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| 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.
