Don’t fuck with people’s shit without asking wtf. Life isn’t like TV, not every surprise is going to be appreciated.
Asshole: no.
Misguided: yes.
His reaction isn’t unreasonable. Misplaced well intentioned actions likely will not end as intended. Ultimately, she didn’t get it. She misunderstood what he loved about the guitar.
The whole idea of “surprises” is complete bullshit. Social media has really over romanticised this to an extreme (big surprise! Big reaction video! Completely staged. Isn’t that soooo romantic and adorable). When my wife gets a present, it costs quite a lot. I’m not going to take a chance of judging her taste, pick a brand I know nothing about and try to guess what she would like. We’ve got an agreement that we pick our own presents and make our plans together. No surprises bullshit. Might be boring by social media standards, but it’s the best I can do.
The modern western version of “gifts” is really about pushing over-consumption. If marketers cannot convince you to buy something yourself, they can try to convince someone else to buy it for you.
I’ve always felt that gifts should be tokens. Symbols of good will, reminders of the relationship. Consumable gifts are great, especially when shared with the giver. Alcohol is great for this, but there’s plenty more you can do. Small, inexpensive art prints or figurines.
I don’t want someone else to buy me something I woukd want to research myself. My parents gave me a “snow thrower” for Christmas a couple years ago. Its a relatively cheap, Ryobi 40v thing- I do not own anything else that uses that battery ecosystem. My step-dad loves his, and I am it is great for their 2-car driveway, but my driveway can probably fit like 10 cars in it, and I would have rather saved up for something nicer myself. Now i’m in this weird limbo where I feel socially obligated to use it for several years at least before I replace it with something I actually want.
I’m a school bus driver and I get tips from the kids (really, the parents) at Christmas and the end of the school year, usually in the form of gift cards. It’s still such a weird concept to me, but the thing I truly appreciate is hand-written (by the kids themselves) cards that express their appreciation and affection. It also saves me from having to go to Target (the most common gift card) and find something there that I actually want.
My bets friend gifted me a few different bottles of mead to try. We tried them together. One bottle was drained by the end, with him drinking about as much as I did.
And it was a great evening, spent with a friend I rarely have the chance to. The mead was good (and what’s left of it still is; pacing myself here), but the quality time was something I can’t order online.
My sentiment exactly. Every Christmas I get more junk I don’t need, or stuff that I do need, but would have rather researched myself. I hate having a bunch of random knick-knacks and novelty items cluttering up my house, but I also feel guilty getting rid of gifts.
Don’t buy me gifts, don’t bring me souvenirs, I don’t need more novelty t-shirts.
The way I do gifts with my Mom is I have a wishlist of things I’ve researched, and she picks from it.
That way what I’m getting is still a surprise, but it’ll be something I actually want.
The way I do gifts with my wife is she either gets me concert lawn seat tickets, or something fun to wear for me.
I love to find something for a person that they don’t even know they want until I give it to them, and that they will love. Can’t do it on demand though - I have to see something and think “wow, cRazi-man would love this and I bet he’s never even seen one.”. Then buy or make whatever it is for that one person.
My kids say that now their standards for gifts are crazy because that is how I gift. Not many, not often, only when inspired, I don’t think they realized it was unusual.
I don’t understand the value of random crap. But do think that a surprise can be so good.
My fiance literally sent me the ring she wanted for our engagement.
Surprises suck, communication rocks!
There are plenty of kinds of surprise that can be wonderful in the right context. Perhaps easiest is when someone tells you they want/would like something, you keep an eye out for opportunities, and surprise them when it comes around. (My wife wanted to see a comedian. I subscribed to their newsletter, and then got (refundable) tickets when they were performing near us, years later.) There can also be things that you are confident someone else will like, which they don’t know exist. (I bought a friend a battery operated pruner after seeing him struggle to keep up with bushes.) Or small things that someone likes (flowers, chocolate, breakfast in bed, depends a lot on what they are into).
The guitar repair was the worst kind of surprise: something irreversible, which the surprisee clearly knew about, and has chosen not to do at every single opportunity - while the surpriser doesn’t know why they are choosing not to. That’s not respectful, which is the absolute minimum requirement for a surprise to work.
For $200 dollars it’s extremely unlikely that anything extensive or irreversible was done, definitely not by an actual professional
I don’t understand this insane fixation that society has with gifts being “surprises”, I find to so annoying, sometimes it even ends up being worse than not giving anything at all the gift is genuinely useless.
One particularly bad case in experience of a surprise gift for me, was when my mom decided to surprise me with a computer as gift, specially since this is a significal finnancial burden, one of which could have been partially relifed by letting me choose and pick parts, but even though we had an agreement to let me pick the parts she just decided randomly to buy a prebuilt instead without notifying me at all, when I was extremely angry at her for this and when I questioned her horrible decision, she said: “I just wanted you to have a happy surprise” and tried to make emotionally guilty trip me when I didn’t show any thankfulness for the gift with: “Why don’t you love me? I do everyrhing for you”
Why? do people assume that I want a surprise? why is this idea so ingrained into people’s brain that when I ask to simply give tge money one would have spent instead in buying the gift, that is seen somehow as rude, what is so rude about trying make the most out of the money would’ve been spent into a worthless sock I didn’t ask nor need?
I kind of have a hard time imagining such a thing being done with sincerely good intentions, how many people would really do that? Easy to imagine it as a way to exercise power over someone with a plausible pretense though.
This is projection
His reaction seems to be to pout and not explain what his problem is. If he could communicate, OP might not have to turn to the internet to find out what they did wrong
Yeah, you don’t fuck with shit a person is that attached to because you think it “looks rough”
Clearly a professional agreed that it didn’t just look rough, the shit was damaged
There’s not enough context here to say that with any certainty. If husband was playing it and enjoying it, then it’s doing the job it needs to. Even if it was actually broken and actually fixed, it still changes the relationship between player and instrument and could’ve easily taken away earned character as a way to make it look “nice”
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the idea of damage as character or lack of maintenance for a musical instrument as an aesthetic decision rather than just a bad decision, but you’re right about there not being enough information
So you think Willie Nelson should replace the top on Trigger?
I think they will ask you if it was damaged…
Sure, why not
Because it’s more valuable as is
I don’t even mean monetary value (though that’s also true, you don’t refinish a vintage guitar because you halve the selling price), but the historical value and sentimental value and enjoyment value. It’s a record of the time he’s put in on it and the dedication to this instrument. That means something, more than “fixing” it ever could.
He has it repaired regularly dumbass, says so in the wiki article you idiots keep posting
Firstly, they’ll repair and/or make any guitar look better. It’s their job so they’ll do it. Secondly and more importantly, it isn’t about if the guitar is damaged or not. It was clearly loved for what it was, it was probably more about the history of it than anything else.
It’s really not hard to not fuck with other peoples stuff without their consent. And it’s real sad that people like you exist that don’t seem to understand that..ml in a nutshell
Lol cope
I don’t need to, I have a good life and I’m happy. I hope yours gets better.
You do and are
It absolutely is about whether the guitar was damaged or not, that’s extremely relevant information and you’re trying to disregard it because that’s the only way you have any chance of not sounding like a complete fucking moron
I’ve got a guitar with a damaged mid pickup, I picked it up for a song, it roughs up the sound something bad, but the thing is that for what I use it to play that roughness helps give me the tone I’m looking for. I have an old Crate amp that inches closer to the end with every session, and its garbled death rattles add precisely what I want to the sound.
Standardization is for hacks. You don’t get to decide what other people are looking for out of their art.
And just for posterity, what do you play?
I haven’t played an actual instrument in decades, got a lot of musician friends though and I do still play with audio software. You can get any tone in existence with fully repaired and properly functioning equipment if you’re halfway competent, this is cope. Get good and fix your shit.
“My friends play music, so I know better than you.”
Douche.
I’m right and you know it, get good and fix your shit clown
Not wrong to do. Wrong to do without asking first.
Depends what “fix” means, but if you didn’t get ripped off for $200, yes.
Getting it professionally tuned isn’t unreasonable imo, especially if the neck/pegs are misaligned, but in no world should that cost $200 (and don’t try to fix a misalignment).
Once you start making changes that can’t be undone, you’ve crossed the line. Get it tuned, get a nice strap (with mounting hardware, if needed), get a polishing kit or nicer case, hell, even get a replacement bridge/pegs and tools for working with a guitar, but don’t make permanent changes yourself (or have anyone else do so). All of those together could be well over $200, but you’d describe that as a tuneup and buying accessories, not taking the guitar “to a pro to fix it.”
Caveat that some people don’t like non-musicians or anyone else even touching their instruments, but I’d like to think that would be obvious to a spouse, even one who might have assumed that permanent changes to an instrument they don’t own are okay.
I’m a non-musician and my husband has a somewhat beaten up, but favored instrument that he learned on, so I’ll send this to him to see if my instinct is right (for my relationship, which does not mean it would be right for anyone else).
Though tbf, even thinking it might be okay, I got my husband a new instrument instead of messing with his beloved one, just because it occurred to me that he might react like the husband in the OP, and I didn’t want to risk it. Of course, he could also have then felt guilty about using the new one because it’s not the one he loves and felt guilty about using the old one because I gifted him a “nicer” one. I was lucky in that he’d already branched out into related instruments and the new one could fill a new niche, so wouldn’t compete with the old, making me less worried about him feeling conflicted [I’m so sorry about that sentence, I’m imagining trying to structure it in German without nominalizing any of the clauses and… woof].
I sent him the green text, and apparently he offered to fix a friend’s instrument in the past and got an earful. He would have been fine with me getting his old one fixed up, but he’s happy to have the new one
fake: 4chan poster has a husband
Gay: 4chan poster has a husband
I for one don’t like people touching my shit. Especially shot that I’ve already put effort into myself. Ask first before you do something like that.
Yeah, absolutely. If you took something that I painted (I can’t paint, fwiw) and had it touched up, fuck you.
He didn’t make this guitar, he found it, and it was damaged
It says that he salvaged and repaired himself.
it also says he did it in high school, and that an actual professional did actual repairs later. It’s possible he was some sort of shop class prodigy, but it’s far more likely that he barely managed to restring the thing and was delusional about the extent of what he repaired
Beat up old guitar in need of refurbishment:
The lead singer from Cake has one of the worst sounding guitar tones you’ll ever hear, but it’s perfect in the context of their songs. ‘Fixing’ it to make it sound good would ruin it. https://youtu.be/tEvcj6Nns_Y
Any tone in existence can be achieved with repaired and properly functioning equipment by a competent musician, avoiding repair because they don’t know how to do that is embarassing
The obsession I have with Trigger…
I love that Willie, a very rich man, still plays THIS guitar and only this guitar. Like, you go to concerts and there’s a guitar tech grabbing different instruments off stage, swapping them out. But ol’ Willie just up there with bus up Trigger looking like she’s about to collapse into splinters. But she produces such a unique sound that no other guitar can match.
This guitar has lived a full life. It even has its own wikipedia page.
There’s a video of it getting “repaired” out there somewhere.
There’s an entire section of the article titled “maintenance”, he apparently does get it regularly repaired
anon:
congratulations, you're being rescuedguitar: “…”
anon:
please do not resistElectric guitars are little more than a piece of wood, metal strings, and a transducer. For a lot of musicians what matters most is the sentimental value of their model. What she did was basically rob the owner of that.
I never really understood paying a lot of money for a solid body electric; it really is just the sum of its parts.
I bought a budget epiphone Les Paul and just swapped out the electronics (and tuning knobs) with resale Gibson parts. Sounds great for less than $400.
What exactly do you think was altered and stolen exactly?
Can you shut up please
If you have to ask the internet if you are an asshole then it’s either because you are definitely an asshole, or because you are karma farming - in which case, you are an asshole.
the AITA on reddit is one of it’s most popular things, and lots of people farm content from it.
because people love judging the shit out of other people and explaining how awful they are. or justifying their assholery.
it’s arm chair quarter backing other people’s relationship drama. and everyone is an NFL relationship coach in their own mind.
people ask the internet because social approval is very important to folks and they need to have their biases validated.
Plus there are podcasts that use those subs for content, so people submit their “creative” writing to see if they can get featured.
Narcissists feeding on other narcissists. Reddit was full of those people, and Lemmy also has them.
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: yes, but longer.
A worn appearance is often desired on old guitars. In some cases, it can even increase its value.
That, and the OP probably did what would be considered finishing someone’s puzzle for them.
Currently in the market for a vintage and, while I agree with your sentiment, unless the guitar’s name is Trigger I’ve only seen prices drop with wear and tear.
It’s very situational. Cracks and dings? No good. Natural checkering from age on an old acoustic? Higher value.
Doesn’t Fender sell pre-worn guitars for a premium?
Ecce homo will always make me laugh. Check the mugshot pic of the lady author. Hilarious!