Well, I was originally going to title this blog 'Back to School' and talk about what happened on my first day of my latest semester of the guitar class. Things didn't turn out quite that way. It's what happened after class that turned out to be interesting.

I did go to guitar class today, as I planned. I honestly can't say I learned anything in class today. It was the first day of the class and as such, he spent the entire class helping out the beginners and never really got much time for his advanced class. Now I hardly consider myself advanced. I can barely play a few chords... I have a LONG way to go compared to the two young kids who were in the class. Clearly they were much more advanced than I was.

Anyway, class ended and I approached the teacher. I wanted to ask him if he would do a setup on the acoustic guitar that I usually bring to class. He offers to do free setups for the students of his class. All you need to do is pay for the guitar strings. So, I gave him my guitar and asked him if he could do a setup on it. He grabs it, takes a look at it, and suddenly gets this puzzled look on his face as he plays it. He then tells me that my guitar has a serious problem. Apparently the frets are 'popping'. I wasn't entirely clear what the hell that meant. As best I could understand it, that meant that the frets (metal bars glued into the neck) were coming loose. This was causing buzzing when certain string and fret combinations were played. It turned out that my brand new, $500 guitar is defective! Apparently the neck is malformed somehow causing one side of the neck to be straight, and the other side to not be straight. This is something that is pretty much unfixable! He said that he wished I'd shown him the guitar right after I bought it, because it is defective and I need to return it! Unfortunately it's been about 3 1/2 to 4 months since I bought the thing. I don't think Guitar Center's going to take it in return. This likely means that I'm going to have to deal with Takamine directly in getting it replaced. I am going to be out an acoustic guitar for a while. I'm going to bring it by Guitar Center during lunch tomorrow and see if I can get them to exchange it. I doubt it though. If they won't take it in exchange, I figure I can at least get some information and hopefully a box of some kind to ship it back to Takamine for exchange. This was a very dissapointing thing to hear. I don't think I'm out $500 for a defective guitar, but now I have to go through the hassle of trying to get it exchanged. Hopefully this won't be a difficult thing to do. This was the bad news after class.

I did get some good news from the teacher though, after class. The teacher teaches several guitar classes at several different schools throughout town on different days of the week. Some are beginner classes, some are beginner/intermediate classes (like the one I went to today), and some are advanced classes. I mentioned to him that I knew he had a class at a different high school. That class was a more advanced class. It's also a lot closer to my new job. It's maybe a 5-10 minute drive from my new job to that advanced class, as opposed to the 30 minute drive through heavy traffic to the beginner/intermediate class that I just started. It would be much easier for me to attend this advanced class at the other school than the class I was at now. Plus, since it's a more advanced class, I think I'd get a lot more out of it, since this class tends to be more beginner, and I'm way beyond that. I asked if it would be possible for me to just switch classes from this class to the more advanced class at the other school. He told me that I was welcome to do that, just don't let anyone in the school management know. Just kinda start showing up. He told me where and when the class is. This means that come next Wednesday (instead of Thursday), I'll be heading over to his more advanced class. I imagine I'll be there armed with my electric, since the acoustic seems to be DOA. :(