![\"reception\"](\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20150509015117\/http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/reception.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nI\u2019ve had only one guitar since college.\u00a0 My roommate Alan Behn sold me his Eko when I was a freshman (1973) and he taught me a basic fingerpicking pattern for folk music.\u00a0 I had been a rock & roller and had an old Gibson Melody Maker, which wasn\u2019t useful to me any more.\u00a0 I paid $50 for the Eko and sold the Gibson for $50 to a friend in Houston.\u00a0 I considered it an even swap.\u00a0 You should search for \u201cgibson melody maker\u201d on eBay now.\u00a0\u00a0\ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Eko Ranger VI<\/a> is built like a locomotive. It weighs a lot more than today\u2019s guitars and is probably harder to destroy. Modern instruments sound better, though. The finish on mine has cracked a lot through the decades, so it\u2019s fairly ugly when you catch it in the light just right. The pick guard had warped and fallen off years ago and my kids got tired of looking at the old glue (daughter said she thought it was jelly when she was a child) and they snuck it to a tech and had a new pick guard made for it one Christmas. Another Christmas my wife bought a decent case to replace my pasteboard one that had been ruined since traveling with a drama ministry<\/a> in 1975. The thing has purtnere been through the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bridge plate<\/a> has been trash for years. Half of the strings were held in by passing numerous safety pins through the ball ends and then feeding the string up from inside the body. (Safety pins are made of hard, somewhat inflexible steel.) The bridge itself had various shims here and there, elevating the saddle and keeping it propped in a more-or-less vertical orientation. This probably contributed to the bridge cracking yesterday \u2014 it just split at the two ends of the saddle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve had the bridge unglued and reinstalled before and it\u2019s just too much trouble to go through again for an instrument that\u2019s on life support already. So now I\u2019m in the market for another guitar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Eko never gave up in the forty years I\u2019ve played it. The top stayed flat; the neck stayed straight; the rosewood fingerboard still looks good; the tone stayed true; the finish (albeit cracked) still shines like new, despite decades of travel and performing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If someone wanted to repair and refinish this guitar, there\u2019s no telling how many decades of life it still has. But a guy like me has no business investing the requisite hours and dollars to curate an artifact from the \u201970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks, Eko; it\u2019s been great. I don\u2019t wanna see you go, but you\u2019d better go now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My Eko (\u201ceeko\u201d) breathed its last yesterday. I\u2019ve had only one guitar since college.\u00a0 My roommate Alan Behn sold me his Eko when I was a freshman (1973) and he taught me a basic fingerpicking pattern for folk music.\u00a0 I had been a rock & roller and had an old Gibson Melody Maker, which wasn\u2019t … Continue reading “Requiem for an Old Guitar”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p45dxY-5T","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}