My Guitars 2, The Chrome Resonator

Brothers in arms, that album cover was always in his room and I never really looked at it closely but that guitar on the front, the chrome guitar seduced me from afar just from being on that cover. It was so beautiful always there I suppose it got me subliminally.

Romeo and Juliet live in Sydney, when I heard this it blew me away and seeing him play that guitar on the stage was just awesome, the way it caught the light and sparkled for me was amazing. The sound, the sound in that song was perfect it seemed like the guitar was made for the song or the song was made for the guitar. Just a great tune and I always wanted to play it and recreate that song.

“The Mississippi Delta was shinning like a National Guitar” - Paul Simon Graceland.

My all time favourite line from any song, it conjures up images in my mind of these guitars and links to the history of the music, so many things going on in that little line.

I then started getting into the blues and realised the history of these guitars and what Paul was talking about, the metal body was in fact just evolution of the instrument, Bluesmen wanting louder instruments. So these things started evolving into what would probably become the electric instruments as the search for louder and louder sounds moved on.

I always wanted one, and I would go to the guitar stores and stare at them hoping one day to get my own National Steel. I should never have looked at the price, back then they were rare and expensive. There were old rust buckets and they were over four to five thousand even more for a good one, back then I could never afford one and spending that much on an instrument for me now is out of the question.

I was made redundant at my job, it was a weird time, I worked with a lot of people and we were all in the same boat, we would sit around and talk about what to do with the pathetically small redundancy payout. Most people were going overseas on a trip. I knew what I was doing.

A trip to Guitar Factor in Gladesville.

I was really unsure about buying a guitar I wasn’t in a band at the time, so I knew it wouldn’t get used much, but it was a little treat for the stress that job put me through so I decided to get a reward for taking shit for so long in that pathetic job.

I walked around the shop for a while and tested out a few guitars, playing left handed there is not much to choose from so its a bit limited.

I saw this thing hanging there, it was brand new and looked amazing.

I picked it up and played it, the neck is the best neck I have felt on any guitar ever. $900 it was a lot of money for me and probably a complete waste but I bought it anyway.

They told me they would set it up left handed and turn the nut around, just sales talk to sell it to me. I put down a deposit and waited a week for them to supposedly do the work.

When I turned up to pick up the guitar all they had done was turned the strings around. I was pretty disappointed but I had to have it and the money was in my pocket, I was a little nervous with that much cash so I paid and left. Never to return.

This guitar is great it has the greatest neck and makes all the sounds.

It does however have a few down points that I need to fix. Having never owned a resonator before I didn’t not realise the cone needs adjustment from time to time so there is currently a little buzz I need to fix.

Its a heavy guitar so picking it up and putting it down I have to be careful with it.

The chrome doesn’t like me and is starting to go a little cloudy where I rest my arm, but thats ok it makes it mine and will probably wear through giving it a vintage look.

Im really happy with it overall and wish I had a few friends to bash out some tunes on it with, but for now I just play the blues by myself with my little old slide dreaming about music and better times.