How many still have their first guitar?

[AgeOfEmpires]

I've got mine.  Forgot about it long, long ago.  It's a Yamaha red label FG-75.  Recently found it in my attic ( ).  The guitar must be from early 70's.  It's sort of rough looking and it's got two nylon strings left on it and a distinctly 70's guitar strap.  

I took lessons for about 2 months way back when, but my parents couldn't afford both piano and guitar and so the piano continued.  I'm sure it was stuffed in a closet somewhere at my parents for a very long time, and then I guess they gave it back to me somewhere along the way (maybe 20 years or more ago) and it wound up in the attic somehow.  Of course, this was way before I got a renewed interest in guitars and certainly before I knew how to care for a guitar.

I'd like to say it brings back a lot of memories, but the only one I can recall is the day I got it and what my guitar teacher looked like.  There has been many, many times over the last couple of years I wish I could have kept taking guitar back then.  Maybe I wouldn't be as crummy a player now as I am, and the FG-75 may have had more stories to tell other than long hot days sitting beside attic "stuff".  Instead, I am sure it looks with envy at the two cases carefully placed beside my bed that contain my Larrivee and my SCGC.

[broKen]

I don't. But I do have this picture of it.

When I was ten or eleven I begged Dad for a guitar. He gave in and bought me one. I have no idea the manufacturer, but it was hard to play. A real piece of junk. I vaguely remember a chunk of brass that Dad made for a bridge/saddle. I stuck with lessons for maybe two months. I was playing C, D, G, and a few others. I had the C scale commited to memory, but I quit anyway. I don't know whatever became of it. That was the first one, but I'm not counting it. Fifteen years later I tried again. An Alvarez Yairi dred. Again I quit after a few months (yeah, I'm a quitter.) I sold it a few years later and bought a grow light with it. I did use that, which explains a lot of things. That was 25 years ago. Seven years ago I bought a Seagull and have played a guitar nearly every day since.
I know this is not the kind of answer you're looking for, but I've had some coffee and can't shut up.

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[flatlander]

I've got mine.  Forgot about it long, long ago.  It's a Yamaha red label FG-75.

My sister has my first one. It was hers in the first place and she got it back later. Same model as your's. A 67 or 68 though.
Ha, found a picture of her playing it for my brother, when it was new.


Heres a pic a year or 2 ago with my in-law Micheal David playing it on left. (yours truely in center with Gallagher)

[eded]

I still have the Harmony archtop tenor that was my dads.  It was the first guitar I ever played.  I tuned it like the 4 high strings of a guitar (DGBE) and transferred the uke chords I knew to it. 

Not my first electric, but I still have the 67 Guild Starfire III I bought in 75.  It could use a little restoration but it still plays great and the pickups are the hottest I've ever found.

Ed

[unclrob]

I wish I saved my first which was a Sears Archtop.Don't remember the modal.My next was my first bass which was  Norma and one day it just imploded.My first brand name was a Gibson B15 had it about a month when my older brother and sister had a party and the top got stepped on this became my first repair also.I still have and I still gig on every now and then.I just gave iy to my son as he is taking guitar in school.Oh ya its a hog top.

[SMan]

 I'm sure I have posted this before but it is a 1970 Navarra Classical given to me by my Dad.  Inexpensive laminate guitar that still plays well.
I've replaced the bridge and tuners.

[GeeNorm]

I still have the first guitar I could physically play, a Sears electric that looks vaguely like a Fender Jaguar. Before that I had a Sears dred that shredded my fingers with its high string action. Maybe a setup would have made it playable but maybe not. Oh, I had a Roy Rogers half sized before that but it was just a wall decoration.

Norman

[Zohn]

Thank goodness I don't - it was an Aria dread - and I really mean a dread   - it was the worst guitar for intonation imaginable.
The next one was an Ovation celebrity which was, well an Ovation...
My first serious guitar was the Takamine Crossover which I imported new in 1996  and I'll probably keep it.

[L07 Shooting Star]

I don't have my very first guitar, but it's still in the family.  Someone in the neighborhood had thrown it out in the trash and I came across it in an alley on my way home from school.  I was 12 at the time.  It had a cowboy painted on the top which I promptly sanded off.  I remember it didn't have all it's strings and I played it that way for quite a while.  I didn't even know how to tune a guitar at that point.

My first "real" guitar was bought for me by my mum about a year later, for my 13th birthday.  I picked it out from the Sears catalogue.  It was a Silvertone model 26952 MIJ, exactly like the one in the attached pictures, except for the saddle, which was one of those height-adjustable metal saddles.  It is the guitar that I actually learned to play real songs on and first "performed" in public with.  I had it until my second year of college.  Due to my carelessness, it got knocked over while leaning against a wall, and the headstock broke off.  I don't remember what happened to it after that, but I got a new Norman to replace it at the time (1973).

After I got the Silvertone, I "fixed up" the old trash can guitar to the point it was playable, made a leather pick guard for it, and gave it to my younger brother.  He still has the guitar and it is still playable.  It's sound and intonation leaves a lot to be desired but it has great sentimental value for both of us.

The pictures are of the exact same Silvertone model as my birthday guitar.  I bought it locally last summer, and "restored" it.  I removed the metal saddle and filled in the slot.  Then I cut a new slot and installed a proper saddle that I made.  The truss rod was broken, so I removed the fingerboard and installed a new one that I got from Stewmac.  I also had to re-glue some loose braces and plastic binding.  I did a fret levelling  and it set up surprisingly well.  It played and sounded pretty darned good when I was done.  I have since sold it.


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[AgeOfEmpires]

Ha, found a picture of her playing it for my brother, when it was new.

That is a great picture.  

I don't know the year of mine.  I may have gotten it as early as 1971, but I'm guessing '72 or '73 is more likely.  Who knows how long it had been hanging on the wall of the music shop - small, rural town of about 15,000 or so back then.

[cke]

I had a nondescript small guitar restrung with nylon when I was eight, but I mostly played my Dad's Goya (in the signature) which is a fabulous guitar.

Then my folks gave me a Garcia Model 3. I played the hell out of that guitar for years: there are divots in the fretboard where I played the cowboy chords!

Still have it, but it is with my son in Atlanta. Recently I put new tuners on it and it has a wonderful warm tone, impressively low action and is very pretty.

Garcia's are somewhat controversial- some think they are great. Others deprecate them, as the importer - Sherry-Brenner of Chicago, had them made in Asia while the label claims Madrid. Big deal. It is a good guitar then and now.

My second guitar was a Yamaha FG300 red label from '68 when they were first imported. Nice nice sound and beautiful RW veneer, but the nut was  too tight for me and I gave it up.

[GGBB]

Mine's long gone - I have no idea where or when.  It was a Kawai OM that I stole from my brother since he never played it.  It was like this one.  It was his Christmas gift one year and I don't ever recall him playing it - all it ever did was sit in the closet.  So when I was 15 and wanted to join my buddies leading choruses at youth group, I put new strings on it and tuned it up.  It played like garbage (nut height felt about 1/4" from the frets) and sounded only a bit better (intonation way off), but I didn't know any better so I stuck with it for about a year until I had enough money to buy my first real guitar - a Takamine F-349 when they still looked just like Martins from ten or more feet away.  That guitar served me well for several years and even took the abuses of summer camp in stride.  One evening at campfire, the endpin pulled out while it was hanging from my back cowboy style.  It fell about 3 feet straight down onto the top of the headstock - but suffered nothing more than a few scuffs.  It would be displaced when I bought a higher end Takamine in 1984 which was my only acoustic until last summer when I finally got the Larrivee I'd been dreaming about for years.

[carruth]

My first guitar was a brand new Yamaha FG140. I still have it, and it still plays OK.

[L07 Shooting Star]

Mine's long gone - I have no idea where or when.  It was a Kawai OM that I stole from my brother since he never played it.  It was like this one.  It was his Christmas gift one year and I don't ever recall him playing it - all it ever did was sit in the closet.  So when I was 15 and wanted to join my buddies leading choruses at youth group, I put new strings on it and tuned it up.  It played like garbage (nut height felt about 1/4" from the frets) and sounded only a bit better (intonation way off), but I didn't know any better so I stuck with it for about a year until I had enough money to buy my first real guitar ............................................

Interestingly, the fret markers on your Kawai,  look exactly like the same ones on my Silvertone (they are cheap "pearlized" plastic as I found out when I got too close with a heat gun when removing the fingerboard).  Also the body and fingerboard binding look to be the same.  Even the truss rod covers match.

The fingerboard on both seem to be of a similiar light colored rosewood.  Also, the bridges look like the same shape and design and of the same light rosewood.  And if you notice, the grain orientation on both bridges is the same (not perpendicular to the top, but skewed somewhat).  Do you know if yours originally had a metal adjustable saddle?  I'm thinking they could have come from the same factory in Japan.  Mine would have been made about 1965 or so.

[BenF]

I still have mine, in fine playable order. My first summer at Uni I borrowed my flat mates guitar, as he couldn't fit it in his car when he went home for the holidays. It was a laminate wood guitar with awful action, that had been smashed in a robbery and repaired with fibreglass. Awful thing, but I learned a few chords and wanted my own. I got a Fender D21S. Solid spruce top, laminate nato back and sides, nato 3 piece neck, RW fretboard.  It did me well, but got badly scratched and dinged, and when a tuner broke it got abandoned.

I restored it last year. Stripped the finish, reshaped the damaged headstock, new tuners (thanks again to ducktrapper for his kind gift of ping tuners), bone saddle, new bridge pins, UST pickup, levelled frets etc.

I've got the action really good, and a heavily compensated saddle means intonation is bang on. It's fun in really low tunings, down to Bb or A on the E string!  Great for getting that John Martyn tones that I love!!

Seriously, with a bit of TLC, old beaters can bring much musical goodness.

[bacchus]

I still have mine, in fact, I just picked it up from a much needed setup today.  It is a cheap electric guitar (LTD Viper 100FM) that I bought about 5 years ago.  I got my first acoustic about a year in and have only very recently got back into electric.  I got it setup while I anxiously await the Forum V RS-4, my first real electric ... hopefully.

[GGBB]

Do you know if yours originally had a metal adjustable saddle?

It's been over 30 years since I've seen it, but I'm 99.9% sure that it had a pretty standard type plastic saddle like the one in the pic. It would have been later than yours, early to mid seventies.

[flatlander]

That is a great picture.  

Quite dated huh? There was another pic from same time. Here pants were paisley too  She probably made vest and pants herself. Either her or mom.

[love2play21]

My first a takamine eg was sacrificed in order to purchase my L-09. A good offering it was I'll never have to need another guitar

[L07 Shooting Star]

It's been over 30 years since I've seen it, but I'm 99.9% sure that it had a pretty standard type plastic saddle like the one in the pic. It would have been later than yours, early to mid seventies.

I can relate to how ones memory fades after 30 years.    Thanks for replying.  I was just curious as they seem to have many similiarities.  I've run into I think three guitars now with those metal adjustable saddles.  I've changed all of them over to a "conventional" saddle and this has improved tone and volume in every case.