Wednesday, January 01, 2020

They Had Me at "$4.95 -- As Is"

A guitar for less than $5 is pretty much an automatic buy for me. Even if the instrument turns out to be useless, I can pull the tuners and nut off and use them on a cigar box build or whatever.

So here's the Sonny brand "Best Rhythmic Guitar Model 330":


It's about the size of a tenor ukulele. Cheap enough that there's no truss rod. Notes true to the 12th fret, but a little bit of fret buzz at the top end.

The set of Ernie Ball nylon strings I put on it cost a dollar more than the guitar itself (the single string on it when I bought it was mounted classical "loop" style, but I bought ball-ends). That's OK. I'll get $11 worth of fun out of playing it for a little bit, then maybe hand it off to a kid who looks like she needs a guitar.

As a bonus, Tamara fell in love with, and bought, her second ukulele (I bought her an Alvarez Grateful Dead model a year or two ago) when I dragged her into Guitar Center to buy the strings. It was on clearance -- a Recording King soprano uke in colors matching my Recording King Dirty 30s parlor guitar. Huzzah!

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