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Pro-Advice

As one of life’s simple pleasures, playing acoustic guitar—especially outside—can be the perfect mental-health solution.

“Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.”—John Stuart Mill

My heroes have always been musicians. After a lifetime of gigs and a decade of Rig Rundowns, I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of musicians that I have loved, emulated, followed, stalked. For the most part, they are nothing like the demigods I imagined. If you get an unguarded glimpse into who they are, often you will recognize a kinship, for we share this same fragile, nervous, socially awkward, somewhat insecure core. Distill it all down without smoke and mirrors, or smoke and beers, and you can see that like most of us, they were drawn to music from an early age because it gave them something they needed.

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Tuttle and Strings first recorded together on Strings’ 2017 release, Turmoil & Tinfoil.

Photo by Alysse Gafkjen

Looking back on their latest releases, the two bluegrass phenoms and friends sit down with one another to talk musical heritage, stage fright, gear, and more.

In any music scene, it’s natural that talented contemporaries will find each other and form fast, harmonious fraternity. It’s no surprise, then, that Nashville-based bluegrass virtuosos Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle became close friends and collaborators as early as 2017—when they were both just 24—and, as is now somewhat common knowledge, were one-time roommates. Tuttle was first featured on Strings’ full-length release, Turmoil & Tinfoil, and a few years later, Strings guested on Tuttle’s Grammy-winning 2022 album, Crooked Tree, on the track “Dooley’s Farm,” while performing together often in the interim.

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Originally salvaged from a clearance sale in Hong Kong in ’96, this ’50s foto flame Tele has gone through a series of mods over the past few decades.

Name: Steve Kellett
Hometown: Petaling Jaya, Malaysia
Guitar: Made-in-Japsn Japan Telecaster

Here’s the tale of my Fender Made-in-Japan Telecaster: I bought this guitar in 1996 in Hong Kong from the Tom Lee Music Annual Warehouse Clearance Sale. I didn’t hear about the sale until the last day, so by the time I rocked up to the rented factory unit in the depths of Mong Kok, where they were holding the sale, there were only two guitars left: a wrecked, cheap acoustic and a made-in-Japan export model foto flame ’50s Telecaster.

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The author’s main squeeze: a 2005 Kopp K-35 prototype.

Sure, variety is supposed to be the spice of life, but is it distracting you from your favorite instruments?

As the luthier and manager of a high-end guitar shop, I get to experience many fine acoustic instruments, in a variety of ways. Whether I’m selecting tonewoods from my stash for a custom build, introducing a customer to their next Collings or Huss & Dalton, or repairing a beloved ’70s Martin that has been played around a hundred campfires, there is always something going on.

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Ted’s D25C has lived a long and creative life, and has the scars to prove it.

How a used Guild D25C became the keys to the cosmos—and a better life in music.

I should probably name my acoustic guitar. After all, my dog Dolly has a name, and while she’s an old pup, I’ve known that guitar much longer. And like Dolly, that Guild D25C I got in the mid-’90s has given me many gifts.

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