I’d like to think I have at least a little musical talent in my bones – even if it is limited in its opportunity for expression.

With that thought, I bought myself a small Christmas present that targeted a wish I’ve had for some time – to play the guitar.

As a drummer, I have always been a little jealous of the people who get to play real notes. Percussion is all about rhythm but can feel a little thin when trying to play an actual song. Sure, there are outlets involving the various keyboard percussive instruments, but it’s not the same as a real musical instrument. I hope that the guitar will give me a chance to expand into this side of making music.

In my typical manner, I spent a great amount of time researching my choices for a guitar online. The options are nearly endless, especially in the lower end that I was targeting. There is a whole bunch of “throw-away” guitars that are all sub-$200. Everywhere you look, everybody talks about the quick need to upgrade these cheap versions and get something more substantial. Quality guitars have great warmth and sustain and are generally easier to play. It’s unfortunate that many beginners, such as myself, start out with these lousy instruments.

The fundamentals of my new guitar are there – sharing the same materials that make up many of the recognized greats.

My choice ended up being an intermediate guitar that was still of high value. All indications pointed to the Yamaha FG730S (quite a mouthful in terms of model name) as a great option for a beginner guitar that has long-lasting merit as a quality instrument. It features a sitka spruce top, rosewood sides/back and rosewood fingerboard. It has real abalone inlay and is generally considered a “poor man’s Taylor” when it comes to sound.

I searched around for the best deal and actually found the cheapest price at a local, small music store called “My Music Store” in Golden Valley, MN. I’ve bought things from them in the past and always found them having a great combination of price and service. They are the type of place that will sell you the “right” instrument – not the most expensive one they think you can afford.

That was mid-December.

I’ve now had the guitar for a few weeks and have enjoyed the steps to learning how to play it. I was a little surprised at how rough it is on my left hand – both in terms of strength and soreness at my finger tips. I need to build up the stamina to really play it and can only stand about 20 minutes of practice before I give up due to pain.

I also looked around for any upgrades – both in terms of strings and other additions to the guitar. The online guitar community is full of opinionated people (and I thought cyclists were a fanatical group) and offered a lot of suggestions. The most common suggestion was to replace the saddle and the bridge pins. On my Yamaha, these were simple plastic components and were there for the most basic of functionality. The claim online was that the guitar could really move up in sound quality with a replacement natural bone saddle – a key component to transferring the vibrations of the strings to the resonator top. All recommendations pointed to a guy that produces real bone guitar parts online – Bob Colosi at www.guitarsaddles.com – as the place to order these parts.

Even though it was a lot of extra work, I found that having to customize the bone saddle really made it “my own” and I’m now a little more connected to – and even proud of – the guitar.

Thus, this past week, I received my real bone saddle and pins and proceeded to upgrade the guitar. Since every guitar is a little different, Bob makes sure to slightly over-size the replacement saddle with the expectation that I would spend some time sanding it down to the right size/shape for my specific guitar. This means that I had to perform about twenty minutes of sanding to get it to just the right size/shape for the slot in my bridge. But once the customization was complete, the part fit perfectly.

The bone bridge pins with abalone inlay were a nice, final touch – adding an element of class to the guitar that was missing in the original design.

I re-strung the guitar (being sure to use the new bone bridge pins) and was immediately happy with the results. The sustain is substantially different – even with my limited ear. For only about $60 in parts, it was a dramatic change to the guitar and one that I am glad to have made.

I just now need to overcome the limitations of my left hand and really learn how to do justice to the guitar.