They Live

I've got GAS.

That's Guitar Acquisition Syndrome (or Gear Acquisition Syndrome to some). You get laid off and what do you do? Look for a job? No. You start buying guitars. Now, I'm not talking expensive guitars. I'm talking cheap guitars. The guitars we called "junky" back in the '80s. Now people collect those guitars. But most of those guitars really are kind of between "good" and "junky". You can buy a pretty good brand new guitar these days for $300. But there are a lot of old guitars out there from the '50s, '60s and '70s going for $50 to $150 which just need some TLC to bring them up to blowing away those $300 guitars. And a lot of them are American made or pretty good quality Japanese.

Problem is this GAS thing. You can really pile up a lot of those "junky" guitars. We're talking Teisco, Silvertone, Harmony, Kay, you name it, people are getting rid of them... and I'm buying them.

So what do I do with them?

I'm reviving them. Resurrecting them. Not restoring necessarily. That can get expensive. People know you want the missing Teisco roller bridge and so they'll charge $85 on eBay, even though the guitars that use that 2.5 inch non-standard bridge cost about $100. No, I'm resurrecting... bringing back from the dead, just a few things here and there to make them playable, maybe use a completely different roller bridge which is much cheaper. But now the guitar works and plays great.  And now it can easily compete against the drones from Fender/Squier and Gibson/Epiphone... not that they're bad or anything... but let's face it... they're kind of... well... boring these days. Their idea of diversity is changing the color or finish and putting some famous guitarist's name on the headstock. :: yawn ::

Come on, let's bring back the golden age of guitars, when there weren't just Ibanez, Gibson and Fender, but you also had Domino, Danelectro, Harmony, Kay, Kent, Kimberly, Silvertone, Supro, Kawai, Teisco, Guyatone, the list goes on....

Let's bring these guitars back to life. Give them new opportunities to make great music.

This blog will be devoted to talking about these guitar projects, such as my very first project, a resurrection of my Kalamazoo KG-2. Stay tuned!