[R-390] Re: depot dawg

[Scott Bauer]

 Has any body seen Willie Nelsons guitar? The same
 one he has been playing for decades. That is a site :-)

 Scott


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "mikea" <mikea at mikea.ath.cx>
To: <r-390 at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2005 7:47 PM
Subject: Re: [R-390] Re: depot dawg


> On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 04:31:05PM -0700, W. Li wrote:
>> Well, this has been quite a discussion! One of my
>> R-390A's is also an "old soldier" with that half moon
>> rubbing above the KC knob. Although, like Corvette
>> collectors, who look for all matching serial numbers,
>> chances are that if you get such an animal in a
>> R390(a) it never worked to begin with, or was never
>> deployed and sat in a warehouse somewhere... In any
>> case, all I ever wanted was a functional unit free of
>> dirt, grime, and biological crud. I count myself lucky
>> to have found three such examples, and they all
>> operate identically. This is a great hobby.
>
> And this brings up something I've noticed in another of my 
> passio^Whobbies:
> the good stuff gets used to death, while the trash survives.
>
> In the field of historical musical instruments, the survivors from more
> than ~250-300 years back are in many cases presentation pieces made to
> look good, rather than _good_ instruments. My last visit to the Victoria
> and Albert Museum's musical instrument collection reinforced this
> ipression: hardly any of the instruments in good condition was built for
> any purpose other than appearance; they're much more like mockups of real
> instruments than they are real instruments themselves. I mean, an _ivory_
> lute, a guitar with back and sides done in large-piece inlay, and so on.
>
> In contrast, the obviously-built-to-be-played instruments are in really 
> bad
> shape, even _ratty_ shape, and I contend it's because they got loved --  
> and
> played -- to death.
>
> Modern examples abound: Andrés Segovia _wore out_ at least three guitars,
> if I recall correctly, in his 60-year career of concertizing. I've worn
> out one myself, and the 37-year-old instrument I love and play is showing
> some signs of ill health and weakness -- not from abuse, but from normal
> use.
>
> The old radios probably show the same sort of thing, although glass and
> metal have intrinsically-longer lifetimes than wood and varnish.
>
>          "Buy it new,
>          Use it up,
>           Make it do,
>          Do without",
>
> as the old New-England adage goes. We're at stage three right now with 
> many
> of these wonderful creatures. It'll be sad when we're in stage four.
>
> -- 
> Mike Andrews, W5EGO
> mikea at mikea.ath.cx
> Tired old sysadmin
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