Official Luthiers Forum!

I've been wondering for the last few years as I talked with music biz folks I've known for 30 plus years - where have all the millions of used guitars gone? There are not enough pawn shops to held them all. Are they stacked like cordwood under most of North America's beds or in their closets? Gotten crated up and stored in warehouses waiting to see the light of day? Have they ended up in landfills or the bottom of the sea? Abducted by aliens?

More are being built every year, and more places than ever market them now thanks to the internet. Heck, even Walmart, BestBuy, and Target sell cheap stuff by the boatload - not just Guitar Center and all the other music retailers.

Where are all the used guitars from the 60's up until the 21st century? Your thoughts, please.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Even so, higher population should mean more guitars sold. More guitars sold should mean more used guitars. Thoroughly unscientific, but...

I've got'em

Gruhn Guitars bought them all.

More than 25 years ago my son's guitar teacher in Chicago wanted me to go into business with him, buying up used guitars and reselling them. I have no vision and did not do it. Gruhn did the same thing to pay for his PhD in reptiles at the University of Chicago, but was getting so much money that he quit his studies and went into used instuments fulltime.

There are lots of other business opportunities that I did not pursue. So, I'll build a few guitars and won't get wealthy

Well Chris ...

the truth be known, they have been consumed by the Nothingness of the What. Yes the black holes gravitational singularity has sucked them in to the oblivious region where the space time curvature becomes infinite. You know, the Event Horizon.
Is also true that they emit radiation from this region when bumped, banged or played upon by those that were sucked up with them.
For all intense purposes, they don't really exist any more and those that do will be consumed when the sun goes nova.

However the good news is repros are available ...just look on ebay.


Blessings
Padma

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Audiences and dispensations on Thursdays ~ by appointment only.


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Also, I think the average number of guitars per person is going up and up. Practically everybody owns one, whether they play it or not. And many who do play own several. I'm certainly guilty

Plus I'm sure plenty are sitting around in unplayable condition. I wonder how often guitars are given up as hopeless and destroyed entirely.

I think the original question is fair, it is one I've stated many times as "surely there are enough guitars already built".

The outstanding majority of guitars were never meant to be anything but "starter" guitars, and have been delivered to the trash heap of history, or should have been. Think of the post war Stella-Kay-Harmony, made in huge numbers to be given to baby boomers on their 10th birthday to satisfy their wish for a guitar, and for $24. If junior stuck with that Stella for a year, he would get a better guitar next birthday, and it got passed to cousin Jimmy on his birthday. You still see them on ebay, but they should have been trashed years ago.

Up until only the 70's, there were very few good quality guitars made. And even now, as the world is awash in seemingly good sounding guitars, the percentage of good ones is pretty small. Granted the entry level guitar is better than the old Stella, but not by too much.

My point is that we as builders are spoiled by our very good guitars, and we tend to see all guitar shaped objects as good guitars, but in reality, they aren't.

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Have you ever seen some of the collections of famous musicians? I remember seeing one of the guitar players of Pearl Jam's partial collection in a mag. Les Paul After Les Paul after Les Paul... Also, one of many shops out there like www.frettedamericana.com have a lot of nice pieces

Well, I never went that far. Since I did mostly repair I remember a lot of turds crossing my bench. Nowadays, the consistence and quality of the major makers instruments seems to have dropped, and the cheap stuff is exploring new horizons of wretched awfulness.

While I'm not a worshipper at the temple of vintage guitars, but it does seem the older stuff is better.
Some new stuff might as well be trashed while still in the box, but thankfully there are some bright spots in the six string universe.

More ideas?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I know a few of them have been ceremoniously placed on the burn pile behind my shop. It felt very "wrong", the first time I burned a guitar, but I am getting used to it. (almost)

I always remember my father telling me of the time he & his brother bought an extra 58' corvette for parts, since they both had one that needed parts. They cut the car up & threw it in a dumpster after they had salvaged what they wanted... Probably a lot of that type of thinking with guitars as well. Makes me angry every time I think of that Vette & old guitars having been destroyed.

Duh, Pete Townsend...


I wonder what the turnaround time is. I tend to be a long termer. When I was about 10 years into rock climbing, I remember reading the average person did it for 3.5 years. I was shocked, but there is probably some figure like that for guitars.

It is possible for a craft to produce itself into extinction. Fiberglass boats did that, and then osmosis saved them, turned out the boats had a life expectancy about the same as wooden ones after all. But what happens next is anyone's guess, the new materials are a lot better. Happily guitars are somewhat perishable.

Hmm... Good tune.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Craig's List
pvg

I know the whereabouts of one guitar from the 1960’s that’s not quite ready for the burn pile.


Joe

Maybe I should clarify... A guitar doesn't make it to the burn pile unless it's totally hooped.
All of them were no-name plywood junk & not worth the extensive repairs required.
It still feels weird, though...

OK... confession time.

Back in the 80's the music store I provided service for used to "sacrifice" a cheap POS guitar every New Year's Eve. Usually our customers and some staff would be hanging out and enjoying a few adult beverages. In the afternoon the store employees and the service staff would draw straws for places in line, the unfortunate instrument would be taken to the parking lot, and after a few words - whoever drew number one would attempt to destroy the instrument in one blow. They might toss it in the air, step on it, or do a Townshend imitation. Each successive person in line would keep it at until the guitar was in small pieces. The customers were then allowed to scavenge parts as mementos or continue the destruction in manners of their own choosing.

Most of the time the chosen six string was a battered old Harmony flattop or Teisco solidbody. One year we had no cheap guitars in the store, and I had no junk in the shop to serve as substitute. A local music wholesaler sold us a $19 child's flattop for the ceremony. To my knowledge, we never smashed anything of real value. Anyone else ever do this?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Joe, that is a beaut.
What is it?
I know somebody that has 350 plus guitars.
People hoard stuff they like.

Whoa. Check out on the graph how the invention of the guitar affected the growth of the human population.

Coincidence? I think not.

You should have been at Woodstock!

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The cheapo Yammy's sold at Costco get returned when they break .. then every once and a while a couple employees at the local Yamaha headquarters take them out back and jump on them .. then they toss whats left in a dumpster.

Like others have said .. people collect them now by the dozen .... and until the music boom of the 70s, there really werent alot of guitars made in comparison to todays factory output.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

It’s a Gibson. Paid $50 for it back in the 70’s after it already had about 10 rough years of play. The finish is now covered in hairline cracks but otherwise the guitar is still in good shape.

Joe

Yet, since time stops at the event horizon, they are always right there!

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Yep, 30 or more years ago most players had only one guitar.(at least myself, and the players I knew) I suspect that at least half of the people who own guitars now have more than one. Conbine that with the expanding population and that's a bunch of guitars. I'd have to count to determine how many guitars I own.

I've got one client who has at least a couple hundred guitars. He's got a huge room full of all kinds of guitars, as well as a big custom climate controlled cabinet with a "Brackett", a couple other customs, and a pre war D28.

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