Revisiting an old Hobby

Many many moons ago my mother bought me a classical Spanish guitar and sent me for lessons once a week. I can’t remember how long I lasted at it, but I know I wasn’t overly enthused with the idea of playing classical guitar. I did, however, want to learn to play the guitar. Just not that type of guitar. (Of course looking back at this more than 30 years later I actually appreciate that learning classical guitar might not have been that bad of an idea, but as a teenager? Hell no!)

Now I’ll never claim that I was particularly good, but I was able to play well enough to keep myself happy and that Spanish guitar was fine. Until of course a flatmate decided that he knew best and put metal strings on it. I told him not to. Would he listen? No. So that was the end of that guitar. I know I was upset that he’d killed my guitar, but I honestly cannot remember what happened. The flatmate in question caused me several headaches so I probably just added it to the list of issues.

Fast forward a few years and feeling flush I went out and bought an electro-acoustic guitar and case from a shop in Cork. Long gone of course. I had it for a while, but I think I had to sell it when I needed the cash.

That was over 20 years ago.

So now, as we’re stuck in what seems to have morphed from lockdown 3.0 into the never-ending lockdown I decided to revisit my old guitar hobby.

I spent ages arguing with myself about if I should get a guitar or not and then about which one I should get. In the end I settled on a Fender CD-60SCE dreadnought. It’s a gorgeous black with some nice little built-in electronics if I ever actually plug it in to anything. I also got a nice hard case for it as well as a stand – I’ve got many not so happy memories of putting a guitar down to only have it slip and fall over.

I was so excited this morning when two big boxes arrived from Thomann:

I wasn’t going to be able to do much with the guitar this morning when it arrived as I had meetings and other things going on, but I had to free it from its cardboard box so I could take a good look at it and snap a quick pic:

Isn’t that a thing of beauty?

Okay okay the neck of a guitar might not be that impressive to most people, so here’s a better shot of the Fender guitar in all its glory:

Now to learn to play the guitar all over again!

If anyone has any recommendations for good songbooks with chords let me know via the comments please!