Where your treasure is…
There’s a funny dichotomy found in Jesus’ words on the Kingdom of God, between ‘where your treasure is’ and ‘the Kingdom is like a treasure in a field.’ Hold those two teachings in tension in your mind for a sec, and let them interpret one another. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. But the Kingdom of God is like a treasure buried in a field, and when a man found it, he buried it back again, went home and sold everything he had to obtain that field.
I have had a complicated relationship with consumerism, with possessions. I even wrote about it, long time ago, about wanting to become a minimalist. I was sort of calling all of us church guitarists to minimize, to reject the consumeristic notion that you needed all three of the new Strymon pedals and if you don’t have them you’re not legit, or whatever. That was kind of the ‘vibe’ you got from guitar influencers online in like 2015. One famous church guitarist even outright said so. I hate that crap. Nevertheless, having the right tools and knowing your tools well is half the battle in music. Especially in recording, where you want a clean performance of the highest possible quality to stand the test of time. And there’s nothing against owning things in the bible, though Jesus had nothing to his name. His whole ‘thing’ was that we ought to not lust after more and more and more.
These days, I’ve struck a healthy balance. I have a ton of pedals, and that’s been a bit of a lingering problem, the hoarding of fun little effects for the guitar. But I dealt with that a bit… I traded a bunch of stuff for my Elliott Guitars Plajio bass. And that’s why I’m writing, I guess. A great instrument is such a treasure. While we shouldn’t worship it, or even insist upon it, a great instrument is worth selling all you have or trading it in, consolidating gear down, turning a couple closet shelves of pedals into a nice guitar, turning two or three less well-made guitars into one really great one. I don’t know. That’s where my heads at right now.
Today, I rock four guitars: A bass, an acoustic, and a Gibson-style and Fender-style electrics. For a guitar-focused recording studio, I feel like that’s the bare minimum. To maximize the amount of tonal variations at my fingertips, I chose sort of ‘do-it-all,’ hybrid guitars. The bass is a P/J config. The acoustic is small-bodied, but deep, and can hang with a dreadnought easy. The 335-style semi-hollow I rock can do jazz archtop sounds as well as screaming blues/rock due to its center block and Voodoo pickups. And my Strat is a total chameleon, with the DGN harness that gives me coil-taps and an Alembic pre.
You might not think it, but after all I’ve owned, and all I’ve chased after, this is keeping it simple!