Hi, I am a couple year long memeber with relentless posts and questions

[catnine]

 I am one who picked up a guitar in 1963 thinking there was a chance of someday making my dreams come true . I have been a member of garage bands and played many gigs for next to nothing and one even for a free record album at the opening of Mary's music store in Schaumberg IL. Turned out the album was limited to a all but forgotten record album selection but it was the playing in front of people that was the real thrill.

 My first guitar was a rented acoustic me and my freind called a hole in the middle then after working  entire summer school vacations as the sole helper of my carpenter father at ages 9 to 13 I finally got my first electric guitar , a Harmony Rocket with three PU's and red sunbust .

 I didn't have an amp .

 Through decades of playing by ear I had various amps and guitars and due to the expense of factory guitars in 1981 I decided to build my own. In 1999 I then decided to build my own tube amp .

 I don't know the math and never was schooled in either but had woodworking skills and the knowledge of schematics so this is all I needed to build my own.

 I was first inspired early on by blues since in the very early 60's my two transister Dick Tracy AM radio only picked up two chicago stations .

 I went through the Beatles and Animals and Stones and many other artists of the times so I have a mix and the blues.

 Today I am 60 . don't have a band and wrote songs and play for my own enjoyment and now that I am not employed it keeps me sane .

 I fear at this age I will never learn theory or amps but that's ok I feel I have all I need which consists of three strats I built from raw wood and two tube amps I was able to keep and I'm happy with that. I have one acousitc left which is a Seagull signature series grand .

 The one thing I am glad I was able to build my own  guitars was I could make the necks wide enough to fit my over sized hands and the Seagull grand is a bit tight but as wide as I could find.

 I wasted 35 years working for Ford dealerships as a tech then a manager and I really am not a car buff.

 I have been with the same women since 1980 after two failed marrages and we get by as we get older and time flies by.

 I have watched the world change so much and can't say I like it much as it is now but I find my way through the bad and embrace the good.

 

[tubenit]

Enjoyed hearing your story! You only got a couple of yrs on me.  I appreciated your reflections about life.

with respect,Tubenit

[panhead]

I have watched the world change so much and can't say I like it much as it is now but I find my way through the bad and embrace the good.

I feel the same way.

[catnine]

 Yes the way the world has changed to me is really something.

 I've never been good with changes , slow changes that you can adjust too over time I can handle but this now is rapid fire change that I can't keep up and to be quite honest I don't have the desire to.

 You can call it old and set in ones ways but I think it's more than that .

 I didn't know what LOL meant and had to ask , why must we reduce the language to this sort of thing when the language is an expression and always used in music .

 Certainly the 60's had rough times I was there I know yet there was a sense of something new around every corner and you did not have to adapt to  it , it was just there.

 I remember my friends while I got on the highschool school bus for the hour ride telling me the Beatles now sucked because of the song rain and paper back writer which were the A and B sides of a 45 single and I thought what are you talking about , they are great man. I couldn't wait for them to come on the am radio with my guitar ready to play along and pick up first the chords then the lead guitar part . I didn't have a way to record back then or the money to buy the record so I waited , be damned the school home work .

 Back then I used to think the beatles sheet music was the lead and bass and chords then learned the triads which were one triad for every note in the lyric then I realized they this was piano sheet music . But I learned a lot of chord changes.