When I started wasting muscle four years ago I’d look over at my guitar and think ‘at this rate I’ll eventually have guitar neck arms’. But at the time it seemed absurd, my arms were pretty beefy and the guitar neck was a long way off. Now as I sit here my arms are closer in size to a guitar neck than what they started as.
The guitar is a Gibson ES-135. A discontinued model I’d had my eye on for a while before PFS but they were only available on used mail-order sites. After a ten month PFS hiatus I started playing again and having nothing else to spend money on I found what appeared to be a good and safe deal on one through Guitar Center. It was listed as Good condition but it was definitely not as good on arrival as listed. Guitar Center was pretty fair about it, willing to pay for any parts/repairs needed and crediting me a couple hundred dollars.
One issue was the guitar was hard to tune and the tuning pegs were hard to turn. The torn ligament in my wrist and arthritis in my thumb brought this to a head in the last week. I ordered new pegs then decided since I’d have to replace them anyway I’d just remove the stickiest one now and see if I could fix it. I ended up removing all the pegs and lubricating them and now they’re easy to turn and the guitar stays in tune.
So I can add this to the pile of go-nowhere knowledge and accomplishments gained under the cloud of PFS. On some level I resent it all and there’s quite a bit. If I had the time machine that could take me back to pre-PFS with just enough knowledge to avoid PFS and nothing else I’ve learned since, no matter how useful or interesting, I’d still do it in a heartbeat.
