Cosmic Debris, Magic Smoke, Tone Holes and Do You Use Them Also...

I have a couple of nice guitars. Nothing too fancy but American made utilitarian instruments that would be equally at home in a hillbilly band or riffing with some jazz hep cats in the key of G#. I also have a bunch of cheap guitars. Some are from budget instrument lines made in Pacific Rim countries that may not have actually flown off the shelf into the itchy hands of capitalist consumer culture slaves but along with the junky thrift store and garage sale instruments I have repaired all of them bat above their average indicating the presence of reliability engineers, a consistent manufacturing process and good quality control. 

My grandson Cullen pounds this old Emperador guitar. It's ok but if he comes to your house and you have a Gibson or a Martin guitar sitting out he's going to think it's ok pound that to because that's what we do and you have heard of Murphy's Law haven't you? It applies double to expensive instruments.           

I've pounded this guitar pretty good myself. A thrift store rescue by my late father in law Bill Cooney, I put new tuners on it, a new bridge pin and installed electronics. That required some hole drilling and in the process I discovered the same system of bracing that violin makers came up with in the 1700s to counter act the string pressure on the thin wooden top is actually in use on this guitar. See consistent manufacturing process. 

Needless to say some of the holes I drilled turned out to be exploratory holes because of brace placement and I drilled other holes and considered leaving the original holes and calling them tone holes to spin the holes in my guitar construction knowledge but decided that like the magic smoke that exists in old tube amps (which I have mistakenly let out before) these old guitar holes needed to be covered to keep in the cosmic debris that probably lives inside. 

I filled some holes by gluing colorful beads over them and others I covered by attaching Mardi Gras doubloons picked up off the streets after the seasonal parades in southern cities where sin, repent, sin more is a lifestyle and a personal jigsaw puzzle that only yourself can know how to put together. Tone secured.

 I'm not sure how secure the tone is in your nice guitar but I'll send Cullen over to see about it. He will wonder why you don't have beads and doubloons. 

You've heard of that 10,000 hour rule by now. Spend 10,000 hours with the guitar and you can probably play something in G#. I actually wrote a song in the key of E, namedropped bluesman Jimmy Reed in it and used a G# chord in the progression. That might be a blues sin but I'll probably do it again.