In With the Old, In With the New
I recently bought a new guitar. The reason I decided to buy it is that while I have a number of guitars the black Eko Ranger that I like to use for live gigs, and on which I am basing the new album “Inheritance”, is showing signs of age. I acquired it in a swap deal in 1977 and it’s the guitar I have played the most during those 42 years, and which most visiting guitarists will have played. It’s the instrument I used to use when singing Jenny and Duncan to sleep back in the day, which often involved raucous renditions of songs such as This Land Is Your Land and Belfast Child as well as a number of toilet humour self-penned numbers to give them a final laugh before finally succumbing to the Land of Nod.
The Eko didn’t cost me much. I got it in a swap deal for a 12 string Hoyer that I’d bought a couple of years before, but I could never get to grips with the thing. First, I wasn’t a great guitarist anyway so to take on a 12 string was definitely a step too far and more of a pose than anything. Second, its machine head was so heavy that it was difficult to hold and with a high action that I didn’t know I could cure back then, it was difficult to play. Neither was an expensive guitar, but sometimes an instrument just suits you and sometimes it doesn’t and the Eko has stood the test of time.
Old guitars need to be cared for and recently I have given the Eko a bit of a battering. It has a particularly beautiful tone, and we have found a technique for getting every ounce of tone out of it during recording, for both fingerpicked songs and thrashing chords. At times it sounds like more than one guitar, its sound sometimes mistaken for a bouzouki, but it’s just a mass produced guitar that became my gem. It has allowed me to play around with tunings that many guitars would not be able to handle, and it has never let me down.
I only had a pickup fitted to it a year or so ago, and I was sceptical whether it could sound better as a semi-acoustic that just an acoustic guitar, but of course it raised its game again. It is now showing signs of its age, Its machine heads are beginning to creak a little. So after “Inheritance” it will be taken out of regular service and probably reserved for just one tuning when I decide to play certain songs live: Surveillance from The Breeding Ground Of Vile, and Land Pirates, as yet unrecorded and a song that may just stay as a live song.
I thought long and hard about a guitar I could use as my main gig guitar and in the end decided to buy a Guild from their ‘Westerly’ collection. I’d played one a number of years ago and then forgot about them until Kate (Folded Arms) borrowed one for a gig. My new guitar arrived a week ago and it has lived up to expectations. With my main instrument being the cittern I won’t overuse my guitars live, but the Guild and the Eko will give me the tunings and sounds that I want for my songs, and I feel I have everything I need. That is a nice feeling.
Links:
Eko Guitars: https://www.ekoguitars.it/en/about
Guild Guitars: https://guildguitars.com/guitars/acoustic-guitars/
Hoyer Guitars: https://www.hoyerguitars.com/about/#h