Baby Blue

Baby Blue 2021

 This guitar has a history. It is the last musical instrument I have made - 22 years ago, while I was still on active duty. It was more of a novelty than anything. Besides wanting to recover some confidence in my skills, due to dealing with disabilities, I wanted to make a statement. It was almost entirely a buildup for the punchline of a gag. I thought it would be fun that whenever anyone asked me if I played a musical instrument, I could say, "I play a little guitar" and then bring that out. It has a name: Baby Blue.

This guitar is built almost entirely from scrap materials and repurposed hardware. Most of the wood is from an inoperable organ that some friends gave us before they moved. The fretboard is from a piece of rosewood that, for whatever reason, ended up on a pallet in a warehouse where I once worked. I used the wood for several different instruments. Most of the hardware and decorative material was left over from upgrades to other guitars I have worked on. I had to buy a few items from music stores and a luthier supplier. If I had to add up the total cost of materials that I had to buy new, it would probably total about $30. The cost in time, skills and passion: priceless.

Long before I even built this guitar, I had built several other instruments throughout the years. I started building and innovating with guitars and accessories while I was still in high school. I wish I still had some of the instruments that I built then or at least to have some photo-documentation of such. Virtually nothing exists though. The process of making instruments has necessitated some ingenuity, especially when working on a limited budget and having only rudimentary tools at my disposal. One of the "tools" that I developed was a computer program (that I wrote in BASIC) that would calculate the placement of frets on a fretted instrument. It was a pretty simple formula, that even with my limited math skills, I was able to somehow figure out and later refine. It is dead-on accurate. What WASN'T accurate was my placement of where the bridge position pickup should go. For some reason, the placement is off a bit and that's why it's slammed right up against the bridge. In almost every single instrument I've ever made, there is some major flaw that even though many people might not detect, it is something that I can't help but notice every time I see or play it. One of these days, I'll be to the level where I don't screw up royally while making a musical instrument.

Several years after I was out of the Air Force and moved back to Bellingham, we were downsizing (and I was trying to come up with some cash for more musical equipment), I put this, along with some of my other equipment up for sale. Somebody came and bought this. It was with almost instant regret though. It was as if I had sold a part of myself. My children were even sad that I had sold it and expressed that to me. 

A year or two after I had sold the instrument, we were getting tires at Les Schwab. While we were waiting, I walked down to a nearby pawnshop. Lo and behold, Baby Blue was on the rack for sale! I literally ran back to the tire shop and told Julie, "you'll never guess what I found at the pawnshop!" She didn't guess, so I had to tell her... and I begged for some money to buy it back. The cost was a little more than what I sold it for at our yard sale, but the strange thing was that they said it came with a case. Case? It never had a case. They came back to the counter with a case. It was a saxophone case. Whatever... I'll take it. The guitar had a few more scratches and dents than what it had before I sold it, but it was okay. It was now mine again. I sold the saxophone case on eBay and it was enough to make up the difference between the cost I sold the guitar for and the amount I had to pay for it at the pawnshop.

Fast-forward a few more years. We were once again in transition. I was going across the country to school and we were downsizing, but this time I was trying to avoid selling any musical instruments that had sentimental value. Instead, I gave a couple of them away to my children - and this was one of them. It was still in the family, so it wasn't completely gone. 

Now, as almost our entire family seems to be in transition and everybody else is either downsizing or they just don't have the capability of taking everything with them. This guitar is now back in my possession... for now. It needed some cleaning, re-stringing and repairs (one of the pickups was busted and needed some hardware). It is now proudly displayed on the rack once again.