The Hobby That Took Over My Basement

I grew up in a tiny little village in the southwestern Ontario snowbelt, situated on a ribbon of highway that connected the US with distributing and manufacturing up here in Canada. There was a lot of traffic up and down that highway and I had fairly progressive parents so there were often people sleeping on the couches or in tents and we would feed and entertain them. It might be a passing motorcycle club that dad would invite to park their bikes and pitch their tents in the abandoned church yard next door or the occupants of a stranded school bus, we would open our door and our hearth and in they would come. My dad was a flatpicker and my mom sang and there were other locals that played as well so we would hold “kitchen dances” and often our frequent visitors would have musical instruments with them as well. It was a whole lot of fun and obviously, I couldn’t help but become interested in music too. My mom got me a guitar and I had lessons for a couple of years but didn’t really take it very far. Eventually I would learn to play harmonica and sing and the guitar went into the closet as tends to often happen with these things and I didn’t really give it a second thought. I moved north and would be involved in the music industry and performing in bands for several years and enjoyed reasonable success regionally. Life happens and a wife, two kids and several jobs later, I had reached the point where I got together with the most popular of the bands I sang with for a reunion performance from time to time and went to jam with friends at the local pub now and then. Then one day my dad contacts me and asks me to come visit. I go to see him and he explains that he is dying and he wants to pass on his “baby” to me, a 1962 Gibson Hummingbird. My father was a salesman who could wheel and deal like you wouldn’t believe. He basically lived the life you see on the “picker” shows these days and although he mostly dealt in tools and machinery, he also bought and sold musical instruments because he had some knowledge of them and could make a buck. He didn’t just give me his “baby”, he also gave me an old drum set, a handful of guitars and a few other assorted instruments and told me I could do with them as I pleased, so long as I keep the Hummingbird to pass on to a suitable person in the family. Well… I decided that I was going to use this small part of dad’s legacy to learn how to play finally and as time went by, how to do my own repairs as well. It has slowly spidered out into other parts of the basement, growing and sprawling until at this point, there are more than 20 instruments in various playability now in my home… So now I want to share some of the knowledge I have accumulated over the last couple of years, some of my experiences shopping for parts and tools, the history of some of the manufacturers and where I have found good and entertaining lessons online. Keep in mind, I’ve only been doing this a couple of years in my spare time so I am not about to work on a family heirloom Gibson or Martin… and I would suggest you shouldn’t either. Much of what I am doing will be with not so valuable instruments that already have a problem and some of what I do might be unconventional and not a good idea if the instrument in question is valuable. So come along for the ride, I want to hear from you of course, let’s share information too because I am far from the last authority on the subjects I will be discussing, and of course, there may be things you are curious about that I haven’t got to yet. Bear with me, I may be a little sporadic with the timing of my posts as I have other responsibilities, but I hope to be able to make this a good resource for the home hobbyist and the curious.