RatStrat.com

I'm hobbyist, a back-porch songwriter driven to find old six-string spirit-callers with new songs in 'em. Through this store on Reverb.com I occasionally offer guitars (and stomps) that seem especially suited to channelling what folks once called "blue devils", those restless spirits that have inspired so much of American music.

Sometime in early 1984 I was sitting with a blind musician who also ran a music store in Oxford, Mississippi. I was plunking on a big vintage Gibson archtop he had for sale that had a crack in the top. It sounded great, throaty and yet articulate. But I kept coming back to the crack, it was bothering me that there was an 'imperfection". Ron, the blind cat, told me that archtop tops sometimes have to crack to find the place they are comfortable in and be able to really move, to get past tension that is holding them back. He said fixing that particular crack would probably change the guitar. I was young and sat there like a fool, worrying about that crack, my own tension holding me back. Still wish I had bought that guitar. Even more I wish I had heard what the man was telling me.

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