Worth the wait!

If you have been reading about my recent guitar-related events, you will recall the one about my tour of the Taylor Factory, and that a recent purchase I’d made was somewhere in production while I was there.

This particular guitar came about because I had another 12-string that I sold because almost every time I played it at church on Sunday nights, I would have problems. These problems mainly had to do with the pickup and electronics, and would pop up literally 10 minutes before the service started when we were doing soundchecks, which would stress me out, and put us in a rush situation to get me mic’d up to play. The frequency of this just got to be too stressful for me, so I had it checked out and then sold it. It was a great sounding and great looking guitar and it had a top-notch pickup in it, but some things are just not meant to be, and some things are just not meant to have, and I suppose that was the case with me and that guitar.

I started looking around for jumbo 12-string Taylors, and found one at Sam Ash, though not the exact model I was interested in. In a minute or less I was hooked, because of the low/perfect action and ease of play. It was unparalleled among any other 12-string I have ever owned, or played. When I found out that Koa was an available wood option, I started researching what Koa sounded like, since I had never heard it. After getting some very helpful info from a few people at Taylor, it was ordered on March 7, and we picked it up on May 31.

This guitar could not have come at a better time because literally, when the phone rang that Saturday and it was Guitar Center saying that it had arrived, I was bent over at the waist in pain due to my most recent issues, health-wise. I was hurting so bad, and that phone call was a huge boost to me—it made my whole weekend, and proved to be a great elixir and detractor from my pain. The power of music and the gift of using a talent that God gave me to play and enjoy music is quite the treasure, and I took advantage of that gift as soon as we got home, thrilled at the results of almost three months of waiting. An absolute joy to play . . .

There really is something to be said about the emotional connection with a musician and an instrument. You pick one up, start to play and something magical starts to happen, and it doesn’t matter where you are when you play—the magic is always there. Even if it is for less than a minute in a Sam Ash store. In Rivergate.