Man, I remember one time, we were playing a gig at some dive bar in Fall River, MA....the band onstage before us, the guitar player was playing a Road Worn Strat that was all beat up, I got so jealous because ALL the hottest chicks were standing in front of him saying stuff like, “Oh my god, he’s amazing! You can just tell how much he cares about playing, look at his guitar! I wish I were that guitar!” And even more so, I could tell the guy had only been playing for like a week, but man, that guitar just SANG and gave him this ability to pull off EJ/Gilmour/SRV/Hendrix/Hooker/King/Clapton all at once.....it was really remarkable.
That’s precisely the crap that runs through my head every time I hear someone say that someone is playing a relic for “cred”.
NO ONE, absolutely NO ONE gives a shit about a guitar’s finish accept for other guitar players. It has absolutely nothing to do with the sounds that come out of it or the “credibility’ of the person playing it. They’re either a competent musician or they aren’t. The finish of their guitar has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Back when I started playing, all the older guitar players I knew would always say “It doesn’t matter what a guitar looks like, it’s what you can do with it that counts.”, which is a stark contrast with what seems to be the case today, with the older generation now getting worked up over how a guitar looks and not paying attention to what’s coming out of it at all.
Interesting times.
