Johnny Cash guitar trick

You learn all sorts of tricks, from all sorts of different sources.

Skip to 0:45:


Basically: insert a playing card under the strings below the nut. Then if you're playing barre chords, you can get a crisper "chukka-chuk" when you're doing rhythmic, percussive strums.

It makes sense in the video.


--GG

This is my reasoning

As I mentioned, I'm slowly, methodically going through my belonging, and divesting of things that I don't use, and which don't bring me enjoyment.


One of the items is a guitar effects pedal, which I bought three(?) years ago, and have used perhaps 5-8 times since then.  It's... fine.  But it doesn't captivate me.  It's a Korg AX1G (pictured), which is a multi-effects pedal:  all of the effects are "stacked" (i.e. for each setting, one sound feeds into another) -- whereas I've discovered that I prefer the sound of only distortion, or only chorus, or only a phaser.  So.


I mentioned the pedal to a co-worker, who expressed interest.  So I brought it in to work, and we took it downstairs to the sub-basement parking garage and he played through it.  I keep an electric guitar and a small amplifier under my desk at work -- because, doesn't everybody?

He decided that he liked it, and would buy it off me.  I told him I'd sell it for fifty bucks -- which is what I got it for (it was originally stickered at $65, I think, but I'd haggled down the price to fifty); I didn't want to make a profit off a co-worker.

I held it for him at my desk for a few days -- but then yesterday (Wednesday) he texted me from home (he works from home on Wednesdays) to say that he'd had a few unexpected bills, so he couldn't pay me for a while.  He said that if I wanted to back out of the deal and sell it to someone else, he would understand.


I pondered -- and the next day I handed the pedal to him and told him to take it home and use it, and to just pay me whenever he could.  Here's my reasoning:

-I could bring it back home; hold it at my desk; or give it to him to hold at his desk or take home.  I'd prefer to not have it at my desk or at home.

-I could continue to advertise it on Gumtree (the AU analog to Craigslist); or I could just sell it to him (on credit, I guess it is).  I trust him to pay me eventually -- and it's more about "getting it out of my house" and "finding a good home, where it will be appreciated and used" than "immediately getting fifty bucks".


And that's what it is.


 --GG