Guitar Quality

Thanks guys! I picked up the supposed connection between the Harmonic Minor and five note Japanese scale in an instructional video. I spent a couple of days trying to get five good notes out of it in JI. I guess it is not my imagination. It is not an easy scale. Not easy translates into, ¨I´m going to be one of the people that avoids this scale,¨ as far as I am concerned.

On the lighter side, I´m probably going to be going to Paracho Mexico this summer. I just found out we can´t get reservations for a cabin later this month. Paracho is on the west coast, up in the mountains a little bit north of Acapulco. The whole town is a
street fair of acoustic guitars for sale. The price is great, the selection is incredible. The problem is spotting a
quality product or getting lucky. I suppose the easy answer would
be to just ask my son. I´m thinking about picking up a guitar with no
frets, so I can add my own. Guitars are the most popular and the cheapest instrument sold in Mexico. You can pretty much buy musical instruments mail order from the US and pay 17% tax and postage to get the same price as you pay in a Mexican music store. The only rap against Paracho guitars is that it is very cold at times in the mountains, and it is always humid. Working with wood in humid conditions isn´t the best of possible environments.

We have two guitars and a mandolin in our house. The guitars are a Hohner and Ibanez. I´m pretty satisfied with the quality, even though they are both made in China. The mandolin was hand made in Paracho and is not great. To look and touch the mandolin, it is a true work of art. It doesn´t sound that good. I have to put new strings on it, which is probably going to do the trick.

OK, you were expecting a question here! I was tuning my son´s guitar last night and discovered that I could sound all six strings by knocking on any part of the guitar. The higher pitched strings are the hardest to sound. It occured to me that this is a good way to test the quality of a guitar since the vibrating strings interact with the body of the guitar. What do you think?

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