Thank you, Josh. I am dobrodado. I began playing guitar with a mail-order electric guitar and amp from a magazine around 1966 at the age of 14. Didn't know if I had any talent or not, but my interests in the Rolling Stones, Beach boys, Beatles, lovinspoonful, Mamas & Papas from WLS Chicago, and a bunch of different folk players kept me trying. Within a couple years, my dad met a banjo player. I had wanted to play a banjo, but had never come across one at that time. Although I took a few guitar lessons from Jimmy Wilson in Lafayette, Indiana, at a music store I can't remember, my banjo lessons from telephone lineman Vic Rigsby outside Fort Wayne, Indiana really seemed to stick. I jumped on the Scruggs style using plastic finger picks, and shortly went to a plastic some pick and pointy Ernie Ball metal finger picks. Within two years of getting my first lessons on a homemade five string, I lived in South Carolina and at 17 helped for a country rock band with some friends called sour mash at the University of SC. All the time. I kept playing both five string banjo and acoustic guitar. About 35 years later, I got a Taylor 814 CE and gave all my other acoustic guitars away. It is my only acoustic guitar that I play on stage and it is ailing, electronically. I also have a few slides, including Weissenborns, square neck resos, a custom lap steel and an old studio Les Paul. Since my son has lived in Southeast Asia, he has brought me a weird metal banjo from Myanmar, a Dro-ou (spelling) with a snakeskin head from Cambodia and a horse head fiddle from Mongolia. My niece gave me a partially destroyed mandolin, which I restored and I am currently teaching a grandchild the ukulele. That's about it. I have played in the same eclectic acoustic six person group with slight personnel changes for over a decade in Columbia, South Carolina. I joined this forum because I am having trouble with the expression system on my Taylor guitar and I am going to look for some other people who have addressed this challenge. Taylor's approach takes a lot of time and money and shipping my instrument. I'm against that. I am in a fix, and I have a gig next Monday and I am going to have to borrow somebody else's guitar, because my sound guy refuses to Mic my guitar. Meeting with my Luthier friend today for him to examine it and help me think about it. Thanks for setting up and maintaining this site, y'all.
