The text you can read below was written mainly to give credit to the belief that you can use a GR33 with an acoustic guitar. If you are not interested, just come back to my main GR33 page
I am probably not the most typical guitar player. I started with classical guitar (aged 10), moved to playing pop guitar (at about 12), came once again into terms with classical guitar (at about 14), then started devouring the "Modern Guitar Method" by W. Leavitt, then became quite partial to jazz... You can imagine I can never decide what kind of guitarist I want to be. Quite luckily, I didn't take music as my profession (although I manage to make some money from time to time playing music), so I can take it as art and pleasure and have the freedom to be and to play whatever I like.
This is somehow reflected in my choice of instrument: I can't afford to have as many instruments as I'd like to (my dream: at least 3 different electric ones, an acoustic, and 2 classical ones - one cut-out, with amplification, the other - just a very regular Spanish guitar). I used to play quite a few guitars that were either borrowed or otherwise not my property - some of them I liked, some - not. One of the worst I've ever played was a Polish electric guitar made somewhere in the 70's, called "Jola 2". I played it only twice a week - in our parish band. I am sure if you played this bastard more than one hour a day, you would literally cut off your fingers. Mine did bleed several times! Luckily after some months of this torture the parish priest was nice enough to give this device to somebody else and present me with a new Czech guitar called "Star". This was a remote Strat clone, but after the "Jola" nightmare it felt and sounded like heaven. In the meantime I had or played several classical guitars, none of them worth mentioning. At some point I got an Ibanez Artist, customized by my teacher (my remote relative), who had died a bit earlier. I know what some people think of Far East guitars, but this one was absolutely perfect for jazz - had two humbuckers, which gave it a nice warm sound and you could lower the strings to about 1 milimetre above 12th fret without any buzzing, distortion etc. It was a pleasure to play - what a pity I had to give it back when my teacher's son came of age. I had another unexpected bit of luck when my father brought me an old classical guitar, bought in Russia. It was about 40 years old (apparently made by some luthier called Kozikin - if anybody has heard of him, please let me know), but looked and played perfectly. I played it for about 10 years, till quite recently. The bad bit is that started to crack in some places - I guess the quality of varnish and glue available in Russia in 1950's wasn't very high. I had to take the strings off. I guess I will have to find a luthier willing to risk taking the whole thing apart and glueing it back once more, which probably won't be an easy task and certainly not a cheap one...
The guitar I played till late 2002 (and still play occasionally) is an acoustic Cort AJ870C. It is probably not the best acoustic guitar in the world, but still it is carefully picked after fussing over some 40 different makes and models available in my country (incidentally, I live in Poland). To make it co-operate well with my GR-33 I had to do two things: change strings from bronze to steel (what an awful thing to do!) and make a special cover for the hole (this is absolutely unorthodox, I know). If it is of any interest to you, the cover is absolutely simple: plywood on top, some felt (exactly matching the hole) on bottom, and a bit of metal which slips under the guitar top and keeps the whole thing in place. The purpose of the cover is to mute some of the resonance and stop the GK-2A pickup from responding to wild harmonics etc.
|
|
My most recent guitar is a Godin Multiac ACS. This one is so famous I hardly need to advertise it here. My only remark is that it tracks with GR33 far better than my acoustic Cort and if there is any misfire or glitch, it is really due to bad playing or trying to do the impossible (perhaps a tremolo on the low E string:) ).