I saw the Chapman Stick display at the Musical Instrument Museum in Scottsdale, AZ. Really cool...had to have one after that.

A good friend and multi-instrumentalist showed me photos of Alphonso Johnson and Tony Levin in the mid 80's. I told him I know the instrument: Kajagoogoo's bass player (Nick Beggs) plays that thing. And then almost 30 years passed and I bought my first Stick ...

I was teaching/managing an audio production university course at the time and had a recording studio also. A student remarked one day that he had a Chapman Stick , maybe I'd like to see it. I'd only ever seen the little ads in Guitar player but thought hell yes " at lunch time we're going to your house in my car" We did that and there in the original wood case with book cables etc was a Shedua # 290. His next questions was do you want to buy it? I ran down to the bank & came back with $800 and took it away.
It sat round the studio for many years I was fascinated but never really latched onto it. Some years later I turned 50 and decided to go after it properly. I remembered videos I'd seen in the early days of the internet of Greg Howard & also Ron Baggerman. The rest is history , it's literally changed my life , and among work , family etc etc I've made some progress. I have 3 now and it's taken me to Europe 3 times for Stick Camps, the best money ever spent since I love the instrument , Europe & the people I've met in particular. Steve Adelson has been a great online mentor & mate also.

I can't remember where I first saw a Stick, but I'm guessing it was Tony Levin at a King Crimson concert in '95. All I know is that I was fascinated with this instrument. I ran into Bob Culbertson at the Ann Arbor Art Fair one year (though I didn't know who he was at that time) and was captivated hearing him play. I chatted him up during a break, hoping he'd offer to let me give it a try!

I became a luthier and after building three guitars I thought of trying to build a Stick. Some research convinced me it would be an engineering project as much as lutherie (electric guitars are very forgiving in that you can often correct through setup any errors in construction though all three came out almost perfect.) I finally bit the bullet and put down a deposit on a Railboard in January of '21 and bought a used rosewood model while waiting for the Railboard to arrive.

I now have a Grand Railboard on order.

The very place that I first heard the Chapman Stick is today up in flames.
This is where it all started for me, at the Banyan Tree park in Lahaina.

Wow! I only recently read Michael Kollwitz's book "Stick With It" in which he writes about playing there.

And I have his album Under The Banyan Tree https://michaelkollwitz-chapmanstick.bandcamp.com/album/under-the-banyan-tree

It was sometime in the early 80s, I think. I'd been playing bass for a couple of years and was in college at the time. I knew very little about music or instruments but I was obsessed with being a bass player.

I went to a music trade show of some sort in the Northeast US, where I'm from. Don't remember where or what event it was. I'd seen the Dregs play at my university and Andy West, the bass player at the time, had a Steinberger. It captured my imagination, and I was in search of one to look at for myself.

My memory of the show is that there was a Stick booth, with at least one instrument set up so that you could play it through headphones. I picked it up, put my fingers on it more or less at random and... the sound was magical. I probably just put my fingers down and accidentally made a nice chord.

That memory has remained vivid for 40-odd years.

I now have a Railboard I bought used about four years ago. It was an impulse purchase and thus far I've not put the time or effort into doing anything with it, devoting my time to the bass... it's been a "someday" thing. I'm starting to mess about with it some more, motivated by Youtube videos (in particular Kevin Keith).

Right now I'm just trying to wrap my head around the bass-side tuning... I've been playing bass for decades and the whole tuned-in-fourths thing is burned into my brain. Taking it slow and deliberate, working on scales and intervals.

There is another way...

Is it safe to assume you're aware of https://stick.com/method/articles/mirrored4ths/

Actually, there's more than one other way (see sig)...

Emmett invented an extremely flexible instrument.

That Northeast guitar trade show was probably 1983 at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden. I believe it was Emmett's only NY exhibit. Steve Oz helped out. I was there as well and bought my first Stick a few months later with the help of Paul Ash in NY. Things have certainly evolved.
The journey is perpetual

Steve A

First time I saw Tony Levin as a part of King Crimson, I thought, what the hell is that? From there I also saw Trey Gunn's Warr Guitar playing and was astonished by the technique and the tone. Especially the weirder stuff from around 2000-2003, the improvs and that.

My first instrument was keyboard, and from there I went into guitar and bass because they felt like more expressive instruments to me. I felt like I didn't fit with being a guitarist or a bassist really. The versatility spoke a lot to me, and I was having difficulties with the normal techniques. Bass tapping was a start but still too difficult. Ended up going 10 string with fifths on each side.