Richard Jernigan -> RE: Gilbert Tuning Machines (Mar. 5 2018 6:59:50)
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One of my all time favorite scenes in a movie is in "MacArthur." Truman has called MacArthur to Honolulu to chew him out for insubordination. MacArthur shows up late, chauffeured in a brilliant red Buick convertible. They go into this big hangar to talk. After they sit down at the table MacArthur gets out his corn cob pipe and says, "Mr. President, may I smoke?" Truman replies, "Go right ahead General, I've probably had more smoke blown in my face than any other man on earth." But when I was a kid and heard the story from my Dad and his pals, Truman said, "...blown up my butt..." On the whole, I suspected Jose III of actually believing his theories. I didn't think he was intentionally BSing me, even though what he said was pretty much pure baloney. I haven't played a '60s Ramirez 1a in decades. I wonder what I would think now? I bought a cedar/cocobolo classical guitar from Arturo Huipe in Paracho at the end of 2006. I knew that some of the talk he was pitching me had to be BS, but it didn't bother me that much. There's a good deal of smoke and mirrors in that town. As my old buddy Gary R. said about the Balinese, "The truth is not in them." It was the 2nd best guitar I played that day, and I liked Arturo. He was a nice kid. But I ended up not playing the guitar very much. Last year I gave it to the Austin Classical Guitar Society. They lent it to a high school student, who used it to audition for college. In the silent video that played while the audience trickled in for the recent concert by Adam Del Monte and Mak Grgic, there was a clip of a young woman. In the subtitles she said she had passed her audition for the University of Texas Butler School of Music using a guitar ACGS had lent her, then the Society gave it to her. In the video she was holding the Huipe, so I guess it served a useful purpose. James Greenberg of Zavaleta's Casa de Guitarras sold a few Huipes several years ago. He gave me an appraisal for nearly twice what I paid for mine in 2006, so my income tax charitable deduction made up for about 3/4 of the price. The other guitar I bought in Paracho was a spruce/Brazilian from Abel Garcia, which I ordered the next day, and waited nearly two years for. Garcia and I talked about guitars in general and the one I ordered for more than an hour. I believe every word he said was the gospel truth. I had independent verification for much of it. It's one of the two classicals I play the most. I bought the Arcangel Fernandez blanca from a dealer who was giving off strong indications of going broke. I was living in the Marshall Islands and he wouldn't ship it to me on approval. Cash on the barrelhead, or no deal. I asked Richard Brune if he would appraise it. He said yes, but he had experienced issues with the dealer in the past, so things might or might not go smoothly. The dealer said Brian Cohen, the highly reputable British maker and dealer had gotten the Arcangel is a 3-guitar deal from a collector. I called up Cohen, who verified a fairly similar story. Cohen asked me whether I was satisfied with the dealer's financial condition. I said no, but I was planning to have Brune appraise the guitar. Cohen said he thought that was a good choice. I finally persuaded the dealer to ship the guitar to Brune (I paid). Brune said it was authentic, and in absolutely mint, unplayed condition. The dealer accepted about 5% less than Brune's appraisal. I had Brune pack it and ship it. When I took the guitar out of its case, tuned it up and played an E-major chord, it knocked my socks off. I have loved it ever since. The dealer did go broke fairly soon afterward. Several years later he still hadn't managed to sell the Cohen copy of Torres's ornate masterpiece FE08. I spent 43 years in a very competitive business. I don't have to trust a person I do business with if I can arrange adequate safeguards. When I do trust someone, I employ Ronald Reagan's maxim about dealing with the Soviets, "Trust, but verfify." RNJ (To be clear, I disagreed strongly with Reagan's social and fiscal policies, and I thought the Iran-Contra business was crooked as a snake's back, and conducted with astonishing amateurism, but I respected and admired Reagan's and Secretary of State George Schultz's negotiations with Gorbachev and Schevardnadze, in the face of strong and vocal opposition from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and CIA Director James Casey, negotiations which eventually contributed to the end of the Soviet Union.) Torres FE08 (or maybe a copy):
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