When I took the wooden instrument out of the wooden case and strapped it on this wooden body, it felt good—like bread to Frankenstein. Even if you do not play guitar, or play guitar well, there is something about wearing an electric guitar that feels good. Just like sawing a plank of wood can make you feel like your dad, strapping on a properly slung electric guitar can make you feel like a rockstar, if only for a little while. If you don’t believe me, try it. If it doesn’t work, try a bass. If that doesn’t work, you’re probably a drummer…

Strapping it on does feel good, but playing it feels better. And it did. I was able to recapture a tolerable sound and setup with the rig I had been using back when I played, long before the email with those “two and a half words.” I enjoyed what I had to work with simply because I was playing rock ‘n’ roll again. But I kept hitting barriers in my playing that, previously, had been cinches to cross on the last go-round-fall-down-go-splat. Naturally, I figured I was the culprit. I had crossed some line while playing guitar was absent from my life and I couldn’t get back. Foul. I twiddled knobs, made different guitar faces than the ones I usually make, and turned up (turning up is the guitar player’s Swiss Army knife). The problem sounded different, but was still there. I looked at the guitar, I mean really looked at it close up and under good lighting. The bridge pickup and complicated tailpiece looked like a bag of Cheetos had exploded onto them and someone had tried to clean it up with beer. Not good, but a trophy of my years dancing with this lovely woman in delectably seedy bars, arrogant clubs, and dirty festivals.

While I was worried about rust on me as I climbed out of the safe and sterile digital cocoon to rejoin the hellacious grand stink of analog, I never thought about rust on my guitar, my co-conspirator. And it looks like in the dozen or so years I’ve owned and played it, I never did worry about it either. A decade of rust from beer-sweat, blood, regular sweat, and um, beer—awesome!

I believe guitars sound best when broken-in. And since technically it’s just wood and wires and a couple of magnets, that break-in is quasi-spiritual. You have to sweat and sometimes bleed yourself into the thing before you can truly be one with your axe. How you get it in is what matters. The effluvia of musical intercourse are nothing more than proof of the commitment to the craft and the bash.

As much as I wanted to keep the reeking, corroding pickup there the way Willie Nelson keeps that big open gash in his guitar, I just couldn’t. I simply couldn’t be heard through the muck of years that had built up on the important bits of this instrument. So the muck and its host, the pickup, had to go.   

Replacing a guitar pickup with a different guitar pickup is tricky business. Much is riding on it. Tone, sustain, feedback, response to all the little tricks, and how it gets along with your amp and playing style are all on the line when you try a new pickup. Nonetheless, I was ready to give it a go. I sought out my standard replacement pickup, not just to mitigate the risks, but because I genuinely liked them. I have used Seymour Duncan pickups on different guitars over the years and have always been happy with them. So why was Ted, my most excellent salesman at one of my favorite local music stores, selling me a Rio Grande pickup instead? “Never heard of them,” I said, “and besides, I don’t trust Texas on accountta, well, you know…” I don’t think Ted trusted Texas either, but he surely trusted these Rio Grande pickups. Frankly, I never really tuned in on Texas as a pillar of rock music (yes, SXSW, I know, I know…), so I naively assumed it was a twangy pickup. “I don’t play a Telecaster,” I told Ted. He said it didn’t matter. Then he handed me a guitar that had Rio Grandes in them. Robin Guitars are a boutique guitar company that makes works of art. Nothing like working a work of art. It was a rare opportunity for me to play one, much like driving a Ferrari around the block. I felt funny holding it, afraid I would scratch it and then have to get a loan to buy it. I just wanted a pickup!

For some reason Ted didn’t seem to trust Texas but he trusted me with this Robin with the Rio Grandes. It sounded amazing, I got everything I wanted going straight into an amp—the right kind of feedback, nice pinched harmonics, warm sustain, plenty of crotch-vibrating distortion with clarity and without brittleness. Considering the price of the guitar, it had better sound like a work of art as much as it looked like one. It’s also worth mentioning that Robin Guitars and Rio Grande pickups are sister companies out of Houston; it’s how Rio Grande got their start. Unfortunately, playing a guitar that was quite unlike my own didn’t really help me suss out this pickup from a wild and dangerous land. No pickup today, bummer. After some research (it would have been quicker just to trust Ted), I went back and told him I was ready to go with this mysterious Rio Grande, which I think is Spanish for ‘Big Rio.’

Good news—the guitar was ready the next day.

Bad news—the pickup didn’t sit right since I own a custom-shop Ibanez. It sat too high.

Good news—even though it wasn’t seated right, it sounded great and I couldn’t wait to sweat all over it.