It was an old guitar but I figured what the heck. I already had 3 guitars sitting in Florida but since I was in Japan for a month, I figured it would be a good to practice on it. 2 years went by and I had came back to Japan to work. Well the guitar was still sitting here which did make me happy considering I didn't know when I would be able to touch an instrument again. My mom had brought it to me while I was in China so I spent the next year and a half playing around with it, eventhough I didn't get much better compared to when I first started back in 98.
The time had come and my guitar just wasn't working with me. Sound was getting bad, I had more touble holding down some of the chords, tuning it was becoming a pain in a butt cuz the peg was getting rusty. I took it to the store to have it checked and the guy told me that the neck was kinda twisted, the peg is pretty rusted, and since it's a really old brand, it is hard to find parts for it, and the guy didn't know how much it would cost to fix everything because of the availability of the parts.
Well that's when I decided that maybe it's time to let this one go and get a new one. Perhaps a better one which is more suited for my hands. With the help of the people in the store, I spent about an hour looking for that perfect guitar. Then I found the Fender Sonoran.
The neck felt nice, strings were so much easier to hold than any other guitars I've owned in my life. Well except for the Fender Stratocaster (which I ended up selling cuz I needed money.. That was a sad day....). Anyways, everything just felt right about it, and the price wasn't bad so I went ahead and made the purchase. I mean I'm sure there was other guitars that are more suitable for me, but unfortunately I don't have a thousand bucks I can spend on a guitar. Maybe someday in the future.
What I ended up doing with my old D-200 was that I had the people in the store take it, cuz I just can't bring myself to throw it away myself. I didn't want to let it go, but I said my goodbye and went home with my new fender.
I practiced with it for about an hour, and it sounded great. Well.. as great as I can get it to sound lol. But then I had this weird feeling inside. Like something was eating me alive. It felt very similar to one of those feeling when you miss someone in a worst way possible after breaking up. It was so bad that I almost had tears coming out. Yeah, I was missing my D-200. It's not even my first guitar but I missed it more than my actual first guitar. More than the Stratocaster. I started thinking about all the time I practiced with it, all those time I used it to teach my students songs in Japanese, and most importantly, all those time my mom had held on to it for me, going through the trouble to bring it to me in China....
I knew I had to get it back or I was going to regret it for rest of my life. So I called the store right away and told them to not to destroy it cuz I'm coming to get it. I probably looked like an idiot going back for an old beat up guitar, but I didn't care. I decided that I was going to take some time to fix it myself. I figured this would be a great chance for me to learn about the structures of the instrument. I don't know how long it would take before it goes back to being like a new guitar, but I think it would be worth it. When I got back home, I did some research on it and I found out that my D-200 was made back in 1976. Wow, I didn't realize it was actually that old. I started thinking about how many people played on it, how long it sat in the store before someone bought it, how long it was sitting in the house, etc. I also found out that the old guitars tends to sound better than brand new ones because the wood have absorbed so many sounds over the years. I didn't realize that taking the time have the wood absorb the sounds actually made difference in the quality of the sound it can produce. That actually got me excited.
I took the D-200 apart and the first thing I did was to remove the peg so I can clean and polish both the neck and the body. Then I worked on cleaning off the rust which I found that it is a more pain than I thought. But it's cool. I like taking my time to work on things little by little. Almost reminds me of working on the Mustang with Dennis, Scott, and Mikey. Or even the time when I was taking the time to clean the parts on my old scooter. It's really fun.
And here's a pic of D-200 and Sonoran side by side.
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