My Guitars 3, the Old Hawaiian Acoustic Guitar

Many years ago I used to be able to walk into a pawn shop and see an array of broken dreams in the form of abandoned guitars that people had left to be sold to someone else after they had been used up and never played again.

I always liked to look at them and wonder what sort of life they had had, why they had been sold on and what they could have been. Probably a lot of them were purchased by parents who were pestered by children wanting to learn to play guitar so they could be like a guitar hero, then after a few months of not being able to get anywhere when the child finds out you need a bit of persistence to actually learn to play, the guitars are given up and something new is found.

A lot of guitars were generic crap and occasionally there would be the odd Fender or Gibson but mostly knock offs, cheap copies. There was sometimes even the old left handed instrument.

If the guitar was a good one it was always out of my price range and all I could do was look.

One day I was walking through cash converters in Newcastle the store has long since gone, but they had this guitar. When I saw it I was instantly intrigued, this was not some 80’s abandoned instrument, this was old really old. I didn’t know how old but it reminded me of something Robert Johnson would play, and at that time I was fully into the blues so I had to get it.

It was $90, I had no money so I had to go and rustle up the cash and come back the next day hoping it would still be there.

The guitar has a bit of a bow on the sound board so I bought it thinking I could repair it. I have backed off the strings to take the pressure away and it has relaxed a bit, but now there’s no way I would think of trying to repair it as it's such an old piece of history, so don't want to mess it up with a bodgy repair.

When I got the guitar home I opened it up and discovered it had spare strings with it they were dated from the 20’s, there was also an old Hawaiian Style Instruction manual in the case. I have no way to tell for sure but this guitar is from the 1920-1930’s. Its not a high quality instrument but its ok for its time and the neck is fantastic.

I don’t play it as I don’t want to stress out the soundboard but its so nice to have a little piece of guitar history and its nice to own something like this, the only bit of history I have.

All these images are taken by me copyright Gyro, you should not see them anywhere else but Steemit, thanks for looking.