What Makes a Guitar Valuable

I love all guitars but really love electric guitars. It does not matter what name is on the headstock. It's the way that the guitar sounds and feels. That is from both a listener and a player perspective. I've had my hands on way too many to count and have seen others in a blind "what guitar is this" test. I can say that I am biased towards budget guitars, but that's only because I have never played a $10,000 guitar. With that being said, I'd like to make the case that guitars are meant to be played and displayed at different times in their life. So, what makes a guitar valuable? The age, the name, the color, the shape, the design, who it came from?

1994 Gibson Les Paul Studio

I do own a Gibson Les Paul and will probably be the most expensive guitar I'll ever buy. It was my workhorse guitar for everything and after 30 years it was painfully obvious that all the heavy use parts needed to be replaced / repaired. I wore the red wine glossy finish down to bare wood on one side. The tuners were shot, the bridge had corroded to pieces, the neck and frets were filthy and I removed some ill advised stickers of my youth. When I started guitar repair it was all a learning experience. The parts I needed were not expensive, and the labor component was my introduction to the craft.

Replacing Tuners on Gibson Les Paul

To me, that created this contradiction in my mind. I asked myself, "Since I upgraded and replaced the parts to make a better guitar, shouldn't the value go up. This is where things get a bit cloudy. Lawsuit guitars were a huge deal during the 70s and 80s with the big four brands all competing to get their instrument into the hands of the most marketable players. In those days image was everything for the marketing and release of a guitar. When production quantity increased with cheaper machine manufactured parts, it was inevitable that a real good copy of a big brand guitar was coming. When production overseas became affordable the wave of competition only got bigger.

I have since learned the lesson that there is a distinction between road guitars, studio guitars, and prized guitars. That is where the contradictions in my head went away. I was filled with excitement when I found out that the budget replicas were showing up at the shows I was going to. They were not the workhorses, but they were there in support none the less. If a part of anyone's kit needed to be looked after, then a local guitar shop would usually come to the rescue with a suitable replacement or stand in. I have guitars that are near and dear to my musical journey and I have guitars that can be willingly passed off to any player that wants to give it a go. Interviews from players of all genres reference the one (or more) guitar that they have to have in their arsenal.

So what makes a guitar special? Is it the person who helped you acquire it? Was it gifted? Was is the previous owner? Does it have any one of a kind features? Is it the way the pickups sound through your amp? Is it special because you built it? Did it come from a famous guitar shop? All of these are valid questions every guitar player asks themselves when considering an investment in a guitar. Many players will tell you that they started, learned, and became proficient on the same instrument. Players like me have started on introductory guitars worked up to the next level and then began getting the gear that complimented their sound.

The next phase of selecting a guitar comes from the guitar hero complex. Back when I started reading guitar magazines it was about what looked cool in a video or on a cover pic. No one cared about tuning stability, the angle of the headstock, tone wood or the pickups. Those are technical aspects that were learned and incorporated into the guitar hunt. I used to think the amp was responsible for my sound when in fact it covered up my lack of practice. When a player idolizes another famous player's gear and begins building a rig like that it confines the identity of the guitar. Lots of beginning guitarists realize that buying an expensive guitar does not make you sound better. Putting in the hours practicing does. I've played with lots of super talented players that don't care what logo is on the headstock. They just give it %100 every chance they get.

So next let's talk about the funny shapes that guitars come in. Dating back to the early 1900s, I've seen sketches and drawings of the original box guitars built by the founders. The pieces of wood that they used were all hand carved into existence and shaped according to their personal preference. Do you think that they thought their hunk of wood guitar could get $100,000 at auction 75 years later? We aren't going to debate which is better or worse or anything like that. I'm just gonna talk about the allure of the guitar. Seeing the bright paint jobs in the shops lined along the walls was like my version of a car show. The styles that represented the cutaway and double cutaways obviously made a reputation in numbers alone. There are a lot of the models in the 80s and 90s that embraced hard lines and edges with sharp points and feats geometric graffiti.

After 30 years my journey with guitars has been filled with learning opportunities that I never would have found anywhere else. I have a deep respect for all those that have built and played guitars before me. The ability to mix wood, metal rubber, plastic, glue, and paint will never be the same from person to person. If you have a guitar that has lasted decades, chances are there is gonna be some work that needs to be done to keep it functional. If you have a guitar that is museum worthy, then keep it that way. If you release it back into the wild, chances are it'll never have the same identity again. For those that have appointed themselves the keepers of the most infamous guitars of all time, keep up the good work. These things don't take care of themselves and are notorious for having personality quirks as they age. Sounds familiar right?

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