Acoustic guitar giant Taylor has announced its transition to 100% employee ownership. “We have delighted in giving people the joy of music and hope to do so for generations to come,” said Bob Taylor, co-founder and President of Taylor Guitars.
“Becoming 100% ESOP allows us to ensure our independence for the long-term future and continue to realise our vision for the company as an innovative guitar manufacturer.”
https://www.musicradar.com/news/taylor-guitars-is-now-completely-owned-by-its-employees
This story happened a some years ago while I was living in the East Coast. I was driving back home from a friends house and decided to take a detour through one of the more nicer neighborhoods because it was the beginning of Fall and I'm just a sucker for the scenery. While driving I just so happened to have found another thing that I go crazy for, a garage sale. With me having some money on hand, I decided that this was fate and pulled over to check it out.
At first I didn't really see anything special, just the kind of stuff you would expect to see at any garage sale. Old furniture, clothes, DVD's and other small items. But then in the corner of my eye I saw something that I just didn't expect to see, a guitar. I went in for a closer look expecting it to be some kind of cheep beginner guitar, the kind with a brand name you don't recognize. But no, what stood before me was an actual Gibson Les Paul!
Side note: To those who don't know, Gibson is a very prestigious guitar brand name and "Les Paul" is possibly their most famous model type. This model of guitar is legendry for being the weapon of choice amongst God level rock stars. Example, Slash from Guns & Roses or Ace Frehley from KISS. Now back to the story
She was beautiful! And yes, I refer to guitars as "she". She was gold in color with white trim and looked kind of old but in really good condition. But what got me in an actual state of shock was the price tag. It said the price was $50! I couldn't help but think that the person selling this forgot to add another Zero to the end of the price, as well as a One to the beginning, so I picked up the guitar and went up to the woman handling the sale to ask her about it.
She didn't really look like a typical entitled parent, but her attitude and body language just radiated entitlement. It was like her aura was almost made out of pure smugness and hatred for the working class. Just by talking to her I couldn't help but feel that she was the kind of soccer mom that you would expect to yell at the coach. As well as the referee, other parents and maybe some of kids. But I digress.
Me= Me, Em= Entitled mom,
Me: Excuse me mam, can I ask about this guitar!? The price says its $50. Is that correct?
Em: Yes that's correct.
Me: Well that's an unusually good price, is their a reason for that?
Em: Yes, its broken. I figured someone could use it like a decoration in their man cave or something.
Hearing that just broke my heart, but it also got me curious
... keep reading on reddit ➡
[GEAR] I just picked up an Epiphone ES-335 pro and it really does stand up to my higher-end Gibson and PRS guitars. The alnico classic pros are excellent. I've compared these to the original Tim Shaw humbuckers in my '87 Gibson Les Paul and much to my surprise there is VERY little difference! The alnico classics are every bit as articulate, punchy, warm, and full sounding as the Shaws. Finally, an Epi I don't need to swap the pickups out on.
It's a far cry from Epiphones from the 90s and 00s and imho the newer guitars even out shine the Korean stuff everyone always raves about. I've owned several Korean Epiphones which were great, but I just feel like these are better quality all around. Fit and finish, frets, setup, and tone are awesome on these. I doubt I will ever be able to justify dropping $3000+ for a made in Memphis Gibson ES-335, not to mention I'd feel safer gigging the Epiphone which would easily be replaced for under $500.
I brought the Epi and my US made PRS custom 24 to practice and I didn't even pick up the PRS. My bandmates actually commented on my tone "dude, your guitar sounds HUGE today!". I also have a Squier classic vibe 50s tele and 70s tele deluxe, Chinese made Fender modern player jazzmaster, along with a mexican players hss strat (every bit as good as any US standard strat circa 2008-2016) and they ALL stand out as great playing and sounding guitars that I likely will never sell. And that's the problem! The cheaper guitars are just SO GOOD now that I can't justify buying the high end stuff. Nor would I ever feel safe bringing a $3000+ guitar to a dive bar gig. Sorry for the rant, but I just can't say enough good things about.
My (50F) step-mother bought her son (now 30m) a guitar for his 18th birthday. It's a really nice Fender.
He lost interest in the guitar and about 5 years ago he decided to pawn it. I offered to buy it from him.
My dad divorced my step-mom recently and now she wants the guitar back. Her argument is she paid for the guitar so it's technically her guitar.
She also feels she doesn't need to give back the money I paid for the guitar because she helped support me and my sister when we still lived in the house with them
AITA here?
Edit: [UPDATE] She has now threatened to go to the police if I don’t give her the guitar back by the end of the day.
I’ve got a few more that I’ve used that aren’t pictured, but I have a hard time using them since they look so nice. I really enjoy the tone these give on my acoustic compared to my normal picks. https://i.imgur.com/ruxMXei.jpg
I just want to highly recommend a lesson video that really really helped me get good at guitar. I've been playing for 13 years and I've learned all of Megadeth's, Ozzy's, Death's, and many other's catologue note for note as a teen because lets be honest, learning other people's music makes you better at guitar and it's just fun. I remember getting the Rust in Peace (Megadeth) tab book when I was 15 and learning that whole album and all of it's solos really made me beast at guitar.
One of my favorite guitar players of all time is Marty Friedman and he has an old lesson video that looks like it is from the 80's or early 90's. I want to highly highly recommend this because he teaches you phrasing and NOT how to be faster. Phrasing is more important. If you listen to Megadeth solos, they are extremely sophisticated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OmDoa2SkKY
Anyway, I just wanted to recommend this lesson video. I love it and it helped me a lot. Also Paul Gilbert's old 80's video really made me fast and made sure that I was doing proper technique while shredding:
https://youtu.be/PJyj0tGQ4q8
Anyway, those are my recommendations for getting good at guitar. If anyone else wants to recommend other videos, please post them in the comments !
I’ll start. PRS guitars are ugly, and Djent is not a genre
So, I've always been a fan of guitars but never had the chance to get one or even learn one, so having this chance really makes me happy despite what has been happening this year (my cat saddly passed away today but I feel like if I dont enjoy today I wont really enjoy it ever and I know that's what she would have liked) so all this time I wasted on getting to know music and being interested in it will be worth.
I'm also really happy that my music teacher was a very good teacher who did extra work just so we could learn this past year.
Also please have a good day/night , whatever time you are. And love your cat.
Update #1: Less than 8 hours for the lesson, been reading every comment and I'm grateful that a lot of people have read this as almost no one watches my other posts so I am very happy that this happened in the subreddit for my favorite sounding instrument. I'll update once the lesson finished so you can know how it went. Thanks again
Update #2: The teacher didn't come so I got all hyped for nothing, my mom found another so tomorrow is going to be the day, I'm going to spend the day with friends. Thanks again for reading.
