Dread nought!

Washburn WD10SCE

I've had a guitar of one sort or another since I was a teenager. In order to get one, I had to promise my academically-orientated parents that I would "never join a group". Perhaps that parental injunction induced a lifelong musical inhibition. Anyway, the guitar has just been a bedroom instrument and I've never publicly performed with it as far as I can remember.

The guitar was my first serious instrument, but I didn't give it the time that I was later to put into the concertina and mandolin. I'm not backtracking (yet) on my preference for playing the mandolin, but I decided that I wanted to be able to perform in more varied ways and the guitar was an obvious option given my long if undeveloped association with it.

My last guitar developed a warped neck which made it harder to play than my mandolin. I therefore decided to replace it with a Washburn WD10SCE Electro Acoustic Dreadnought Guitar which is remarkably good value. Although I perform acoustic music I wanted a model with an electric pickup owing to the decline of folk clubs and the growing ubiquity of open mic sessions.

I got the guitar just after Christmas and began to work up some songs - two traditional folk songs I've dabbled with over the years and a well-known Blues number I first started to learn but never pursued almost fifty years ago! After nine days of attempting to refresh my skills, I played all three songs at the Orpy practice session - the first public appearance with a guitar of my whole life! Whilst the songs are all at an early stage of development, the performance went better than I expected and I received some valuable advice and encouragement.