Comments

• noahfuture ✭✭✭

  March 2016 Posts: 61

  I watched that Tchtavolo clip a million times before buying my first guitar from Rodrigo. Loved that one so much, I bought another, and now I'm commissioning my third. Someone is gonna be really lucky to get this guitar!!! Seriously people, snatch that thing!!!!

  One writes music because winter is eternal and if one didn't, the wolves and the blizzards would be at one's throat all the sooner.
  -David Mitchell
• chappie ✭✭✭✭

  March 2016 Posts: 125

  Thanks Noah! Let me know when you are in town again! Charlie

  charlie
• klaatu Nova ScotiaProdigy Rodrigo Shopis D'Artagnan, 1950s Jacques Castelluccia

  March 2016 Posts: 1,665

  I did indeed own this guitar for a while, and I wish I had never let it go. It is an amazing instrument, one of Rodrigo's best. The pros at Django in June who played it loved it - Joscho, Gonzalo, Olivier Kikteff, and Biel Ballester among them. I asked Joscho to play it in 2010 so I could get one video. An hour and a half later he sheepishly handed it back, and the next morning in class asked if he could play it again. He handed me Michael Bauer's fabulous heart-shaped hole Di Mauro, so it wasn't a bad trade at all. Every time Gonzalo saw me after playing it, he would say "Tha's a byootiful guitar, man!"
  
  I later decided to commission a guitar from Rodrigo, and he built me a fantastic Selmer-style D hole. When Charlie decided to let his '77 Favino go, I sent his Shopis back as partial payment and also had to sell the D hole as well. Over time, I came to regret letting the two guitars go, and also decided that I could not justify keeping so much money tied up in one guitar, so the Favino got sent off to Michael Horowitz and I commissioned a new guitar from Rodrigo, which he delivered at Django in June 2014. I will not be so foolish as to let this one go.
  
  Over the years, my severe GAS became a running joke with my friends and bandmates. A lot of it would have been avoided if I had had the good sense to simply hang onto Charlie's Shopis and quit trying other guitars out. I wish I could buy it back from him, but I have no money to spare, and the US-CAN$ exchange is not in my favour. Whoever winds up with this guitar will have a superb instrument.

  Benny
  
  "It's a great feeling to be dealing with material which is better than yourself, that you know you can never live up to."
  -- Orson Welles
• Buco NOVA, DCDeity Ivanovski maple/spruce

  March 2016 edited March 2016 Posts: 4,735

  I'm sorry to hear about your troubles.
  As I'm entering my middle age and starting to have these phantom pains here and there in my hands, a thought sometimes occurs what if it got serious to where it would impede my guitar playing. I just shudder and take my mind elsewhere. I can't begin to understand how you feel about it but I wish you good luck.
  That Tchavolo clip is so awesome. His musing over the guitar was even musical.
  I'm sure it's going to find a buyer soon. I even entertained my mind as a possibility even though I know it's a science fiction.

  

  Every note wants to go somewhere-Kurt Rosenwinkel
• chappie ✭✭✭✭

  March 2016 Posts: 125

  Thanks, Buco. It's my fault mainly. Too many years as a boxer and doing Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. My hands have paid the price, particularly my left, chording hand. I can still play a little, some slide and simpler stuff. I am teaching my daughter, who is also an awesome drummer and pianist. So life goes on. Thanks for the note.
  Charlie

  

  charlie