The Best Things in Life - Shopping for an Electric Guitar

25 Good Summers to Master the Campagnolo Super Record of Guitars

Every so often people will ask if I will go shopping for a bike with them. Crazy thing to do, because I am a race-bike anorak of Olympic standard, so when it comes to that moment where you ask "what would you do?" I have to lie.

I will tell you "sure take the $899 Giant with 9 speed, it will do fine" or "105's really just a couple of seasons ago's Dura Ace" hoping like hell you never get to be really passionate about cycling as you will realise that what I meant to say was "sell everything you have to buy the Colnago with the Record groupset".

It's not that I'm a bad person, I just can't bear to explain to you the insanity of how only 0.0005% of the population are going to get what it means to have Record over Chorus - and how it gets to the very essence of road cycling. Just a fleeting glimpse of Bianchi's celeste paintwork gives me the torrent of emotions that is Fausto Coppi's life story, the 20th century history of Europe, life, death, honour and betrayal. Not logic, emotion.

This week, after a moment of 'why die wondering?' madness, I turned out for the Lonely Planet Band's first Winter rehearsal of 2009 and amazingly was not sent home or made to put my guitar down and stand in the corner. A bunch of real musicians let me strum along on my Seagull acoustic as loud as I possibly could, showing me chords and filling a hole in my heart that has been empty forever.

To be fair, un-miked, they could not even tell how craptapulous I was. An acoustic guitar falling in behind 3 Fenders, a Gibson and a whopping bass, maketh no sound in the forest. I did learn to strum my guitar louder and harder than I ever thought possible!

So when I quizzed the LP Guitar Jedi Council on what to do (having brought a knife to a gunfight in guitar terms), I was super-sensitive to any diplomatic "get a cheap guitar and amp and see how you go" responses. There were none. These are my kind of passionate people, and Ian even offered to give up his Saturday morning (and risk being late for his beloved Bombers playing the Anzac Day game with Collingwood) to check out the wares of Anthony at The Guitar Colonel in South Melbourne.

We met at 10:30, and the next 3 hours were spent in some weird space-time warp trying 10 or so vintage guitars from Fender Tele's and a Strat to Gibson Firebirds and and S5. Ian's eye had already fallen on a 1996 Fender Blues Junior 15 watt valve amp, which was not negotiable if a guitar was to be had.

By noon it was obvious, even to a 5 chord duffer like me that the Strat was it. Way beyond initial budget, this was just the right thing to do. And nor did Ian bullshit me like I'm going to bullshit you if you take me along on a bike-buying mission. He just turned the amp to 11, let a few licks of Stairway loose and we were not for one moment 'denied' the thrill of gold-class living. That's the moment in the photo above.

Sadly, the white one was sold, but the black 1994 Strat 57 Reissue will be mine.

That legendary Wayne's World Moment

And just to remind you what it is all about...



Why 25 Good Summers?

At 45, I figure that by 70 I had better have this thing sorted. That's 25 summer's worth of practice on the rooftop to go.