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From the beginning of practicing guitar, Jason and Ha had planned to be in a garage band together to perform live and put out recorded music on cassette. Work on Rgo luthier services took over: very little practice on guitar, practically no time for amps, scribbling sheetmusic delayed to the summer, and creating original music did not happen often enough. By the new year 1993, the plan was readjusted to reunite the two Fender Strats, Ha's unevolved revolutionary EinRouge, which was the early 1980s Fender Lead II, with Jason's increasingly surreally expensive Turquoise, which was Fenderized in a few short months along the way from its original plain ol' factory model 1970s Stratocaster playable condition.
    The EinRouge was the normalization and preservation guitar that underwent light examination. Ha disassembled it one time only, to discuss ongoing educational challenges with Jason. That occasion spawned GuykerCo and Modern Cooper at an important time for the two teenagers when they pushed forward in their apprenticeship with special problems presented in the industry by Gibson, Jackson, Ibanez, Rickenbacker, Yamaha, all the other guitarmakers they had set aside to create Skeletor and develop Turquoise. They had avoided developing amps, speakers, microphones, the sound rig, until then.
    Other than the two times Ha restrung the lower 5 strings, Jason tried to repair the wine red Frnder guitar with springs from a ballpoint pen into the high E finetuner; they left it that way for a while. He finally came around to insisting the whole finetuner be replaced to match the other five, so they did. Jason had the strange pleasure of stringing the high E and tuning the EinRouge--and failed miserably. He gave up. Ha chose a different string, a B from a 12-string acoustic set, and restrung it and invited him to try again. When he got all strings in tune, he was not satisfied and quit again, believing the tune-up impressed him enough it should be a double E string but bigger sounding than tremelo on a mandolin. The EinRouge had a tendency to be a stubborn G.I. or Gman-only guitar, a government property in the way Jason had difficulties grasping its quirks. He followed his hunches and used Ha's Vietnamese mandolin. He had so much fun focusing on getting the tremelo picking correct, he forgot about any electric guitar. She let him score one more point of a RunMeMore kata, if he could tremelo pick on one nylon string on the Yamaha. He did; he chose the top 2 strings and the bottom 2 or 3 strings, one at a time. The middle 2 or 3vstrings he did not try much, saying he could wait for a 12-string steel strings acoustic guitar--or a banjo. On the Yamaha folk guitar, he could not earn another merit point for playing like on a banjo, but he certainly tried again on the EinRouge. He understood and declined giving himself a merit point. Ha joked, she got one bayou bohick backwoods hillbilly merit point for her rhythm accompaniment on an invisible washboard with an invisible accroutrement simply not there in her hand. He believed her, so he wanted Teacher Ha to play along while he was on the EinRouge for improvisation, his ticket to skipping recital downstairs that day. Sure enough, Ha clapped and clapped on her thighs, and he played the guitar with deftness: a little blues and jazz and folk, a country tune improvised nicely, two key changes, several different right hand styles, two seamless fingerboard styles, perfect foot tapping. Then he veered into Rock, ended as First Guitar soloing after Ha had prompted with her silenced rhythm she would listen instead. Bravely shy, he counted six measures into it and quit. He said he needed her with a baton in her hand, it was all opera after that. But plugging in their guitars could CURE them of venturing into opera. That stop helped him to organize his workflow for the next four sessions together with Ha.
    With all six strings on, assuming it would be plugged in, it did not sound good enough for either a teacher or a student, nor as good in no-amps low volume as either of his Fenders. It was a jam guitar, not a performance guitar. His ambition dropped the notion that it could even be ready in a studio for any other musician, so he definitely wanted Ha to try to record on the EinRouge in the near future.
    He later quit to go home and fetch his amps. She wondered if he had access to a Pignose. He said that was better for carrying for the walk. He would be back the same day.
    Jason was simply used to an electric guitar as a guitar player and acoustic sounds as a luthier. Every time he played a few on the EinRouge, he was a musician, do he would quit guitaring and handed it back. Something different and steadily advanced every time he played. The difference between EinRouge and all other Rgo assignment guitars and side projects was Ha's guitar transferred the upgraded musicianship back to Jason. The music lessons, the discussions on theory, the sessions on design, the coursework in crafting guitars, the business management, everything culminated easily for Jason when he wanted access to the EinRouge to free himself from the density of their work together. It was Jason's decompression guitar.