Love the one you’re with

Last night I ventured backstage at Colston Hall in Bristol to chat with blues-rock’s man of the hour Joe Bonamassa, who was in town on his British Blues Explosion tour. Joe is a prolific guitar collector and something he said was so relevant to this issue’s theme of buying and selling that I thought I’d share it with you here, as we go to press. “Everybody who buys a guitar for a £1,000 and sells it for £1,200 thinks, ‘I’m a guitar dealer.’ But you cannot look at buying a guitar as an instrument as ‘what’s it worth’,” Joe argued. “People try to sell me stuff all the time, and I’m buying two or three things a week now. And the best tip I can suggest is that – especially with high-end stuff that you might save up all your money for – don’t treat it like it’s a Fabergé egg: go out and enjoy it. The other thing is, don’t look down at that guitar and think, ‘I wonder what it’s worth now? I wonder what I can make on it.’ You have to take the view that maybe one day that valuable vintage guitar could be worth nothing. If there are no buyers for a Tele in 30 years, you can at least say, ‘Well, I’ve still got a cool Tele.’ That’s the only barometer when you buy stuff,” he concluded.

All of which is to say, it is your personal response to a guitar that really matters, not its market value nor the opinion of others. The next guitar you try may not be expensive and it may not be in concourse condition. But if it resonates with you, and gets you playing with more fire and commitment, you have the only motive you’ll ever need to buy – and keep – that guitar. We don’t think anodyne synth music will ever really eclipse the magic of a Les Paul through a cranked Marshall stack, but if it does, you’ll still have something whose value won’t evaporate: a guitar you love. Enjoy the issue, see you next month.