And then there was one

Is this it?

I think everybody that plays guitar goes thru this sometime, and I almost hate to mention it, but I'm really considering clearing the decks as far as guitars go and having just one guitar to play. I know, I know what you're thinking...

"But what about all those different sounds, Strat, Tele, P90, various humbuckers, Lipsticks..?"

Well, I guess my current difficulties with my hand/need for a big necked guitar are driving it really, but I don't play gigs, I don't do any recording and other than that I just plug in and have a play. Usually on whichever guitar happens to be nearest.

I'm not depressed about it, and I might mean one electric, one acoustic and a mandolin in truth, and there are always Jooky guitars to 'test' as well, which means I get my fill of weird and wonder-filled sounds. But I mean a single guitar - the legendary 'keeper', my 'go to' guitar, the one that is aging next to me, seeing the kids grow, getting battered and scraped, yellowing and all a bit doddery alongside me as I do just that.

It used to be my Jazzmaster of course, and maybe it should be again, but I am thinking that a big necked Les Paul with P90s is really 'me' right now, and maybe I should just follow my nose. Or maybe a BFG, humbucker plus P90 and no worries about dinging the finish.

So I'm all-of-a-ponder.

What to do, what to do.

I could just make one of course, but there is something exciting about buying a guitar isn't there? Exciting, and yet addictive. So perhaps, it isn't such a good idea after all, I dunno.

It is a recognised loop though - you buy a guitar, love it. Buy another, then another. Sell trade or lose one, fancy something different and then descend into the Danteian 77 rings of Fender, Gibson, Rickenbacker, PRS, Squier, Schecter, Ibanez, Shine, Yamaha, Martin, Epiphone....then onto the hand made guitars, odd looking guitars, weird as hell looking guitars, mandolins, banjos, dobros, ukes...and so on.

Then you decide you need just one as you are spending so much time buying and sellling them that you forget how to play, then you just have one guitar when someone offers you an amazing deal on a Baja Tele, and well, you'd be mad not to, and then you start thinking about that Kay cheese grater you started on and aimlessly check Ebay and there is one just the same - now vintage, but only £200 and well, it'd be rude not to, and then you start remembering the others through a golden haze of fake nostalgia and you start snapping them up as you really shouldn't have let them go in the first place, and anyway they are collectible now as everybody that was twenty, twenty years ago is at a similar stage and all the selling has ended and now the buying has begun again, supply demands higher prices and so on and so you go forth and the guitars multiply and suddenly you realise that not only have you got back all of the guitars you 'de-cluttered' just months before, but you've also got back all and every guitar you ever owned, lusted after or walked past in a shop on holiday in Abersychan in 1982 and meant to go back whenever it was that they opened (every second Tuesday in March), and so I'm thinking about downsizing the collection, with a total lack of nerves and concern as I know, and you know because it is the way, that like pigeons on elastic they'll all be back by dusk, and the circle will start again.

*breathe*

I do still quite fancy a Les Paul Studio '50s Tribute in Heritage Cherryburst though. Thomann are doing them for less than £600. Twin P90s, big neck...

Hmmm... Maybe I should just get one. I can always offload the others later if the Studio really is the one.

I can,
can't I?