Soon after the pink guitar I added another Lotus: a copy of a Fender Stratocaster. It was black with a white pickguard.

I started taking classical guitar lessons when I was 15 years old. My teacher was Roger Jackson. I played my father's Juan Pimentel guitar, a gorgeous instrument that has some of the lightest action of any classical guitar I've ever played. In December of 1989 when I was 17 years old I got a 1978 Fender Stratocaster with a bullet truss rod. The body is natural blond ash (I think) with a black 3-ply pickguard. The neck and fingerboard are maple. It cost $450 dollars, which many will say is too much for a late 70s CBS Fender. The large headstock is not popular and collectors tend to overlook this era in Strats. But I will never choose to sell it. It is an extremely comfortable guitar. It has the lightest action of any guitar I've ever held. The neck is the perfect size. I took the tremolo bar off. Those are useless for everyone after Jimi Hendrix.

When I was a freshman in college my parents got me a Mario Salinas classical. I fell in love with the tone immediately. The bass notes are clear, the highs are bright and the midtones connect them beautifully. The guitar provides a full range of tones when plucking from the bridge to the neck. The volume and balance allows for great versatility. But the action is very high which makes it a challenging guitar to play.

This is a video recording of me playing Prelude 1 (of 6) by Manuel Ponce.

My newest guitar is a Takamine EF325SRC cutaway acoustic steel-string with an internal pick-up. It's pretty and it plays easily but it doesn't have great sound. I will sell it some day, but not until I know I can afford another steel-string. The best ones I've played so far are Taylors. Martins are nice for strumming but for fingerstyle guitar I've heard the best and most consistent balance on Taylors.

I've kindly left my face out of this video in which I play Rik Emmett's Midsummer's Daydream (from Thunder Seven).

Here's a video of me playing an etude by...some Italian I can't remember right now. I'll look it up. The technique is sloppiest in this performance and the phrasing is awful. The pace changes and the wrong notes are accentuated.

Contact Information

Department of English
Purdue University
500 Oval Drive
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2038

mcovarru@purdue.edu