A Wierd Feeling

[mandopete]

My wife and I watched the movie The Red Violin last night and I brought up the notion of how wierd it seems to me to play or own an instrument that was previously owned by a virtouso musician. #I don't know why it is, but I would feel ridiculous if I was trying to play say John Reischman's mandolin (yeah, like that would happen).

Is it just because of the previous owner's notoriety or is there something else? #Am I crazy? #My wife thought this was absurd, but I have always felt this way and I found it difficult to explain.

Anyone else have this notion?

[Ken Sager]

Nope. I don't have that notion. If I couldn't play the instrument at all it would be weird. One thing for sure, buying that type of instrument you'd know that any limitations would be in the new owner, not the instrument itself.

[AlanN]

Dunno. I have played both JR's Loar and CT's Dude. I survived to tell the tale.

[PaulD]

I would get self-conscious, wondering whether the instrument was comparing my playing to its previous master's. My understanding is that most instrument psychologists believe that instruments are not that judgemental. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

pd

[straight-a]

Hey, If I could own Big Mon's Loar, I wouldn't have a bit of trouble playing it. (Well, maybe after I lowered the action http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/rock.gif )

[farmerjones]

Jethro's mando is so full of tunes a normal guy couldn't lift it.

Only relating to violins because there were so many of them, but my luthier friend has set up several violins well over a hundred years old, and to hear a voice that's been silent for over a century is touching. That first note may not be crisp but it's the first anybody has heard for over a hundred years. Makes me feel very mortal and insignificant.

FJ

[Jim MacDaniel]

I believe I would enjoy playing an instrument like that with a storied past and major mojo.


What I might feel more funny about, is playing an instrument that set me back five figures or more, second guessing that my playing might not be worthy of such a large expenditure. (OK -- knowing that my playing was not worthy. #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif )

[Mando Medic]

Pete, That is a great movie and now you need to find a book called Antonietta, by John Hersey. It's the Red Violin, but better. I have for years been able to play instruments from famous and not so famous people and I have always felt it a humbling experience. I remember many years ago, a friend of a friend was touring playing the (sp) Sassole Strad that was on loan to her from the Mehnuhin collection. When he introduced me to her, Christina Edinger, she handed me her Strad and said, oh I'd love to hear you play it. Sheesh! I played Over The Waterfall on it and said, "You know, if you moved that soundpost around a little and put fine tuners on all the strings, this would be a great fiddle." I'm told that she never forgot that introduction and neither have I. A humbling experience for sure. Kenc

[JEStanek]

I don't know if I would have the weird feeling you're describing. Part of the alure, for me at least, in purchasing a vintage Gibson A-oval, is in knowing it has a history (even if I don't know what it is exactly).

Kinda like getting Grand Dad's pocket knife. Now if it was a possesed mando painted in human blood.... That's a different matter.

Pete, could you smack Gene Frenkels cowbell... if he/it existed.

Jamie

[olgraypat]

Humbling and awe-inspiring are maybe my feelings. I recently attended a Dry Branch Fire Squad concert, and while we were walking along the street, saw one of the band members tuning a mandolin. Since I couldn't help myself, I walked over, struck up a conversation, and found out that he was tuning the mandolin that Bill Monroe played while Charlie Derrington was working on Bill's famously smashed mandolin. He had just gotten it from Charlie, who had passed away only a few days before. I was too awed to ask to hold it but he graciously offered, and now I have a picture of myself with that great instrument. That's been over a month ago, and I still get goose bumps just thinking about it.

[mandopete]

Yeah, I guess this thing is a combination of "what if someone in the audience knew..." and just a wierd sort of gut feeling. It sure isn't anything that's scientific, but I know that different people will get a vastly different sound out of the same instrument (listen to Tone Poets).

But it's just that wierd feeling, I don't know how to describe it. Sounds like I'm the only one here who has it, maybe I need therapy....

http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wow.gif

[delsbrother]

I definitely get those kind of feelings. Sometimes it stems from insecurity ("I'm not worthy"). I felt that way the first (and only) time I chunked on a Loar before hastily handing it back to its owner..

Knowing a little bit about music/history sometimes makes me queasy handling old instruments as well.. For example, I've been doing a lot of research on influential players and luthiers from the beginning of the last century.. But I have a pretty good idea I would not have been welcome in their homes when they were alive (because of my race). Of course I can't be sure of that; it's hard to judge people by the customs of the day.. But in any case it makes me a little less easy about playing period instruments. I don't expect any of you to understand this, and I realize it's irrational. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

I circumvent this by buying/playing new instruments, commissioning replicas.. and collecting bizarre emandos. #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Jack Roberts]

I have two used mandolins, both owned by (now late) professional musicians. If they could speak, I am sure they would both be saying "O! From what lofty heights I have fallen."

[Keith Erickson]

...Anyone else have this notion?
Mandopete,

My other hobby is collecting curio & relic firearms. #I just so happen to own and regularly shoot 2 Mausers G98 rifles. #Both have seen action on the battlefield during the 1st World War in Europe.

Sometimes when I am out on the range practicing, I stop to think about that scared soldier using the rifle and was just trying to stay alive or those poor chaps that were on the receiving end of the rifle. #That's a strange feeling that spooks me sometimes.... # # ...enough said on that subject.

As for those antique mandolins with history; that wouldn't affect me in the negative to say the least. #If I just so happen to have the opportunity to touch Monroe's Loar, I would probably break out into the "Battle of Evermore".

Knowing that I'm not the best mandolin player in the world doesn't bother me. #I've been playing musical instruments for at least 25 years. #It hasn't been until I started to play the mandolin that I could really appreciate these fine instruments. #If I happen to come in contact with a mando with history, I would embrace it and want to know more about it. #I would also have come to this board and maybe bragged a little that I just so happened to have touched history.

[JonT]

"The Red Violin" is just a wonderful piece of filmmaking, isn't it? I'm not big into DVDs and such, but my library includes that one, and also "Amadeus" and "Immortal Beloved," this latter being the story of Beethoven. Great stuff, all of them. (Yep, of course there are some 'grassy DVDs too, but I do love the classic works.)

But on this business of pre-owned instruments - Neil Young says it pretty well on his "Prairie Wind" record - a pretty good record, by the way.

He's got a tune there called "This Old Guitar," written about an instrument, a D-28, he says he bought from the family of Hank Williams after Hank merged with the universe.

The lead line goes, "This old guitar ain't mine to keep...."
And that's the way it is with these instruments. All of them.

Yes, and Tony Rice sings about this too, in the tune, "Me and My Guitar."

The best of them, from the good, mid-level instruments on up to the cream of the crop, will outlive us all by many generations - and for a look at this wonderful phenomenon, read "Stradivari's Genius," a terrific book that follows the stories of six Strads from their construction to the present day, including one, never played, that remains in as-new condition in its display case in, I think, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

As it goes for these fiddles, violi and chelli, why not for our beloved mandolins, guitars and banjos?

I mean, first of all, they're pretty much infinately repairable. Second, their knees and hearts don't wear out, they don't catch pneumonia or cancer and if cared for, they never, ever, lose their voices.

For myself, I take more than a little pride in owning several instruments that I've not bought new. These include an incredible old S.S. Stewart 5-string that has a four-digit serial number, indicating, as far as I can tell, that it was built prior to 1880 (it's an exact and very ornate twin of the instrument shown on the first two Kingston Trio album covers, for those of you of a certain age); a Vega long-neck with a 1926 pot...and several others.

So there can be some serious history involved.

And here's something else. My dearest and oldest pal passed a few weeks ago. Following his memorial service, his wife, whom I've known since college, gave me his favorite and much-loved banjo. I took it with tears in my eyes because I'm sure it retains Hal's considerable mojo. Pre-owned for sure.

But beyond the emotional qualities, these things can possess, there also can be a level of economy that allows us to obtain instruments used that we might not be able to afford new. Over the course of the last 10 years or so, I've bought a Stelling Staghorn used from Elderly, a Santa Cruz 12-fret Dread used from McCabe's and a Tom Anderson Droptop Classic (this latter being, horrors, a pretty cool 'lektrik git-tar) used from a shop here in SoCal called Traditional Music, now defunct. In all three cases, I paid between half and two-thirds of what the retail/new price would have been, and in each case ended up with a pristine, killer instrument. Well, okay, the Santa Cruz came to me pre-dinged, but that just saved me from having to endure that dreaded first ding. I would not have spent the money it would have cost to purchase any of these instruments new.

And the thing is, you can't wear them out, not really. When really fine musicians come to the house I joke that they better not play all the music out of my durned instruments. But the reality is, the more they are played, the better they get.

So pre-owned instruments? Man, if you can find a good one, and it's for sale and it speaks to you, I'd counsel that you go for it. I certainly have/would again. But that's just me.

Peace - Jon

[plunkett5]

If you like The Red Violin, read Accordian Crimes by Annie Proulx. Better treatment of the same idea, and a fine feel for music and musicians.

[Mando-Loon]

I think if I were to play an instrument owned by a virtuoso musician, I would feel lucky, proud and quite happy. The instrument would probably be of good quality, set up well and broken in nicely. Clapton's "Blackie" Strat I could maybe do justice to. Not that I'm as good as he on guitar but I'm not too shabby. Bill Munroe's Loar wouldn't fare the same however...

Robbie

[John Flynn]

most instrument psychologists believe that instruments are not that judgemental
Instrument psychologists! LOL! That's a good one. It reminds me of that pet psychologist who was on TV. I can see a mando laying on a couch, with the doc asking, "So why do YOU think you don't stay in tune?" http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[swampstomper]

I used to be in band with where our b**joist had 1/2 of the instrument Rudy Lyle played on Rawhide, Uncle Pen etc. (Can't remember if it was the neck or pot -- someone had split the two parts, he had gotten it from Roger Sprung). Of course we always insisted that he play Rawhide "just like Rudy". It was pretty cool to be standing next to the actual (1/2) instrument that had recorded the original, as I tried to coax some tone out of my late 70's Ibanez...

[Ivan Kelsall]

To me the ultimate experience would be to own an instrument previously owned by a renowned player.I already strive to be my best on my new Mandolin,but to have say, Big Mon's Loar( It'll never happen for anyone) - but how hard would that make you try to be your best ?.I'd retire from work just to get the hours of practice in,
Saska

[fiddle5]

I have no problem having a pre-owned instrument, but I'm really not into collectors value, I'd buy it cause it plays well. If the instrument was played often, it should play much better than a new one. Instruments that sit for extended periods of time have to go through a break-in period again. This is especially true with violins. A violin that has sat for 50 years un-played, may take a number of years to reach back up to its previous potential and response. I care more about how it sounds now, than who has actually owned it. I have a few instruments that play quite well, I wonder who will own and play them when I'm gone?

As for the movie "the Red Violin", its complete fiction, but it sure gave me some ideas about how to electronically test an accoustic instrument. Our engineering shop has a complete sound lab to duplicate some of the process. At one time I was scientifically proving which strings were better, and how long they last, at least for violin anyway. Bored of it now, but was fun at the time.

mike