When deciding to get into the market for a high-end guitar, there are probably lots of questions you want answered. Do my playing skills match up with the expense? Will I be able to play it to its full potential? Will it gain in value over time (or drop)? These are all valid in the world of high-end retail, in general, but with guitars it might be more personal than you may think.
Let’s Start at the Beginning
Take the idea of planting a tree in your yard. Watch it grow over the years and decades. Chop it down and harvest the lumber. You now have what could be the start of a potentially “musical” instrument — or a piece of household furniture. Is this raw wood sentimental to you because you planted it, watched it grow and mature, and now have it in your hands hoping it’ll become something else? Of course!
A similar idea applies to guitar making, or what we call luthiery. I’ve spent years learning about and understanding what might make a guitar expensive or sentimental. One of those things is experiencing the life process of the materials firsthand. Similar to the scenario I explained above with planting trees, I, along with my dad and brother, planted hundreds of saplings from all types of species in the mid-1990s on our 12-acres of land in the Indiana countryside. We hand-watered them every summer, we mowed around them, and we climbed them until the sun went down.
Then 20 years later I experienced the sentimental value of these materials when our northern ash trees were struck by the emerald ash borer. What most people saw as 20 wasted years and piles of firewood, I saw as an opportunity. I harvested the ash, which was beautifully figured and solid, cut it to size, planed it down, and built some solidbody electric guitar bodies from the trees that we planted as a family 20 years prior. These weren’t high-end in the guitar market, but they were high-end to me. They were sentimental. This was full circle at its best.
Not every high-end guitar buyer will be able to personally experience this type of ultimate material selection, but there are ways to make an instrument yours. I’ll go into some detail.
Make It Yours
When it comes to high-end guitars, we typically think custom shop. Fender Custom Shop or PRS Private Stock might ring a bell. It’s similar to choosing the trim package for a sports car or the level of chrome detail on a motorcycle. You can get something off the lot or choose to customize it how you like. Customizing a guitar can be a very deep, personal experience. You choose the shape, the finest assortments of tonewoods, the aesthetic appointments, and the finish and color. This makes the guitar “yours.” Priceless, to a degree, because you have exactly what you wanted. And it’s not meant for anybody else.
“The story is a big part of the value,” says Jay Piccirillo, Sweetwater’s Guitar Category Manager, on planning custom guitar specs with a luthier. When customizing, you think about what you’ve always wanted. That dream guitar that will be full of the best tones you’ve ever heard and the best “feels” you’ve ever felt.
Don Carr, Sweetwater’s Guitar Content Specialist, states, “It’s like a custom-tailored suit; it fits you.” He mentions you can take the best of what you want and make it yours. That comes from knowing what you want. And Don would know. He’s been playing guitar and touring for four decades, including 23 years with the Oak Ridge Boys.
“Sometimes a guitar is a status symbol or trophy more than an instrument,” Jay added. “The story makes all the difference. So being handmade, limited, etc. enhances that story.” He’s right, based on feedback we hear at Sweetwater. As the guitar market grows in the more affordable, imported category, the high-end market has also grown to a level where creating your own trophy is more obtainable than you might think.
Take, for example, our Sweetwater-exclusive PRS Wood Library collection. Several of us traveled out to Stevensville, Maryland, where we hand-selected the finest tonewoods imaginable, chose our options with some of the finest luthiers in the world, and sat back and watched these works of art come to life. This type of high-end guitar is a great option in the case where you don’t quite know your “want” or when you would rather get custom quality at a more affordable price. These beauties soon showed up on our doorstep, while we anxiously waited for the first time we would lay eyes on them in our Guitar Gallery, where our 55-point Inspection and high-resolution photo processes take place. These photos show their true aesthetic exquisiteness and the attention to detail. Be on the lookout for more PRS Wood Library guitars hitting our stock soon.
To go to the next level, the PRS Private Stock fuels the thought of getting exactly what you want in a package that unmistakably comes from some of the most beautiful works of art with wood that you’ll ever set eyes on. This allows you to fully customize every aspect of your guitar and work directly with the luthiers in Stevensville on your vision for your guitar.
Another more vintage-inspired option is the Fender Custom Shop line, which gives those tried-and-true designs and tones from the ’50s and ’60s a modern twist. You could choose the signature and sought-after sounds of the David Gilmour Strat, or go toward a modern guitar that’s built to look like it’s been on tour for 60 years with a Heavy Relic. These guitars are built to classic specs that touch on the unique, one-of-a-kind aesthetics of their handbuilt relicing process. Each one is an exceptional work of art and tone!
Hands On
Another important high-end guitar topic I often hear in the industry is this: guitars built by machines have no mojo, love, or artistry involved in their production. Most guitars built with machines benefit from the tight tolerances of a CNC-guided process. The method that most modern-day builders use is to rough-cut with a CNC, then complete the intricate details and finish work by hand. They are machine-built, hand-finished. Thom Grant, another one of Sweetwater’s expert guitarists, says, “you have to do all the feels by hand.” As good as machines are today, they still can’t relate to the feel and shape of that mahogany neck and maple-capped body on a Gibson Les Paul. That’s where the love comes in. The more handwork involved, the more detailed, and possibly collectible, that guitar is and will be.
Joe Albright, one of our 10 on-site luthiers in the Sweetwater’s Guitar Repair Shop, is also a custom-builder on the side. He mentions that high-end guitars will hold their value more over time because of the level of artistry that goes into creating them. “The guitar still needs to be touched by an artisan. All of the parts need to be skillfully put together by a craftsman who will know what adjustments to make to maximize the potential,” he passionately states. Joe creates some of the most beautiful works of art that I’ve personally seen when it comes to guitars. He also has a knack for bringing things back from extremely broken states.
So it could all come down to that emotional and sentimental connection you might have with trees that have been in your front yard for 20 or more years. Or maybe it’s the longing for something exclusively yours. No matter the reason, that dream guitar you thought you’d never have? Well, it’s within your reach.