36 Views of an Accordion, #1

This is my [actual] first instrument, inherited from my father, who didn't accomplish much on it. I was forced to take it for two years when I was 12 until I rebelled and threw it over for guitar. I built my first electric guitar in woodshop (don't have it - sold it). I made the body from mahogany and the neck from ash, and bought the other bits, tuners, fretboard, pickups etc. I hid the pickups behind some stylish red plastic. It worked fine. My first song was "Pipeline" by the Ventures.

The accordion sat around the house for 50 years before I noticed that it would make an interesting photo subject, and took this image of it. I love this photo. It inspired me to continue taking many more musical instrument images, some of which you can see on my website (if you have Flash, sorry iPad and iPhone users). I took several interesting shots of it on this date (incl #2 and #5), but can only post one to look at.

I traded a print of this photo for work on the actual accordion to get it playing again. It now has new black straps. I liked those old ones for nostalgic reasons, but alas they threw them out during the repair.