I live near Gloucester in England. My guitar is a Saga Gitane Lulo Rheinhardt. Since I bought it I've been playing it almost every day and now I'm concerned that the frets are wearing out! I actually bought my guitar after listening to two good players at a gypsy guitar festival. They were jamming together outside the main marquee with me as the only audience! So I was able to feed them requests for tunes and they took it in turns to play rhythm and lead. As a result I could compare the sound of the two guitars; the Lulo Rheinhardt had the better tone and so I imported one from the US. The stock GHD strings on it were rubbish. The G string wore out in a week so I immediately replaced them all with Argentines - so much better!
I would love to be able to play lead but I'm not fast enough. With the Grilles on this site, the Cosimini books and other sources I can play rhythm to quite a few tunes. I'm now playing Gypsy jazz with a friend at work who is brilliant at lead improvisation. Sometimes I'm listening so carefully to what he's playing I forget what I should be playing! We're currently working on Lulu Swing (terrific grille posted in the Forum here), Blue Bossa (learnt Kevin Nolan Bossa strum) & Anouman (working on taking it in turns to do rhythm and lead. I particularly like the Cm9 version of Blue Bossa grille on this site.
With another friend who plays the flute, we've taken a shine to Hungaria, Swing Gitane, Blue Bossa and Les Feuilles Mortes (Autumn Leaves).
I'm always interested to play Gypsy guitar with anyone around the Gloucester, Cheltenham, Forest of Dean area!
Cheers: Tom
