The First Dent! What's your first ding story?!

jlander9

Hello All,
So it finally happened, sooner than I had hoped. My guitar got a small ding. Really it's just a milometer, only visible when you tilt the guitar at a certain angle, but I know it's there! My ipad betrayed me when it fell off the music stand and to my lady (guitar). I was angry! It felt like someone had hurt me! Yes, I know it seems like i am over reacting but this is MY guitar, my friend, my confidant, I hold her, I play her, I enjoy making her sing and to see her with a ding is unbearable. So why do I bring this up? Well, my girlfriend said "Great, now your guitar has character." Immediatly I looked up Django's Selmer 503,and I realized wow! his guitar really lived. It was used, "seasoned" it had CHARACTER! LIKE THE
AMAZING CHARACTER THAT PLAYED HER! so whats in a ding? For the sake of the forum, what's your first ding story? 8)

Bob Holo

I don't remember my first, but I remember my worst though it was years ago, I had a four or five inch stack of method books & a big overstuffed sheet music binder sitting on top of a tall loudspeaker and my Zerostat sitting on top of that.



I bumped the speaker causing the books to fall and the heavy binder to flip open with a vengeance as big binders do when they slip. I can still see it as in slow motion. The Zerostat got flipped down under the books as they rotated off the speaker. The Zerostat hit the soundboard of my Webber OM which was sitting a foot or two away in a guitar stand ... it hit handle-first at the precise moment that the heavy bottom of the big binder snapped open almost as though it were spring-loaded and hammered the Zerostat at just the perfect angle to drive its trigger through the soundboard near the bottom edge. The impact was so fast and clean that it didn't split the soundboard. It punched a horse-shoe shaped chunk of spruce out and buried the zerostat's handle to the hilt. I stood there shocked & blinking for what seemed like minutes, thinking: "You have got to be F*ng kidding me." I mean, yes, it was careless of me to stack things on a speaker - but statistically speaking, how many things needed to line up with absolute precision to make that happen...

Uggh. Anyway, now I keep guitars in cases or up on hooks or otherwise up and/or out of the way.

swing68

Also not the first and not a GJ guitar (mercifully) but the one I recall with the greatest chagrin is my old Washburn F-30 which I lent to a metaller at a house party jam. I was a bit too tipsy to notice his leather and steel wristband plus assorted chains clanking into the soundboard until too late.

Guitar's still fine, playable and in use - but it does constantly glare at me from the wall-hanging like a mate you just deserted in the pub when the bubbas came round lookng for some Friday night action ...

klaatu

Also not a GJ guitar ...

My '66 Martin D28, which dates from my bluegrass days, was purchased secondhand in 1976 after being refinished at the Martin factory, having suffered somewhat from being used and abused by a street musician. I managed to keep it fairly pristine for a number of years until one night at a gig with my bluegrass band. As I was talking and gesturing with my hands between songs, the strap suddenly slipped from the endpin, and the guitar dropped like a rock to the stage. I remember standing there staring at open-mouthed it like an idiot, unable to move. Fortunately, the only real damage was a small crack in the top in the lower bout where it hit the floor. But I felt like the guitar lost its cherry that night.

Lango-Django

Back in 1968 when I was 17, I was lucky enough to buy a factory-refinished Martin 000-28 with herringbone inlay. As far as I was able to find by the serial number, this beautiful guitar seemed to have been made in the 20's or 30's. I paid three hundred bucks for it, which was quite a bit in those days.

alas, being a somewhat lazy careless young fella, one day I after playing it, I carelessly put it halfway into its hard shell case that was on my bedroom floor. Somehow the top of the case fell down and one of the those metal snap buckles left a big tooth mark in the top of my beautiful guitar.. No impact upon the instrument's sound, just an annoying but minor cosmetic flaw that made me feel ashamed of myself every time I saw it.

A couple of years later, I took that guitar to Europe with me, having decided to finance this trip by selling my guitar over in France where Martin guitars were hard to find.

Amazingly enough, this was one of those stupid teenage plans that actually worked, because vintage Martin guitars WERE in demand in Europe, and I was easily able to sell that guitar to a rich young French girl for a ridiculously high price, probably three or four times what I paid for it in the US.

I don't remember the girl's name anymore--- she didn't even really know how to play the guitar, but somehow convinced Papa (who must've been loaded; they lived in huge lavish mansion) that she needed this costly instrument to learn to play on.

Soon after selling the guitar, I headed back to North America and gradually lost interest in folk music and Martin-type guitars, in favour of jazz and arch tops..

Then one day in the 1990's, I happen to be watching TV and there is Eric Clapton Unplugged, and he's playing Jesse Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues" and lo and behold...what is that guitar he's playing?

Why, it's a Martin triple-O 28 herringbone!

Now I admit to having absolutely NO proof that Mr. Clapton was playing my actual guitar, because the camera never panned up close enough for me to see if it had that little bite mark.

And actually, even if the camera HAD panned in really close, it would'nt have really helped my cause, because the dink was JUST in that spot that the player's right arm would have totally covered.

...but if anybody who reads this should ever get the chance to talk to Eric Clapton about guitars, would you please be so kind as to ask him about his triple-O, and whether has that little scar on the top.

Because I really believe in my heart of hearts that that WAS my old guitar I saw him playing!

Will

wim

I am not a princess about my guitars .. they all get banged up pretty regularly, but I don't mind - I prefer the antiqued look

CalebFSU

yeah I don't have any really great stories but, my Cat knocked my copy of Gypsy Picking off of my old crappy collapseable music stand and it hit my gitane d-500 and knocked the end of one of the mustaches off. I got a better music stand after that. My US made Hommage, only has playing wear and maybe a nick here or there on the binding, but yeah I play my guitars and generally try to take good care of them but a small ding here and there and I am not going die.

jlander9

Slow motion, disbelief, and momentary hatred for the thing/person that caused the damage. Wim and Caleb FSU, you're right, dings happen , but that first one sure does hurt! :shock:

Archtop Eddy

Not exactly his first ding, but maybe the Mother of All Dings... One time after a gig, Tony Green backed his car (a four thousand pound Checker cab) over his guitar case crushing his beloved Dupont into chunks and splinters. He gently picked up the case without trying to remove any of the broken parts and took it to his trusty luthier who glued it back together! Here's a pic of the guitar after the repairs. Not bad, huh? AE

CalebFSU

hahahah Eddy Great story! I have seen him play that guitar and its pretty great sounding. Especially when Tony plays it.

B25Gib

......Not a ding story, but how about a thoughtless/deliberate abuse story!
......I'm camping at Lake Dorr in central FL in the summer of '82 with two other friends/jamming and the fire is dying down late in the evening. So my friend stirs the coals with the headstock of his mid 60's Guild acoustic and of course the varnish/lacquer catches fire. "Wow, look at that" he says for about 5 seconds before yelling "Ah, that's enough" before putting it out in the sand.
......But hey! He was the best player of all three of us!
......Rocky