Would You Buy This or Not? (Musical Instruments)

With a full-on raging blizzard outside, we can't go to any yard sales this weekend, so we're going to take a look at some things we've bought over the years, most of them at yard sales.

This week: musical instruments

If I had to choose my favorite musical instrument find at a yard sale, I could not.  The first two are the best bets for that honor though.

I had a guitar just like this when I was 13.  I carried it everywhere and played it whenever someone wasn't telling me what to do.  Two years into this, it got hit by a vollyball -  Ray Ledford's overhand serve - and it was toast.  Silvertone's are the great American working man's guitar and I missed it badly.

So I found a broken one at a yard sale decades later.  It had a perfect finish, but the back was coming apart and the neck was coming away from the body.  They only wanted $5.  Sold.

I've gotten the two aforementioned defects fixed, but it will still take another $200 for a luthier to make it play better than any Silvertone ever made, and I'm going to do that, just for principle's sake.

This cost me a quarter.  It's a stick with carpenter's staples shot in at just the right intervals to make the 8 notes of the scale.  It's only slightly more complicated to make than it sounds, and I could make 12 of them in an afternoon.  It's the slickest thing.

I bought this Harmony ukulele at the same sale as the one-stringed thing.  It played great until I changed the strings, and now it sounds terrible.   I think I'll use it to barter for the repair of the Silvertone.

At a dime apeice, I thought I'd scrap out these little brass "cups".  Then I net one down on the tile floor and it rang.  As it turns out they all three ring at different notes, and I'm guessing they were once part of a larger set you tap with mallets to play.  I will not be sending them to the scrap yard.

I like bells in general, and will usually pay up to a buck if it has nice tone.

This one has multiple tones, all out of tune with one another.  Delightful.

Could I pass up two cymbals for a buck?  Of course not.  What I will do with them I can't say, but if you tie them on a rope like this, drop them on the tile kitchen floor and quickly lift them up again, they give the cats somethnig to think about.

The kalimba on the right I've had for decades, and I've played it on three Gather videos.  (Each of those three words is a separate link.)  Mark J made another video of me playing it at the Fitzgerald Theatre.

On the left is a kalimba I found at a yard sale for $5.  The tone is beautiful, but it can't be tuned.  It appears to have been made to sell to tourists, but I still enjoy it a great deal.  Each peg has a secondary "harmony" that is as loud is the main tone.

This tin whistle is the only thing I bought new here.  It too has only 8 notes in a scale unless you want to get fancy and cover half of a hole.  I'm happy to play simple things that don't require that.  At less than $10, this qualified as something I would buy, despite it's tarnished status as something "new".

Not since my garage band split in 1973 had I had an amp, but last summer I came across this Hohner at a sale for $20, so

Now I have something to plug my 1960 Gretsch into.  It's really hard to get into one photograph, so a while back did a whole post on it.

I also play it on three different Gather videos.  These are songs I wrote, and I'd regard it a personal favor if you'd check them out:

Easy on the Eyes

You Were Strangers Too

With Whom They Please

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I intend to continue doing these compilation posts of things Janie and I have found at yard sales.  Next week: our collection of bird figurines.