Extremely well done Gene. You provide a well informed and articulate voice to the Stick community as we soldier on without Emmett. He thought the world of you. And he told me so. So glad FHF is active again.

Great thread. Full of useful info. I offer some useless info:

Back before 9/11 I carried a bottle of Virginia red wine to my translator friend in Japan, inside my gig bag. It was a little bulky, but it arrived without incident. Toshio, a huge red wine fan, was delighted. Those days are long gone...

Silly story about travelling with Stick.

When I first got my stick. About 6 months later or so, I flew out to California to see the stick night at the guitar merchant. I'm thinking Gene was hosting. Bob Culbertson Rick alegria Emmett , and Rachel flowers, were on stage. It is a very good memory.

Regardless,. I brought my 10 string in a hard case. I carried it all the way to the airplane, gate checked it. When I got to California my hard case was dented big time, almost like they threw it into the plane. Thank God , the Stick was not damaged. It was only the case the top of the headstock made an impression on the case, it was a pretty good triangle and the case did not close properly afterwards. I tried to file a claim,. They made me send the case down to Texas, they did a half ass job of trying to repair it. When I got it back it wasn't much better. I gave up, and straightened it out myself. When Emmett saw the case he thought it was from the original shipping and thought about filing a claim with ups , but I explained it was United, and it had just happened. He kept my Stick for a few days because he didn't like the action. He fixed it and sent it back to me within a few days. I was amazed. I don't remember paying for the service.

Funny thing is I flew United. I think there are quite a few horror stories on traveling with sticks on this forum.
The alto stick fits in the overhead compartment. I'm not a professional musician so I don't have to carry around my big sticks. Good memories thanks for invoking them..

https://youtu.be/5YGc4zOqozo

Sent from my motorola one 5G ace using Tapatalk

Thanks for that Michael, I know he cherished your friendship (and engineering skills!) as well. We both valued his musical wit and vision, it's a joy to share in those memories and create new ones along the way.

I do miss the days of rolling into the airport with 30 minutes to depart.

I do recall that afternoon Rey, what a fun get together. Rachel was unhinged that night!

Even before you mentioned United I was thinking of that video. If you hadn't posted it I would have. Heck, I'll convert the llink to embeded anyway.

Hi Gene, great video! I think I would feel safe checking in my instrument in a stuffed hard case following your advice I actually learned to stuff up inside the case "the hard way" back in 2006. I was flying Stockholm-Boston-San Francisco. I checked in a tenor sax in a hard case as well as a flight case with electronics. At San Francisco airport none of my luggage turned up in the luggage area. Everybody grabbed their trunks and left until it was only me there, waiting... for nothing. A guard said I could go to a nearby office and ask about it, and so I did. "I'm sorry, Mr, but your luggage has been declared dangerous and taken to a safe area for termination, unless claimed by the owner within 30 minutes". It was only 10 minutes left by then so I ran like crazy and in five minutes I arrived at a huge concrete hall with a sealed-off area, sized like a tennis yard. In the center of that square, I spotted my sax hard case and I jumped over the fence and ran towards it. "Mr, you are not allowed to enter the restricted area!" someone shouted behind me and I yelled back "I'm the owner and I'm claiming my luggage!". PHEW... (a similar nightmare happened in Italy, but then nothing got crushed).

So I got the sax back but the rest of the gear had been sent to Chicago and I was promised to have it sent to me in Santa Cruz (which happened three days later, the night before the first concert was due). When opening the sax case I found out that the case had been thrown around violently and the instrument inside was damaged. With borrowed tools, I managed to fix the damage to fifty percent but that sax is still not as it used to be. Since then I have always stuffed cloths around instruments inside hard shells. Except for once in 2011 when playing for the French radio in Paris because they sent me two tickets, one for me and one for the SG12 strapped to the seat beside me. I don't think that will ever happen to me again A few years ago I took a bus from Stockholm to Paris to play some lower-profile gigs there and when switching bus drivers in Germany the new guy thought that my SG12 was "too big for you to enter the bus with". That was scary, I had to argue for ten minutes to get clearance (it was in fact 20 mm too long, so I had taken a chance with it). Next week I'm going to play two concerts at nearby churches and I'm so happy to be able to go there by metro and public bus lines. Oh, I just remembered... once at Instanbul airport it took a long time to leave the craft and walk to the (enormous) luggage area. On the other side of the hall, I saw my Grand in its hard case, simply left alone on the floor right among busy crowds of people running by in all directions. Anyone could have just picked it up and walked away.