b'nose. Sorry, I know thats horrible, but the ideamade a huge difference, and was central to its came to me one night when I was playing pool andsuccess. Here is a word of advice for any start up sat down rather clumsily while holding a cue just inbusiness. Keep the admin as simple as possible, but front of my face. Foul, miss one life.completely accurate and bang up to date. If you I know this story is supposed to be about guitars,dont know where you are, you cant possibly know but cues use the same materials as guitars, andwhere you are going or how to get there, Ive just the technology of keeping wood straight in a cue isthought that up, its rather good. much the same as making it bend in guitar sides.Any sport involves levels of calculation and The way a cue hits the ball has many similaritiesmuscle control that are far beneath our conscious to the physics of a musical instrument. In fact cuesawareness - muscle memory takes over much of the are balanced and voiced in a similar fashion tojudgment and movement. Playing a guitar is exactly guitar bracing, and like a cricket bat, a good cuethe same - on a conscious level we are not aware of makes a good noise. In order to explain conceptsmost of the fingering and hand movement that is such as headroom in a guitar, I like to talk aboutrequired. Both pastimes involve countless, minute hitting a golf ball, and I can describe attack andshades of choice and implementation every second. decay in sound by talking about badminton, theAsk me to talk about the fine measurements and comparisons are very close.judgements involved in playing snooker one day, Before long the business was very successful. Atbring sandwiches and a drink.one point, a manufacturer from China visited meI had a good team to make the cues, so I took on and showed me copies of my cues, complete withsome interesting consultancy work for a computer model names, and asked me if I liked them. I cantcompany, making assembly equipment, models and remember quite what I did, and Im not sure ifprototypes of digitisers, workstations etc. I built hospital records go back that far.heat-sealing machines for one local company and With the new business I tried hard to get the adminvacuum forming tools for another. I helped make a under proper control. After many false starts,publicity film for the aluminium industry and spent Eddies wife Ann took charge of the office, whicha lot of time rebuilding houses, which is a habit that Eric PulidoOnce one thing starts to go wrong, everything snowballs. We planned to meet at the Jools Holland studio but the datesDavid Meaddidnt work, so I sent off four guitars toDavid is a guitarist, journalist and teacher, meet up with them at a London Hotel. Theand has edited several major guitar carriers delivered them a day late, by which time the band had moved on to Germany.periodicals. Richard BennettThe hotel kindly kept them in store, but theI met him at a guitar show with Gordon, andWhy do Mark Knopfler and Neil Diamond reception shift changed and nobody couldspent a pleasant few hours telling storiesneed a guitarist in their band?Is find the guitars when the band came back.and drinking a little bit. He uses a lot of oddsomeone else playing those famous I arranged to have the guitars redelivered totunings, often with a partial capo on hislines? Maybe they sneak off stage, have the next destination, but they arrived withcustom built Falstaff, and recently askeda cup of tea and come back in time to only a couple of hours to spare before theif I had a Goodfellow available to keep intake all the applause. Anyway,, being whole band set off back home. This sort ofstandard tuning. The only one I had was theasked to work with such people is a huge thing explains why I sometimes get a littleone I was using as a demo because it hadcompliment. If the guitar sound stops grumpy. Eric did buy an Ariel though. slight beauty mark in the timber. It suitedand a bouzouki starts, it is probably David very well, and he calls it Spot. Richard playing one of his two Fyldes.64'