I have known some flutists who paid ridiculously large sums of money for just the headjoint. Didn't seem to affect their playing or sound much from my (back row) vantage point, but they liked them. A year or ten ago several preeminent violinists could not tell a Stradivarius from a new carbon-fiber clone; in fact, the majority preferred the new one. Collecting guitars is a disease. And I have repaired far too many amps destroyed by their players through various acts of incompetence and sheer ignorance. Fortunately, I bypassed guitars for trumpets, only have, uh, seven -- but they are all different!
Well, there’s a fine line between being a collector and a hoarder! Here’s my playful take on how I perceive the difference:
I have around 10 guitars, but they’re all very different—two are basses, one a Music Man Stingray with active electronics that’s a totally different instrument than my Fender Precision. Two are acoustics, one twelve string the other standard. Then there’s a Les Paul, a Telecaster, a Strat, a Rickenbacker, a groovy seafoam green Danelectro—I’m still missing a Gretsch and an SG. They all sound completely different and play completely differently—some have humbucker pickups with a fat sound, some have single coil and the tele even has a lipstick pickup at the neck.
If you’re a fan of rock music and work on guitar amps, you surely know the signature sounds of all these instruments—they’re far less subtle than differences between violins (and there have been other studies that refuted that Stradivarius blind test
). Classical string and brass instruments are all based on the same mechanics—but rock guitars are a mechanical-electronic hybrid, and have further variances based on pickup choice and placement, and they resonate differently depending on whether they’re hollow or solid bodied, etc. It’s rare for any artist—unless you’re Stevie Ray Vaughan—to limit themselves to one type of guitar.
But even if none of that matters, guitars are pretty! Some people collect impressionist art, or Steuben glassware, or even bubblegum cards or Star Wars memorabilia. I happen to find vacuum tubes beautiful objects that come in a vast array of elegant, innovative shapes, and I can’t articulate where my fascination with collecting them comes from. For those who collect things as a hobby to rise to the level of disease, I’d say it would have to involve pursuing it to financial ruin or to the detriment of employment or social functioning. Otherwise I think it is fun, and I’m always fascinated to hear the stories of those who collect things (with some exceptions of course—bugs come to mind).
Having said all that I now have to look inwards with brutal honesty and reflect on my own financial ruin and social dysfunction status…shit.
