So yeah, I took my guitar to Noll Guitars in Warwick, which is on the third floor of a repurposed factory building. When I walked in the first thing I noticed was three old pinball machines against the wall to the right (
kerri9494 has been on the lookout for places with pinball so I've become pinball-sensitive; they didn't appear to be plugged in so I'm not sure if they were working or what.After a little while the guy who, I believe, runs the place came over and asked me what was up. I explained that I wanted my guitar to be amplified, said the style I played, etc...
He then proceeded to give me an unabridged history of the guitar pickup, at the end of which it became clear that I would at least want a piezo pickup (decent sound, minimal feedback, minimal guitar destruction). He took out one of his guitars, which had both a pickup and an internal microphone, and hooked me up to a soundboard, where I could here the pickup alone, the microphone alone, and a mixture of the two. The ultimate, apparently, is to have both, with most of the sound coming from the pickup but a little mike sound in there too to provide a little more realistic sound (with the mike you get the sound of your fingers on the strings, etc.). But the microphone setup cost $400 (the pickup was less than half that) and you wouldn't want just a mike (too much feedback at high volumes, and it didn't seem to sound as good as the pickup by itself anyway) so that part of the purchase was postponed indefinitely, as was the equalizer box.
While the guy was writing up the work order, a younger guy came by and asked me if I had heard of Blind Blake, and talked about how my playing had reminded him a little of Blind Blake and how he had recently heard him for the first time and had gone out and bought the CDs of his complete works (he was a fingerpicking blues guitar player from, I think, Atlanta in the 20s and 30s) and so on. This was quite a compliment, as Blind Blake was a really amazing guitar player, although I had been playing a Robert Johnson song so I dunno.
Then I left! The end.