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Photo by Ren Potts: Me playing an ESP Viper with 'Cage Match to the Death' circa 2006

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Preface

I just bought a new electric guitar. I took it apart. Took a bunch of pictures of it. Did a little work on it. I was going to post about it today. When I started writing I couldn’t help but reminisce about my first guitar which was a strat style guitar similar to the one I just bought. I decided I'd say a few words about my first electric guitar to preface my post. A few words turned into a few paragraphs and reminiscing about my first electric guitar got me to reminiscing about some of my other guitars. More and more paragraphs came and I decided to birth a new series. I never got to writing about my new guitar. That is not where inspirado led me on this night. I still plan on posting about my new guitar soon, so stay tuned.

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My Electric Guitar Autobiography, Vol. 1: Pearl 6060600

The Guitar

My first electric guitar was an early 90’s Olympic White Peavey Predator that my parents had bought me for my twelfth birthday. The serial number was 6060600 (which I thought was pretty bad-ass at the time). I named it Pearl.

It was a dirt-cheap strat-style guitar. It never held tune for very long and the body wood I am pretty sure was some type of particle board or plywood. But, it played fairly well and it actually did not sound terrible. Even in a cheap guitar, there are tones that can only be achieved by a three single coil (SSS) pickup configuration and it had that sound.

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Unfortunately I do not have any photos or videos of me and this guitar. I didn’t really take pictures when I was a kid and digital cameras did not yet exist. The following photo is of a guitar that is the exact same make, model and color of pearl.

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Source

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The Passion

I played the hell out of that guitar. And I beat the hell out of that guitar. Literally. When I first got it, sometimes I would have the distortion and reverb cranked up and I would turn the guitar upwards and punch the top with my fist and let the strings and the springs ring out and then dive-bomb with the whammy bar. It actually sounded really cool at the time. I don’t know if it would still sound cool because I would never do something like that now. There were dents and paint chips missing in the top from me smashing it. I otherwise took very good care of the instrument and learned a tremendous amount playing it. I had enjoyed playing acoustic guitar for the year or so before, but playing the electric was what really sparked my passion for music.

I would spend countless hours in the garage playing songs over and over until I got them right, avoiding my homework and chores. It was all I wanted to do. Despite my neglecting my responsibilities, my father was thrilled. He has been a musician his whole life--primarily a drummer--and he was just so happy that one of his kids finally learned to play. He would regularly call on me to come and play guitar with him on drums and my uncle Louie, whom he played in a band with, on bass. He would encourage me to improvise on the spot and to sing along. It was like learning a language through immersion. And it was an experience that I would not trade for anything.

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Me as a child with my uncle Jeff in the background

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"He used to be such a sweet little boy."

I was typically a pretty good kid up until late middle school. In seventh or eighth grade, a friend and I got into some trouble for stealing and destroying school property on a couple of different occasions. One of those cases actually involved criminal charges. In addition to that when I was a freshman in high school, it became a criminal offense for people under the age of 18 to smoke cigarettes in my state (I had already been smoking since I was eleven). Up until that point, it was only illegal for minors to purchase cigarettes. I was busted twice in the same month by the police for smoking cigarettes during my lunch break at school and was fined. My parents were pretty tired of the fines I was incurring by this point. Especially since I was too young to get a job and pay them myself. My dad threatened to sell my guitar if I got in any more trouble. He claimed it was the only way they would be able to pay any more fines or restitution. It was the most effective thing he could have possibly done at the time to get me to get my shit together. My dad knew that more than anything, I was hooked on playing my guitar. I quit smoking (for quite some time), I stopped stealing and breaking shit, and I only got high when I was absolutely sure I wouldn’t get caught.

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Lost and Found

A couple years later, I lent the guitar to a friend of mine. I had another guitar and did not play Pearl much anymore. My friend left the guitar at someone else’s house at some point and that person pawned it.

Luckily, my dad always hit up all the local pawn shops on payday. He was—and still is—always on the lookout for music equipment and cassette tapes. In fact my dad has one of the largest collections of audio cassettes that I know of. He still listens to them too. He is pretty resistant to change.

My dad asked the shop-keeper “Is the serial number on that guitar 6060600?” Once the man confirmed it was, my dad informed him that it was his son’s guitar and that he had the receipt to it back at home. The shop was very helpful and I ended up getting the guitar back shortly after that.

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For a Friend

In my early twenties, I ended up giving Pearl away to a guy that I worked night shifts with stocking shelves at Wal-Mart. Everyone called him Moose. I worked there for over a year and he was one of my best friends there. We ruled the foosball table at break-time and he would frequently invite me over for meals after work. He invited me over for Christmas dinner one year. Working nights your schedule gets pretty fucked up and you don’t always eat meals at the same time as everyone else. So we had Christmas dinner at eight in the morning. Just him, his wife and myself. He was from a Mexican family and made amazing tamales for the holidays. It was so good. In addition to being a great cook he was an amazing blues guitar player. He had sold his guitar the previous year when his wife, who also worked nights at walmart, had a really rough pregnancy and had to stop working for a while. Times got tough and they needed money. I was more than happy to give him the guitar. I did not need it at that point and to see a good guitar player without a guitar is a terrible thing. He eventually inherited an old Gibson from his uncle and I was happy to learn that he passed Pearl to someone else in need.

And that was the last I have heard of Pearl 6060600. Hopefully, it is still floating around out there somewhere. Maybe another awnry twelver year old got their hands on it.

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I hope you enjoyed. If you have some stories or memories of your first guitar (or other instrument), feel free to share in the comments or even write your own guitar autobiography.

Best wishes,
@veckinon

I have played guitar on a couple of fellow steemians tracks. You can hear them here:

https://steemit.com/dsound/@veckinon/20180309t225057280z-entry-for-falseyedols-cypher-challenge-s1e1
https://steemit.com/music/@veckinon/covert-collaboration-and-renegade-recording-session
https://steemit.com/music/@amberyooper/my-silent-scream-a-musical-collaboration