Songwriting guitar

Songwriting in the garden with Applause and Boss BE Micro

This is my Applause acoustic guitar, bought in Slough in 1979.  Applause was the cheapo line from Kaman (Ovation was the main range, and Adamas was the deluxe line) and features a fibreglass bowl back, resin neck, a solid aluminium finger board with the frets milled into it and a crappy laminated wooden top.  The guitar has a weird thin compressed sound, and isn't easy to play.  Oddly, this makes it a great guitar to have.  You have to seriously dig in to get anything out of it, and it doesn't sound too bad loud, but you have to pick hard! Easy to play guitars can lead you to be lazy and laid back.  If you're lazy and laid back with this bad boy you get nothing!  Maybe because of this, I realised recently it's a great guitar for songwriting, perhaps because standard lines, licks, cliches etc don't come out right on it and you start doing things differently, use capos, open tunings etc in ways you might not on a nice Martin.  I've written loads of songs on it and most of them I still play.  It's almost indestructible so it is the take-on-holiday/camping/festival/beach guitar - one of the machine heads is held on with a wood screw provided by a Greek farmer in 1983 after it was knocked off in the luggage store of the magic bus from London to Athens whilst backpacking.   That metal fingerboard gets very hot in direct sun though.  Sunburned finger tips! Ouch. Not good for guitar playing.  So whilst it is doubtless the most horrible guitar I own I also would never get rid of it.  It's earned its place.  I'm not a collector - my guitars have to have utility and this one, for all its ugliness, has it in spades.