ll sound.

I even dusted off my old Suzuki books and have been working the bow. Of course, someone has to hold down the fort on the 1-3! :wink:

Hell, her new carbon fiber case costs more than my bass! (I guess if you spend $20k on the instrument, they throw in a nice case!) I’ve been hassling her, telling her she now needs a new bow…

BTW - 5 piece bluegrass/folk/oldtime/Americana:
fiddle/guitar
tenor guitar/harp
mando/banjo/guitar
cello
bass
2 women/3 men - all sing lead/backup
Right now we’re ROCKING the Old Folks’ Home circuit! :wink:

For me the one that got away was an old Kay 5-string. A bass tech in the area was closing up shop a couple of years ago, and would have let it go cheap. Was in perfect condition, set up wonderfully. But at the time I talked myself out of buying a 5-string as my primary bass. Now I realize it would be cool to have that and my beater. Oh well…