For want of anything else to write about tonight, I thought I'd dip into the guitar collection and see if there weren't a few points of interest to share with you. Here then is my Yamaha SA2200, a quite stunning 6-string semi-acoustic I picked up a few years back.

Sometime back in 2000, not long after I came out to Saudi, I decided I need to bring a guitar with me to see if I couldn't improve my playing (a lot). At the time the only thing I had was another Yamaha, an MSG Standard. So I duly packed it up in its hard case and trundled myself off to the airport to come back here to Riyadh - I had a lot to learn I think about travelling with an instrument. It should come as no surprise then, that when I collected the guitar from the carousel, not all was well. I could see that the case was damaged, one of those little metal feet they put on cases was punched clean through the case, and I could also see that one of the catches was undone. An on the spot inspection confirmed my worst fears that the case had been dropped. What was worse, was that the MSG was now resting in the case with its headstock snapped off - all looked very terminal. To cut a long story short though, BA held its hands up to having responsibility for their lack of care and one £200 repair bill later, Sounds Great Music near Manchester did a sterling job of repairing it for me. It travels no longer.

Stuck once more for a guitar, I was left with a long stretch in Saudi until I could get home again and pick up something else. Fortune smiled on me and up popped an alpine white Gibson Les Paul Studio on one of the many notice boards - not a bad guitar at all in the circumstances. One short negotiation later and it was mine. It didn't take me long to realise that all was not entirely right with it though. Sharp fret ends protruding out from the edges of the fretboard told a rather unpleasant story. This guitar had not survived the ravages of the Arabian climate well and the lack of humidity had taken its toll, with the wood shrinking and so leaving the frets ends standing proud. At the time, I neither had the tools nor experience to sort it out, so I gradually grew to dislike it intensely - it just wasn't nice to play. But time passed and other acquisitions meant I could quietly forget about it.

So we get to around 5 years ago and in a speculative moment, I thought it might be worth bringing it back to the UK and seeing what it might be worth in part-exchange for something else. I'd had my eye on something in a local shop and thought the LP might well get me a good proportion of the way there, so back to the UK it came with me. A deal was struck and I found myself the rather pleased as punch owner of the the SA2200 you can see here.

The soundness of the deal was confirmed to me a few months later when I called into the shop again, only to see the LP hanging on the wall in a rather sorry looking state. Back in a country with moisture content in the atmosphere, the wood of the Gibson had started to absorb the humidity around it and expanded as wood does. It had the most amazing crackle glaze effect across the whole of the front of the body and did not look good.

The SA2200 is still with me, though at a distance. It plays wonderfully well and is a joy to hear. Only a couple of weeks till I'm back home again and I can give it another go.