guitarists wife/ partners

[earldunk]

Does your other half not understand your guitar addiction and the search for that guitar that is the perfect fit for you?.
I have made kits up to practice finishing and have been making practice necks and bodys out of reclaimed woods ( at little real cost) so when i am confident enough I can make the guitar i have always wanted out of nice looking woods ( I already have a good quilted maple piece set aside), don't want to start on some fine Wood and hack it to death and waste good money. Now my wife keeps saying " Why do you need another guitar?" . What ever i say be it about tone or just how good a guitar can look with a great top she just don't get it, We may have to buy a new car soon so I put it to her like this.
When we go to get a new car do we just buy the first car we see, they all have wheels and engines , seats and so on, they do the same thing. or do we base it on preformance and get a car that is better than the one we own, better fuel consumption and more reliable.
My debate fell on dead ears, she said you have more than one guitar I dont have a collection of cars. So i asked her how many pairs of shoes do you have?, do you need all of them?.

I tried other things like showing her the price of the gibson les paul that i liked and comparing that price to woods, showing how much money i would save building myself.
I even set my kit up and played different guitars showing the sound difference between them, her reply was " why do you need different sounds, your not in the band anymore.
I am going to admit defeat I cannot remove the sword from the stone.

[Ben-Had]

New car, new guitar, new wi...ahh nevermind:)

[johnnparchem]

I would move the conversation from wanting a new guitar to building guitars. The process of working with wood and building a guitar has value. Although from experience I find these sort of conversation are really a proxy for some other issue. Generally around the time spent on the hobby or the lack of time ..., or a concern about the expenses. I end up paying for my time in the shop by building and installing features in my wife garden.

[tippie53]

I am lucky that my wife allows my addiction. I have amassed a nice collection . I don't even know how many I have. I now count them in rooms. I have a room full and started to stack in the cellar.
My oldest is an 1857 Martin 0-28
My latest will be a Henderson D 45
My wife will have a nice guitar auction when I croak

[Mitch]

Life is full of choices. I better stop now... ;-)

[JEmory]

I guess I am the lucky one..My wife is the one that plays the guitars, she wants more and more..so its open season on building as many as I want.

Maybe you could get away from the 'me against her' thing and figure out a more amicable way to reach some sort of agreement/compromise?
Women usually don't lose in an adversarial battle with the husband. Flowers? Candy? Date night?
-tommy

[earldunk]

Got the new car for my wife through a good friend, as luck would have it the guy i had the car off was throwing out a pine dining room table, so now i have some pine to make another cab out of.
my other speaker cab is made from my old pine dining room table will have a matching pair soon ( soon as i can get a speaker).
will wait a few weeks only got new pickups today.

[nkwak]

Does your other half not understand your guitar addiction and the search for that guitar that is the perfect fit for you?.
I have made kits up to practice finishing and have been making practice necks and bodys out of reclaimed woods ( at little real cost) so when i am confident enough I can make the guitar i have always wanted out of nice looking woods ( I already have a good quilted maple piece set aside), don't want to start on some fine Wood and hack it to death and waste good money. Now my wife keeps saying " Why do you need another guitar?" . What ever i say be it about tone or just how good a guitar can look with a great top she just don't get it, We may have to buy a new car soon so I put it to her like this.
When we go to get a new car do we just buy the first car we see, they all have wheels and engines , seats and so on, they do the same thing. or do we base it on preformance and get a car that is better than the one we own, better fuel consumption and more reliable.
My debate fell on dead ears, she said you have more than one guitar I dont have a collection of cars. So i asked her how many pairs of shoes do you have?, do you need all of them?.

I tried other things like showing her the price of the gibson les paul that i liked and comparing that price to woods, showing how much money i would save building myself.
I even set my kit up and played different guitars showing the sound difference between them, her reply was " why do you need different sounds, your not in the band anymore.
I am going to admit defeat I cannot remove the sword from the stone.

I'm with you on that one as well. I tried pushing the importance of the skills over the value of the finished product and it just made my honey do list longer and harder to fulfill. My wife and I need couples counseling on things bigger than this though.

[ruby@magpage.com]

I would not count on building just one guitar and having that guitar be the personification of my dreams. I might suggest building a couple of instruments before starting on that "perfect" guitar. You will have to work out several things that only happen when you assemble the guitar.

A while back I saw a contest to build a guitar inexpensively. I think many of them were built for under $100 by using local woods and shopping ebay for tuners and such.

And, like has been said, don't make it adversarial. Would you have to justify changing the oil in the car? Building a table? Going to a baseball game? This could be nothing more than a (very) pleasurable way to spend your time.

Ed