2017 CB1100 EX First Ride Review

[Guth_imp]

VLJ, I'm going to drift a bit far in response, but hey it's your thread and I own the place so what the heck.

I too had been on the guitar merry-go-round in the past. In my case for many, many years. (Hard to avoid it when you live in Austin, lol.) I've bought and sold so many guitars that I'm not sure that I can remember them all. During some of our earlier discussions I seemed to get the impression that you might have had a similar habit with motorcycles. This is one of the reasons that I might have come across a bit skeptical about your then pending CB1100 purchasing decision. About six years ago, I finally tuned out all of the noise on the internet (before online forums, I was a member of a guitar listserv) and just started to focus more on being happy with those guitars I already owned. After this happened, I started to enjoy playing the guitar a lot more instead of wasting my energy focusing on what latest guitar everybody else was raving about. It's now been almost six years since I've bought/sold/swapped a guitar and I couldn't be happier. I've said here before that online forums can have negative impacts, and I meant it. Motorcycle forums aren't any different for those people with a personality type similar to mine. So with all of this in mind, I truly hope that you're able to enjoy your CB1100 for a very long time to come. I've actually come to appreciate mine more now than when I first bought it.

As far as your guitars are concerned, that 335 is stunning — what a beautiful guitar. It gives me a little more insight to your 2017 EX purchase as it's the perfect guitar match for your CB1100 from a visual standpoint! And you can't go wrong with any variation of a Strat. I've always had a weakness for white Strats (the cover of Jeff Beck's "Wired" album is largely responsible for this) and have a minty white/maple necked Fender Squire Strat from Japan that I bought new back in 1984 (I couldn't afford an American Strat back then but now even the old Japan Squires have started to become collectible — crazy). I had a cool little black face '64 Vibro-Champ amp that I used for the longest time but I gave it away to my brother as a gift a few years back. Speaking of Jeff Beck and SRV, I saw the two of them together from the eighth row back when they toured together not too long before SRV died. It was such an awesome evening for me. Beck was truly one of my guitar heroes when I was in high school, but watching Stevie play sober for the first (and sadly only) time was a mind-blowing experience.

Now as far the guitars that I really like to play are concerned, the recording that I used for the CB1100 video featured my '08 J45 TV and it's my favorite. But I've got a '07 Custom Shop Advanced Jumbo that has the most beautiful maple that I've ever seen on a guitar (or maybe on anything for that matter). You can see birdseye, quilted and flamed patterns all in the same piece of wood. I traded away my Collings acoustic (the company that I almost went to work for when I still lived in Austin) for this AJ and it represents my very last guitar transaction. The AJ is spectacular, but I simply prefer the tone of the J45. I can geek out over guitars with you via PM if you'd like but I can't include photos, so I'll just do it here (yes I realize that I'm taking advantage of my status here but I'll stop after this post, lol.)

As far as my music goes, I'm not really sure where it comes from. I listen to a little bit of everything but blues has long been one of my favorite genres (it's how my wife and I met for one thing). Yet most of my tunes are not blues'ish at all. I just play what seems to naturally come out of my fingers.

[url=http://billguthrie.com/music/]You'll find some of my music here.

Here are a couple of photos of the maple AJ...





Sorry folks, I'll now return you to our regularly scheduled programming, lol.