Geriatric guitars??

[sunjamr]

Our member Cliff posted below a question about best acoustic guitars. There are many of us old guys among the AM members, and this made me think: Maybe I should do a video on “Best guitars for geriatric players”. As we humans get older, we lose strength and flexibility in our hands, and even in our shoulders and elbows. So what are the most user-friendly guitars for older people? I can immediately say that for me, it’s much much easier to play my Fender Strat than any acoustic I have ever played. But what about my acoustic guitars? As I noted in my response to Cliff’s post, my Taylor Baby is by far the easiest acoustic for me to play. It’s only slightly more difficult than playing a ukulele. Next in line would be my Taylor GS Mini and my Alvarez AF30CE, which are identical sized small-body guitars. And my classical guitar with its wide neck and nylon strings is pretty easy to play.

Sunjamr Steve

[GnLguy]

Steve

I understand what you’re saying about a shorter scale length, but most guitars range 25.4–25.5 inches with Gibson acoustics being 24.75 inches

As has been discussed endlessly on the forum, any guitar, if setup properly will play much easier. Most of us have had those acoustic guitars that the neck was either warped or the truss rod was extremely out of adjustment to the point that the strings were 1/2″ or more off of the fretboard at the 12th fret. The nut on most guitars, especially Asian guitars, aren’t slotted correctly and bridge is usually far too high making them difficult to play.
Once everything is adjusted correctly, any guitar electric or acoustic will be at its best and much easier to play.
Also mentioned many times before, when I found my Breedlove Oregon Myrtlewood guitar, I found MY guitar. It is that special guitar that grabbed my attention and I’ve not found anything that I like better
It’s a proprietary body shape made only by Breedlove called a Concerto; it was designed to compete with a dreadnought in performance, in some ways, it’s larger than a dread.
Some are surprised that I use it to play fingerstyle because conventional wisdom says to use a Concert or Parlor size guitar – or if I bought another Breedlove, it would be their proprietary body shapes called Concertina or Companion.
Personally, I don’t care what the body shape is – I picked that guitar up and my ear told me that this was the one for me. That’s all that matters to me.
I’m comfortable using a 12-54 string set. There are some things that I can do to improve the setup (which will be done at next string change) but with it as it is, I can play barre chords relatively easy with the setup as it is.

My perspective is that unless a person has issues with their hands – arthritis, gout, etc – buy/play the guitar that the tone totally impresses you and have it set up correctly to be at it’s best and easiest to play.
When the tone of your guitar totally impresses a player, that person will be much more enthused in their practice & performing

Keith
aka GnLguy

[Mark H]

Playing with a new .012 medium set after a recent setup I noticed that two months later I needed to increase the neck relief on a 000-16 Martin to bring the action back down to optimum. While it was perfect when I picked it up after a major refurb, including new tuners, yay, over two months the action started to get higher. Cranking the truss rod tighter was the solution.

So I agree with GnL (which could probably be a first!) 😊, there’s no such thing as “the perfect acoustic for older players”. It’s all about getting- and maintaining the setup that suits you.

[GnLguy]

Mark H wrote:

So I agree with GnL (which could probably be a first!) 😊,

Wow, I really feel the love on that one Mark LOL (its all good)

Difference of opinion is great and helps all of us to grow. It’s when we build walls of negative opinions about others and allow those walls to separate us that we run into problems.
Take for example Frank Zappa. Very little that I agree with Frank on what his positions and thoughts on life were however, I truly admire the way that he would voice his thoughts regardless of whether anyone agreed with him or not.
Rather than be offended and shutting him out, I listened to what he had to say. Yes I learned from him, and yes I still disagreed with him. Over time, I realize why he felt the way that did on certain issues

Too many people have allowed themselves to become offended and to carry harsh feelings about others. I try to take inventory of my thoughts & feeling of others often to hopefully keep myself from falling into that trap

[Author]

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