Awhile back I bought a Fender Squire used from craig’s list, with a 10-watt crate amp in the deal.

It sounds like shit.

Lesson learned: You get what you pay for. Squiers are cheap knock-offs for a reason.

I put that Squier on its stand and never played it after the first few days. Every now and then, I’d take it back out, tune it, and put it back within five minutes.

Later my father-in-law bought an off-brand guitar with a beautiful full sound to it and smooth fretboard. Color me jealous.

After playing his guitar, I thought to myself, “Man…if my guitar sounded like that, and played that smoothly, I’d probably practice all the time.” But I didn’t have the kind of money he’d spent, even though it still wasn’t even a top of the line guitar.

Thus when a co-worker announced his Fender Telecaster was for sale, I sighed to myself and thought, “Yeah, if only.”

But after a couple of days, I thought, “Why the hell not?”

I spoke to the wife about borrowing money from savings against some of my future allowance, to which she agreed. My co-worker brought the Telecaster to work with an amp one Friday for me to try it out.

Two pickups, maple fretboard, and a clean, precise, sharp sound even further enhanced by installed vintage Telecaster pickups.

Plus it was shiny. Oh so shiny.

I took it home that day.

I was right; where I can’t stand to play the Squier for more than a couple minutes before I get disgusted, I can hardly put the Telecaster down.

 Just over the weekend, I’ve already added multiple songs to repertoire, including Extreme’s ballad “More Than Words”, and “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, popularly covered by Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright, and others.

I’m slowly working on Cliffs of Dover (Eric Johnson), but that’s going to be a long time coming. I’ve just started practicing my pentatonic and blues scales so that I can perform riffs better, since those have always been my weak point.

Best of all, I’m starting to write music again.