Nevis Island, Cortez Guitars and Me

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I have a vague recollection of a discussion of Cortez guitars on this site, but I couldn't find the topic. I think the discussion was regarding the similarities in the headstock design between Cortez guitars and the Guild G shield.

We were on the island of Nevis last weekend and this band started playing at the beach bar. Holy crap were they good and that's not the rhum talking. I'm not a big fan of steel drums and since they didn't have one, I found the music much more enjoyable. I later discovered the woman playing the tambourine worked at the restaurant at the hotel we stayed at. We chatted quite a bit about the band.

I took a look at the headstock of the guitar played by the lead singer (the man wearing the fedora) and thought, OMG he's playing a Guild. Upon closer inspection, I discovered it's a Cortez and thought I remembered a thread on LTG discussing the similarities. Once again, I don't think the rhum was impacting my ability to think at this point of the trip. During a break, I spoke to the owner of the Cortez and he allowed me to photograph it, hold it and I then played the first couple of verse's of Jimmy Buffet's "Volcano" for him as the rest of the band came over and watched me play. I was playing bar chords on the eight and sixth fret and they seemed quite impressed, although I don't think they knew the song, even with a dormant volcano as the focal point of the entire island. For the guitar, all of the songs they played were in the first position and were in the key of C. I think they were all two chord songs. I was probably a bit jealous of the vibe they created and it was a lesson learned. At home, I know a guy who never wants to play two songs in a row in the same key.

The action on his guitar was not great, the wood was incredibly dry. As you can see the bridge pins are all different diameters, the nut has been doctored and I'm not even sure the guitar was fully in tune. Who knows when he last changed the strings.

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As TX mentioned in another thread, if you right click the photo, you can enlarge it and get a better glimpse of those bridge pins.
 
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