Guitars are almost indestructible, and there is a little goldmine out there
Have you got an old electric guitar that has been hanging around, or maybe an old acoustic with a couple of strings missing? They may be repairable, in fact electric guitars and pretty much indestructible, so why not get it fixed?
One of the problem areas on the guitar is the fretboard or the neck. Sometimes the neck can warp, but on a well-made guitar you can adjust this by tensioning or relaxing the truss rod that runs through the middle of the neck. Now this is a job for somebody who knows what they are doing, so I would suggest that you find a guitar repairer who could do this for you, they will also be able to restring the guitar and maybe change the tuning pegs if required.
I was always amazed as a teenager that when you spoke to people about playing the guitar they always had one knocking around the house somewhere. It always surprised me how many people didn’t play but they seemed to have a guitar and as I was getting into teaching at the time I would often get them to pass my name around.
A good friend of mine who is an architect keeps a guitar and amp in his office. He says it is a good talking point when people come in to discuss a new project, getting the conversation off to a relaxed start.
In the years that I’ve been teaching I’ve known a number of occasions where old guitar has been found in the loft and it’s turned out to be quite a find. The most extreme and for example of this was somebody found an original Gretsch White Falcon that came in the original Gretsch case and this was worth a few thousand pounds 20+ years ago. Although this is unusual there often finds of classic less well-known guitars such as Hofner, and EKO and even the odd Fender Stratocaster.
A few years ago I put the word out for some old guitars to be donated for charity, I had given to me around about 20 guitars that I was able to repair and get into a number of schools that were short on musical instruments. Even in that number there are a couple of Fender Squire’s that were literally given to me for nothing. So this might be a little bit of a goldmine if you are willing and able to do a little bit of repair work and TLC on the instrument.
I am personally keen on the whole idea of recycling and therefore the idea of an old guitar just being thrown away to me is quite abhorrent. Guitars have their own character, even the cheap ones, and with some attention can be made into something quite special. I have an old Ibanez Road Star that I had rebuilt. The guitar actually cost me nothing because it had been left in a school by an ex pupil for a few years and as he had gone back to some exotic country he was very unlikely to come back to retrieve the instrument. The basic build quality of the guitar was very good so I just stripped down and repainted it but then spent some money on pickups and a nice scratch plate. This is one of the guitars that I used to gig, playing in a different tuning and using it for bottleneck blues playing.
I mentioned earlier that electric guitars are pretty much indestructible, so what about the acoustic guitars. The obvious weakness on the acoustic guitar is the acoustic body which is basically a hollow box, and if this gets damaged it might be difficult to repair. It’s not impossible but it is something that you would have to do because the cost of taking it to a professional unless the instrument is a high quality would really not be worth it. However that does not stop the instrument being useful for parts and the same goes for the electric guitar of course. You might fancy building something yourself but using the hardware from an old instrument.
Now if you have an artistic bent then and unplayable instrument might be made into a work of art or even dare I say this into some sort of container; which takes me to a story of an old classical guitar teacher of mine who was horrified that one of his pupils had old guitars with plants growing out of them hanging on their wall.
So with all these guitars knocking around, by the law of averages some of them could be valuable and a good guitar keeps its value not necessarily from the point of view of sale as that is market dependant, but certainly from the point of view of its usefulness.
So if you are keen on salvaging and repairing a guitar but do not know how to play I have a free course that can help
So until next time
Vic
Visit www.bluescampuk.co.uk for links to the free course
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