Anyway, he went there to try out a Martin and, in my opinion, they told him a huge lie to scare him out of ordering a guitar online.  They told him he had to be careful because there were a lot of new Martin guitars out there today that are duds that will never sound good.  They told him that Martin does not even have control of these dud guitars. They also cautioned that this local Martin dealer has to send duds back to manufacturers frequently and that they end up getting sold on the Internet or EBAY since guitar players wont buy these duds after hearing them. He then asked if we bought these other dealer’s “Sent Back Duds” and sell them on the Internet?  This is simply a scare tactic to try to keep a customer from buying a guitar on the Internet at a better price than they are willing to take. 

Well at least now he knows he can't trust the guys at that music store.  They just flat out lied to him.  We buy between 500 and 1000 guitars from Martin each year.  We have never sent a dud-sounding guitar back to Martin because we have never gotten a dud from Martin.  Think about it.  Martin never, ever, ever, sells seconds; they never get out of the building.  While touring the US factories of many top guitar makers one will often an entire box of upper end guitars and some as much $10,000 retail each and they will have all been sawn in half because there was some sort of crack or finish quality issue with them and some of them were just burned by the final buffer work.  Martin is no different.  They just don't let substandard guitars out of the building because it would hurt the reputation of the brand. 

 They moved it all to a Korean Manufacturer last fall and now those guitars have a designation of AX or TX(Textured Models) and they are Korean.  All LX guitars and Adamas guitars are still made in USA.  That pretty much means anything that was made in the USA with gold hardware is still made in USA along with Adamas and anything without is somewhere else.  However, there are few Celebrity and Celebrity Deluxe guitars that have gold hardware too, but they have never been made in USA.  The USA factory in Connecticut is still making Legend and Elite guitars and Custom Legend and Custom Elite and Adamas guitars along with the Hybrid Electrics.  Also, Fender has moved the Guild USA Acoustic plant to the Connecticut Ovation Plant and they are now being made in New England again. This transition all happened in the second half of 2008 and is all up and running now.  I have not seen any of the Connecticut built Guild guitars as of this writing. However, I have not noticed any change in the quality of the Ovation line during all this.  They all seem to be as good as ever.

I also took one of my old 1957, 00018 Martins.  He really did some nice shots of it with different plant arrangements and a horse saddle and even an American Flag.  He actually has an antique phone booth in his studio and did one shot of the suitcase and the guitar in the phone booth which made it look like some guy in 1959 had stopped at the bus station to call his girlfriend one more time before he left on the road.  Don’t get me wrong, I know how to take pictures of guitars and probably very few people alive have snapped more good photographs of quality guitars than I have over the last 40 years.  However, Larry Nance is an ARTIST.  The guy is good!  I couldn’t believe the emotion and the feeling he captured with the lighting and angles he used.  My photography makes people want to buy the guitar, his photography makes people want to buy pictures. 

It made me feel about my pictures kind of like when listening to someone who plays a good ballad and plays all the right chords and sings all the right notes while they are reading it out of a songbook, and then his pictures were like listening to someone with a broken heart sing that same ballad through their pain and really giving their soul to the song.   You know what I mean! The music art is best when the soul is involved.  I saw some pictures of my guitars today that really brought out the soul of the instrument.  When I look at my pictures of guitars I think, wow, what a nice flame maple top, or gee, that is a sweet looking inlay.  When I look at Larry’s pictures of my guitars I think, “what if it could talk,” or “what was the last song it played?” or  “does it miss it’s last owner.”  I know they don’t miss us, but they sure do hear more about us from our heart than almost anyone in our lives. 

Anyway, this was a really cool experience.  He is going to produce some really cool art from those two guitars and if it goes well we will do some of the other old pieces I have.

Have a great weekend and put some soul into that song.

Bro Bobby

Wow! What a day.  We have recently gotten an order of 100 G&L Electric Guitars and Basses in from California.  We are in the process of getting all the photographs done and all the listings up. It is a big job.  With G&L USA Guitars each one is different.  They are all custom made to specs and can have a host of options such as Birdseye Maple Neck and Body Binding, or Double Body Binding and a myriad of different neck sizes and shapes and feels.  When we take pictures and write an ad to list on the OklahomaVintageGuitar.com site for a G&L USA piece it is for one piece and one piece only.  When we do an ad for a tuner or an AMP the same listing might be able to sell hundreds of items that are all alike but G&L guitars are so unique that each one only gets one sale and one sale only.  While this is a big job it is also a great deal of fun.  With 100 new pieces coming in the door all in boxes, it is like Christmas for about 3 days while we open all of them and get them photographed and ready to sell.  Each one has such a different personality it is fun to hold and play each one as it first comes out of its case.

Anyone who really knows me knows I am a strange duck when it comes to my guitar collection.  I am really really into both acoustic guitars and electric guitars.  However, when it comes to vintage verses new pieces my tastes run quite different.  I grew up in the 50s and 60s and started playing in 1966 at the age of 10.  I really loved the old Fender electric guitars of the era and those were the first serious guitars in my life and in my collection.  I have a pile of old Tele’s and Strats from the 50s and 60s and I’m pretty much crazy about anything Leo Fender built from 1950 to Dec 31, 1964 when he sold the company to CBS.  For this reason my vintage collection is really heavy on the electric side and rather light on the Acoustic Side.  My friends say that light is not the word to use to describe any of my group of instruments, but it heavier on the electric side with basses and guitars than on the acoustic side.  When it comes to new instruments, however, I am much more into the acoustic instruments and I have been blessed with loving the instruments and the music and can really find some great things about almost any brand from anywhere. 

On another day I’ll write about why I think Martin is building the best instruments today of their 175 year history, but I do think it is true and I have some from all the great eras of the past 100 years.  So, Bobby likes old electrics and new acoustics.  I suppose one could say this true, with few exceptions. One of the reasons for this is the biggest issue of all on a guitar, even before tone and that is ACTION.  Old electrics almost always have a great action, or it can be made great rather quickly and easily.  Old acoustics almost always have an action high enough to run a large cat under the strings at the 12^th fret without touching the fingerboard or the strings.  What difference does it make if something has awesome tone, if you need an orthopedic surgeon for hand work after you play it for a few minutes.  Feel and tone are both super important but both must be present for me to get excited about a piece.  This is why I am all over the new Martin guitars and Gibson and Taylor also.  Taylors have a great neck and super feel, and the action can be so easily set to almost play itself.  One of the reasons I love the new Martins is because the necks are so improved in the last 25 years and they can be set to play easily and to my ear they have an awesome tone.  Gibsons are fun and pretty and sound good and they can be set to play really nice, and back to the pretty, they are just so interesting and yes, ornate and pretty.

At this point I’ll stir up a hornets nest and say, Ovations are also among my favorite pieces.  Wait, wait, just a minute, before you who are of the opinion that a guitar must be made in PA or CA for it to really have its roots in Heaven, let me caution you not to narrow your vision so much that you miss some of the finest pieces in both tonality and playability of all time.  I’ll go out on a limb right now and say it.  Here it comes.  But before I do, remember I am a guy who owns 3000 guitars at this very moment and I have been collecting and playing for over 40 years.  OK, I’ll say it.  The very best sounding guitar I have ever had in my hands is and OVATION.  What!!!!  You now say, I just lost all my credibility as a musician.  Well you just ask anyone who played one of Charlie Kaman’s old #47 Adamas guitars and they will either have to admit it or lie to you because their sawdust friends are present.  By the way, the body of the old #47 didn’t have an ounce of wood in it.  My whole point is that we should be careful not to box ourselves into a brand or a style of instrument and miss out on something that we could use to greatly expand our music.