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My First Guitar

My parents bought me my first guitar in the late 1970′s. A Franciscan Nylon String Classical guitar which I still have to this day.

I initially took group lessons with my Mom and we shared the guitar, and I used it on stage for some Elementary school functions. This guitar followed us from Walnut Creek, Ca, to Kaneohe, Hawaii, to Coral Springs, Florida, and back to the Bay Area of California. I used it for most of my lessons with my second guitar teacher, Bruce Hock in Danville, Ca. I left it at home when I was stationed in the Philippines however. When I returned from overseas, it came with me to Abiline Texas, then back to Dublin Ca, then to Livermore Ca. I have used it for recordings and performances including playing at my brothers wedding (where the above picture was taken of my youngest son Jake staring at the guitar) and have written many songs on it, including this one from 1985/1986 called Riverflow.

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Air Force Days

For my High School Graduation gift, my parents bought me this:

a black 1986 Takamine EF341. I loved it and took it to the Philippines, Clark AB with me in 1989

I put a lot of miles on that guitar. While I was there, I bought a few other guitars:

and it was in the Philippines that I truly started to practice, like for 6, 8 or 12 hours at a time. I learned so much during that two year period from 1989-1991. Mainly playing on my days off from being a Crew Chief on C-130 and C-141 aircraft. In 1991, I was transfered to Dyess AFB, Abiline TX, where I bought this Martin Acoustic Bass:

but before I left to come back to California, I sold everything but my first Nylon String guitar and the Acoustic Bass from the Philippines.

but the other thing that I wound up with was a four track recording machine and microphones. I was already doing a lot of songwriting and now I was doing multi-track recording.

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Betsy

By 1992 I was out of the Air Force, back home in California, working at the Livermore Airport, engaged to Tina, and living in a little apartment in Dublin, Ca. It was an exciting time of many changes and I was also taking lessons again. Around that time, Gibson had started remaking the J160E which is the guitar that Beatles John and George played. As a present, Tina bought me one (which she also took the liberty of naming for me, "Betsy"). She said afterwards it would be the last instrument she would ever buy for me again. She said she realized that what she had done was not just bought me a guitar, she had bought me a girlfriend. Its been decades at this point and she has kept to her promise. The Gibson J160E was a sweet beautiful tank bomber of a guitar. Big heavy loud and booming. I loved it. I kept the stock .013 gauge strings on it (thats pretty thick strings) and my forearms and hands suffered for it, over time. I wrote many songs on that guitar and it was the guitar I played when I first started playing coffee houses around 1995 or so.

Here is a clip of my friend Brian and I playing at the first coffee house I ever played at, Virtues of Coffee in Livermore, with the Gibson plugged in thru the P-90 pickup.

I played that Gibson for years until the neck warped up by the body. I had it repaired and sold it and my Black Rickenbacker 360 to a Beatle fan. I don’t have a good acoustic video of the Gibson so you’ll have to trust me that nothing else has the sonic chunky wallop of a Jumbo Gibson.

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Between Betsy & Colette

After I sold my Gibson J160e but before I bought the Breedlove, I cycled thru quite a few guitars looking for my next performance axe, most notable was a Classical Nylon string with a cutaway by Takamine, the CD132SC:

This guitar was a strong contender but there are just some things you cant do without steel strings.

However, stuff like James Taylor’s Fire & Rain turn out nicely:

I also tried the Godin Mutiac AC, another nylon string guitar, great feel but still same result as the Takamine. Next was the Parker Fly (like the Godin Multiac, I do not have a pic) which was interesting because it had an acoustic pickup and electric pickups which you could run in stereo, but it was super uncomfortable to play with the upper horn of the body poking you in the chest. Check out some of this:

The Fender DG 10-12 twelve string seemed to work pretty well, but after awhile I missed the feel of just 6 strings:

This song turned out pretty well tho...

and this one turned out ok as well, plus a view of the inside of my old shoebox studio in my garage.

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Colette

The most amazing guitars I've ever played were Breedlove Guitars. Simply put, it was the acoustic sound nirvana I could hear in my head but never could quite get from a guitar. Until I played a Breedlove. It took years to be able to afford one. By 2002 I ordered a Breedlove C25R custom and everything else took a back seat.

It's not a guitar that is universally embraced. It's unusual truss rod system and bracing do not fit everyone's style, but it sure fit mine at the time. After using the Gibson J160E as my main guitar for years, switching to a smaller light body guitar like this was like removing the chains. I did an entire albums worth of songs in 2004 because I was so inspired by this guitar, here is one of them called, Wyoming (audio only):

From 2014, my original song, “Hold Hands with The Devil”

Lastly, here is the last video I did with the Breedlove in late 2016 before I sold this guitar, playing one of my originals, A Heart without your Love.

So why would I sell the guitar that I describe as my nirvana shamba-la of sound? Well physically I started to hurt when I would play anything but a classical size body (like my first guitar). It didn't happen overnight but gradually I started to feel uncomfortable and then "in pain" after playing a larger guitar. My shoulders especially ached from reaching over the high deep body with my right arm and reaching out and under the long neck with my left hand. So in 2014 I bought a 12 fret guitar called a Shorty from Rainsong. It uses a classical size body, a shorter scale neck, and has a cutaway. I can play again for hours like when I was a teen with no discomfort. Additionally it is made of carbon fiber, not wood, so there are no more worries about temperature and humidity. 

It was kinda sad to let the Breedlove go, but things change. I found a guy who had the 12 string version from the same year who was looking to buy my 6 string version. The Breedlove was a work of art. Enjoy the pix!

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Martin Guitars

Martin Guitars. What can I say? One of those iconic brands that just have that allure for all of us guitarists at some point. I've played a number of these guitars and always wanted a big Martin Dreadnought to explore. In the late 90's/early 2000's Martin introduced the Road Series which was USA made, stripped down, less expensive models of their top of the line icons and I was able to get a used one for about 400 bucks. I named this one Grizz because the top looked a little gnarly.

The D stands for DreadNought (named after an old big navy ship) and the M stands for Mahogany wood top. Not having had a full size acoustic since the Gibson J160, I had forgotten how big these things were compared to my little Breedlove. It was useful to have a full bodied guitar again for recordings etc but I could see where I was headed. Smaller and cheaper was definitely my direction, I just didn't know where it was all going to lead just yet. I used Martin SP .012 Phosphor Bronze strings for this guitar.

I ended up installing a LR BAGGS pickup system in it. I used the iMix system which combined the dual source of the Element undersaddle piezo with the iBeam bridge plate pickup. My plan at the time was to use this as a stage guitar but that never panned out. 

In the meantime I did a bunch of recordings with this one and videos. Here is where a big body Martin can really shine, with a bit of Bluegrass. This is a video of me on the DM playing my only bluegrass style song, Lowdown & Lonesome https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xt2KsVrTV4

Another Martin I owned for awhile was the Martin Backpacker:

I did a cover of Willie Nelson’s song, Remember Me:

plus this review:

Then there was Grandpa:

So I found Grandpa hanging from the ceiling in a music shop in the Philippines. They did not have it tuned up because if you did, the neck sunk into the body. It was basically unplayable. It had a Martin logo silk screened on the head stock but it was not a Martin. I would tell people it was a 68 Martin Acoustic Bass and they would believe me ha but really it was a Faux-Martin. I bought it despite the fact that you couldn’t really tune it up. Then one day this happened:

So the story with the broken guitar. I left my dorm room door in the Philippines unlocked by mistake and three drunk friends came running into my darkened room while I was sleeping. The first guy accidentally knocked over the Martin Acoustic Bass copy and the other two guys stepped right on top of it, breaking it to pieces. I glued it back together as best I could and amazingly it worked. It wouldn't be till I got back to the states and found a good luthier who could really repair it better for me, but if they hadn't broke the guitar, I never would've wound up with such a playable instrument because truth be told, before the accident, it never was able to tune up to pitch.

This is my original song, Say It Aint So where I use Grandpa...

I didn’t ever sell this guitar,  I gave it to my godson, Ryan who is a fantastic bassist.

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Rizzo, Riggie, Meredith & Kojak

Rizzo (sometimes I called him Woody) was my Regal Dobro RD40M guitar.

It was a round neck, mahogany body, spyder resonator style guitar. What a sound this thing had! A vibrant biting snarl of a sound. Because it was SO distinct I only used it on a few recordings.

One was this video version of my original instrumental called Brett's Boogie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L27uPFiN-Po

Riggie was a travel banjo that gave me a chance to explore how to play a banjo which I had a lot of fun with.

I used it for my recording of Lowdown & Lonesome off of the Tales of the Bed Yam CD and I also used it on this video of Steve Miller's The Joker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1hN3Kq2JpA

Meredith was my solid top mandolin.

I used this mandolin on a number of recordings but only one video that I could find, this cover of Bodhi Jones’ “Fifth Floor”

and lastly was Kojak, my all metal RC-2 Regal Duolian Resonator:

what a complete beast this thing was. Such a heavy body being all metal it would try to slide off your lap, but what a sound. I used it for an entire set of cover songs here:

Also, check it out during the solo section at about a minute and a half in...

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Electric Guitars

Before I settled on the Godin Archtop as my only electric,

I went through a long string of different electrics, starting with an SRV (Stevie Ray Vaughan) Strat, which I didn’t keep very long, trading it in for a cheap strat copy and a Tascam 488 recording console.

Although the Strat was interesting, I quickly found myself searching for other tones. I tried a Black Rickenbacker 360 and a Parker Fly, neither of which do I have any great pictures of, as both were sold fairly soon after purchasing. Then I bought a Gretsch 6117 from 1959 which I detail here in another post. Although the Gretsch was completely cool, I regretted selling my Black Rickenbacker, a mid 90's model. so I eventually bought the same guitar in a natural finish (Amber). The Rik has a similar chime to a Gretsch but slightly more sophisticated, more tame. The Gretsch tends to be a bit more raucous and raw.

which worked really well in this original song of mine:

And I also went a little crazy over Fender Telecasters, Kinman pickups, Fishman bridges, and Fender Pro Juniors...

Hawkeye:

Old Smokey:

and amps...

Not pictured is a Tech 21 60 watt and a Fender 65 Deluxe Reverb Reissue, plus a couple different bass amps.

These other electrics paraded thru my studio briefly; Vivian, a Loar 309:

Skully, a Gibson VooDoo SG

Julia, an Epiphone Casino in natural Finish (not shown in pic was the John Lennon drawing likeness truss rod cover)

I had a really cool Danelectro Baritone Guitar, which sits sonically inbetween a guitar and bass (Lo-Retta) which is a guitar with a longer scale than a guitar neck but shorter than a bass, so it can play notes lower than a guitar but not as low as a bass. :

and of course a Beatles Bass (Sexy Sadie) and Upright Bass (Elvira)

When I started selling everything, I knew I wanted an economic electric guitar and initially settled on this cheap Korean made version of a Gretsch 5120 in orange finish along with a Fender Vaporizer in surf green. It was one of those guitars I always wanted (in Orange color) but was a little disappointed in that it wasn't as versatile as I had hoped. When it turned out that the neck was a little tweaked beyond repair, I donated the guitar and got the Godin 5th Ave Kingpin II

I used the Gretsch, The Danelectro Baritone (Lo-retta) and the upright Bass (Elvira) along with The Loar LH309VS (Vivian):

for my song, Texas Twist. Its the only recording I have of this Gretsch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeIcFcrDLcA

  Vivian also got used here in this version of Ain’t Misbehavin’:

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My Grandfathers Ukulele

I of course kept my Grandfathers Ukulele when I sold everything else off.

Here is a video of my wife, Tina, and I goofing around...

and the Uke also got used on this original song of mine, “Everyday (I Believe in You)”

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1912 Gibson L-1 / 1959 Gretsch 6117

My two coolest guitars were my only two vintage guitars - one electric, one acoustic. The acoustic one was a 1912 Gibson L-1.

I got it from a bandmate who said it was the guitar his grandmother learned to play on.

He was looking for someone to keep it safe and keep it played. I kept an eye on the cracks (they did not progress), changed the tuners when they wore out to Stew Mac Golden Age Restoration tuners, had help from Frank Ford at Gryphon Strings on how to unstick the bridge from finish (carefully with a thin putty knife) and discovered the strings I like best on this guitar, GHS Vintage Bronze in .012's

Old Tuners stoped working

New tuners installed, they look vintage dont they?

Old Tuners...

New Tuners:

I named this guitar Grandma of course.

Here is a clip of me getting ready for the lead section on Lowdown and Lonesome https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU6E-ovPYOA

and here is a longer video about this guitar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dg0G85sGug

Here are the close ups of the second label added by Grandma...

There was another video I did with this guitar that turned out alright, a cover of Lyle Lovett's She's No Lady https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVctbc1znAs

My coolest electric guitar was my 1959 Gretsch 6117 (Hobbes)

I bought it from the second owners son. He said his father bought it in 1961 and had the Bigsby tremolo added at that time. He used it for gigging with his band for awhile but from then on it pretty much sat in its original case in the closet. I loved the feel and the sound of this guitar. The 6117 was the scaled down version of the 6120, which was the top of the line Chet Atkins type Gretsch. By adding the Bigsby it essentially turned the 6117 into the poor mans version of the 6120, minus only the full bindings package. It was truly a pleasure to have owned and played this guitar.

Video of Brett's Boogie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-9jo_b2bhg

and it also got used throughout this original song I wrote with a friend...

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So many guitars, so little time...

From the first guitar my parents gave me around 1977/78 ...  

to an ever growing collection that populated my 5 successive teaching studios,

finally reaching to between 30-40 instruments by 2015 (not to mention the many that were bought and sold along the way) I was truly fortunate to have owned, played and cared for so many amazing guitars.

I started teaching in 1997 full time from my home. Later I moved into a music store in neighboring Pleasanton California where I stayed until about 2002/2003, followed by getting my own office space of about 400 sq ft in downtown Pleasanton. Check out the sequence of videos I did for each successive studio incarnation: https://youtu.be/2AjJpWZDyig

When the recession hit hard for me in 2008, I started building that little 100 sq ft studio in my garage and shoved all of those guitars in there. Honey I shrank my studio.

I also was fortunate enuf to get my old job back at the Livermore Airport. I no longer need all these guitars because not only am I done teaching, but I also finished my latest CD (Tales of The Bed Yam http://brettallengregory.bandcamp.com/ ) where I was using all of the many voices of these cool guitars.

Before I started selling everything off, I did a couple of videos, the first from 2014 with the studio I built in my garage at pretty much it's peak capacity. My apologies for the low volume https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEFG_TeVX9U

  The second video is here from 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISZiCxbU_tE

showing some good pictures of the main guitars before they were sold and of my current main guitar, the Rainsong Shorty SFT.

The Shorty is an all carbon fiber / graphite body and neck guitar. There is no wood used in its construction. It has a classical (small) body size, a short scale neck and a cutaway to allow access to the higher notes. I added better Gotoh tuners, bridge pins and gave the truss rod cover a prison tattoo.

This guitar fits my life and lifestyle best these days. As a small body and neck guitar its much more comfortable for me to play, as opposed to some of the Jumbo size guitars I used to own, which were starting to give me shoulder pain due to how much I practice and the fact that I am getting older. It is also, due to the nature of being Carbon Fiber, more or less impervious to humidity and temperature changes, so I don't have to worry so much about it like I do with traditional wood guitars. I do still have the first guitar my parents bought me and also an archtop electric guitar - The Godin 5th Ave Kingpin II paired  with the Carvin Vintage 16 amp,

to satisfy my electric guitar needs and function as a semi acoustic backup guitar, and my Beatles Bass and small bass amp,

but truth be told, if I was headed out the door because everything was on fire, I would be grabbing the RainSong on the way out.

You can check out my video playlist of my favorite cover songs being played on the RainSong Shorty here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn6cpZiSRoJfCJv4Y4bRelhXLX6Uq9MSW