About four weeks back, shortly after we’d talked about this whole thing, Denny headed to Columbus one morning.
His plan was to stop at Sam Ash and Guitar Center stores that, as many musicians here know, are within one mile of one another on the north side of Morse Road
But as Denny was approaching the Hilliard-Rome exit, he had a second thought.
“Maybe they’re not going to open until 10:30.”
While pulled over in the lot of an abandoned burger joint, he found out two things: One, the stores weren’t open at all that day; two, at that time, they didn’t open most days until noon.
And it all might have ended right then and there.
“You know how it is,” he said. “Even though it’s just a few hundred dollars, you’ve got to watch your p’s and q’s.”
Particularly this year.
But there was another side of it, too.
Like other guys five years either side of me, Denny can no longer confidently sing “yes, it is” after “Time is on my side.”
At 63, he told me, “you’re running up on the end game. So, if it’s gonna happen, you’ve got to make it happen. The warranty’s running out on all of our old (insert plural synonym for donkey).”
And having played guitar for just 38 years, he said, “I got a late start.”
Jump to two weeks ago.
His girlfriend, Rosa, was about to leave for work at 8 a.m.
Knowing his sparse schedule, she suggested he think about making that trip again.
Whether it was the caffeine from an extra cup of coffee, I can’t say. But in a few minutes, Denny was antsy.
And not long after that, he had blown by the Hilliard-Rome exit, made it up to Morse Road and found himself sitting in a parking lot 45 minutes before either of the music stores was to have opened.
Unaccomplished at sitting still, “I just decided to drive down Morse Road. And I see this raggedy looking pawn shop.”
Surrounded by shining new places, “it looked like it belonged on a different side of town.”
So much so, “I was hesitant about going in.”
But, hey.
“It was kind of a dark place, and the line of guitars looked kind of dusty and dirty … nothing I was looking for.”
So, he checked his phone to see what time it was, raised his eyes, “and there was this blond 339 on the back wall.”
The Epiphone 339 is a successor to the long successful Epiphone 335, a semi-hollow body electric guitar with a layered maple body and a mahogany neck modeled after the Gibson 335.
Itself a Gibson mimic, the 339 features two f-shaped sound holes of the sort that appear to be competing in a waxed mustache contest on the front of every acoustic violin, viola, cello and standup bass you’ll ever see.
On the 339, both holes open to the semi-hollow body, which acts like a reverberating chamber, just like the inside of an acoustic guitar, save that the guitar’s opening is a round hole.
And there’s this: All of Denny’s other guitars are solid-bodies.
So, he pulled the instrument down from what seemed the one bright spot in the store.
“It had rusty strings,” he said. “But it, like, hadn’t been played much at all.”
A quick conversation told him that with what looked like a brand new hard case, the instrument that looked like a brand new guitar it was half the price of a new one.
That translates into a half of a check from the stimulus package just passed, without the need for Congressional action.
By the time the two stores he had planned to visit were opening, “I had my new baby on the front seat, riding back to Springfield.”
At home, he got his elf on.
First, he replaced the rusted strings.
Then he adjusted the truss rod on the neck so the so the distance between the strings and fretboard were just right. (If they’re too close, you get string buzz.)
The final adjustment involved the points at which the strings attach to the bridge.
“That’s how you set the intonation. And, of course, that changes if you change string size.”
This took about two hours, during which “you really couldn’t really tell what it would sound like,” he said. So, “you keep your fingers crossed.”
When they uncrossed and moved over the strings, the sound “was even better than I thought it would be.”
The action was easy enough that he’s going to put down his pick now and then and try a little finger picking.
Bottom line?
Though not in a pink bunny suit, “I was doing a happy dance.”
As Denny was telling me all this, his black lab, Buddy, was motionless on the kitchen floor; Sissy, the chihuahua appeared to need anti-anxiety meds over by the gas heater; and with flame under it and water inside, the cast-iron skillet on the stove was doing its best impression of an Iron Age humidifier, though with a big plus: If it boiled dry, the house wouldn’t burn down.
The 339 had one other huge plus.
Like any instrument new to you (he called it “my new number one”), it makes you want to play more.”
And that’s why he pulled out an emery cloth attached to a pick and started sanding his finger calluses.
“If you play that much, you get grooves in your calluses and the strings will catch on them.”
Now for the apology. Like so many presents sent this year, this story arrives two days late, largely because I’ve had trouble getting into the Christmas spirit.
On the other hand, considering the guitar’s price, I’m not a dollar short.
And I haven’t put my eye out.
So Merry Pandemic Christmas.
Let’s give it another shot next year and bet on the Spirit of Christmas to Come.