My Baby's Back

I started playing guitar about 20 years ago, in early 1989. My first guitar was a rented Squier Stratocaster that my mom leased from the local old school guitar shop in the Congressional Mini-Mall on Rockville Pike. (I had my first date at the movie theater at the same mini-mall that same year. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, with Heidi B. Good times.)

Once it was established that guitar wasn't going the way of my lessons on piano, trumpet and violin, we returned the Strat and bought my first real guitar, the Yamaha RGX-211M.


I don't know what drew me to it, but I'll assume it was the LOOK! I'M YELLOW! finish, and the fact that it had 24 frets. That seemed like a big deal to me at the time.

I played this bad boy all through high school, surviving lots of practices in Mr. Emily's basement and an assortment of live shows throughout the Rockville, MD metro area. This was my main axe for years. It was five years before I bought another electric guitar (an old Vox teardrop model that I don't have anymore). I was gifted my Les Paul in about 1998, and the then-beat-to-hell Yamaha languished in my parents' basement, untouched.

Last winter, I flew it back to Wisconsin with me, discovered it didn't work anymore, and let it languish for another few months.

But I've now taken it in for repairs, found it was a super minor fix (cleaning off some pot contacts) and now my yellow beauty is back home with me.

I'd done at lot of weird experiments with this beast... my favorite was replacing the standard neck pickup with this weird monster thing I bought at a parts clearance sale at Veneman Music for 5 cents. My grandfather helped me out with some of the soldering. It's got a nice distinctive sound, more like a Telecaster than a Strat knockoff. And a nice Floyd Rose setup.



Somewhere along the line, I lost the rear panel, but some corrugated cardboard did the trick.

I'm looking forward to working this back into the rotation. The band is playing at Mojo's in Waunakee on July 19th, come on by and watch it in action!