Often when i am in a process of exercising it comes to my mind to buy a new guitar. Then I go online and surf through hundreds of webpages, which offer and discuss advantages and disadvantages of new models. I am reading reviews, opinions, i am checking new developments of the industry, I am visiting online-stores of well-known luthiers and I am always thinking: Would this guitar make me play better? There are many reasons to think about this: Another guitar can have other form or other strings or other sound, other wood, something will be different from my own. And I am asking myself why I am thinking in that way, because I am also a violin-player and I have never thought about buying another after getting a good one, which will accompany me for life-time.
I guess the difference may be, that the instrument violin is perfect, the form has not changed since many years, the measure is always the same and though you can find a lot of different sounding violins, the handling is more equal. You have not a steel-stringed and a nylon-stringed violin, not a special jazz-violin nor a resonator-violin. I remember a story of my old violin-teacher, who told me that years ago a luthier tried to make glass-violins, but they not conquered the market, because of one simple thing: The break easily. But actually they try it again. And I have heard, that they shall sound great.
Back to the guitar I think every guitar-player has to fight against daily temptation not to play and instead of playing to search for another “baby”. The time you are misusing to search would be better used to exercise to become really better on one instrument.
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Good points with the comparison between the two instruments. It makes sense about the violin and I believe in most cases the violin is a much more handmade and personal instrument. Most guitar players have a favorite guitar, and most working (gigging) players seem to have a favorite that is used almost exclusively. I think a bigger trap for guitar players in not as much changing instruments as it is the constant trying out of effects pedals. More practice on any guitar without the pedals would produce a lot more proficient guitar players. I tried the violin once. I thought it would be cool to pull it out of my bag of tricks for a few songs. Practice lasted a week. I’ll stick to the guitar. My hats off to any good violin player!