Raking a cow toward Dursey.

Stories of the Inner-Craft : If you’ve ever watched a guitar review and thought “grand, but what’s it like to play?”, this is for you.

Our new band member had barely sat down before he asked, “Is he always this technical?” - the way a man might ask whether the tide always comes in that fast. I didn’t take offence. I’d just brushed aside a couple of YouTube reviewers he’d been relying on, the sort of lads who can talk about a guitar for twenty minutes without ever once mentioning what happens when you actually play the thing. Plenty of adjectives, mind you. Enough warmth to heat a small parish, but not a hint of how the instrument behaves when you lean into it.

There’s a particular kind of vagueness in guitar reviews that reminds me of Irish rural weather forecasts: “a soft day”, “a fresh breeze”, “a touch of mist rolling in”. Lovely to hear, useless if you’re trying to decide whether to bring the washing in. The guitar equivalent is “vintage‑leaning”, “airy”, “woody”, “modern clarity”. Grand words, all of them, but none will tell you whether the guitar will buckle when you dig in, or bloom when you ease off, or behave itself at a session where the bodhrán player has notions.

I’ve learned I need something sturdier than atmospherics. When I pick up a guitar, I want to know its temperament - whether it’s the kind that’ll meet you halfway, or the kind that sulks until you coax it, or the kind that has opinions about your right hand. That’s not technical in the YouTube sense; it’s just the way I listen. I want to understand the instrument as a partner, not a decorative object that photographs well beside a potted fern.

Over time I’ve built a small set of habits that help me figure this out. They’re not rules, just the anchors (or hooks) I return to when I’m trying to understand a guitar on its own terms. Little tests, small rituals, the sort of things you develop when you’ve spent enough years in rooms where the heating doesn’t quite work and the only honest thing in the place is the instrument in your hands. And every now and then, usually on a back road in Derbyshire or Donegal, you’ll pass a sign offering advice so blunt it could strip paint off a gable wall. You read it the way you’d watch a West Cork man raking a cow toward Dursey in sideways rain - with respect, with silence, and with the full understanding that whatever’s happening is both entirely normal and absolutely none of your business.

I’ve started gathering those anchors in one place. It’s a living document - part method, part field notes and I’ll keep refining it as I go. If you’ve ever watched a glowing review and thought, “Grand, but what does it do?”, you might find it useful.

The method page lives here. Treat it like a field gate: open it if you like, close it after you, and mind the latch. https://myguitar.blog/method