Originally Posted in Quora
Just last week I posted my favorites along with an invitation to see those of others. That post is floating around in “Quora-space”. But I never balk at the chance to do a “show and tell” with some of my guitars.
Favorite Acoustic
Gallagher BG-50 Appalachian Spruce and Sinker Mahogany
Favorite Electric
Fender Reclaimed Redwood 60th Anniversary Telecaster
These guitars represent my favorites from a collection that took me fifteen years to build. I would be hard-pressed to call them my best as I have several guitars, both electric and acoustic, that I vacillate over as being my “best guitars”. That may sound like semantics, but, at least for me and the way I view my guitars, “best” and “favorite” have different meanings.
Gallagher is a small but rapidly growing brand based in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Started in the mid-1960’s by J.W. Gallagher in the small Tennessee community of Wartrace, just a short drive from where the company is headquartered today, in Murfreesboro, just thirty minutes from Nashville. At some point (around 1965) he had been approached to build a few nice guitars but, at the time, had no plans to make the switch to guitars from his core business which was focused on crafting fine, Victorian-style furniture. Since he was already well-versed in the art of fine woodworking, it wasn’t difficult for him to build his first acoustic guitar and have it turn out to be a darned good one. I don’t recollect just how this next fateful happening occurred, but sometime soon thereafter, one of his initial builds landed on-stage one night with none other than Doc Watson, arguably one of the best bluegrass players in history. Doc immediately fell in love with the instrument and offered J.W. the opportunity to sell the guitar to him on the spot. The guitar had a small crack in it, so J.W. did Doc one-better and built him a one-of-a-kind guitar which incorporated some design elements that Doc had requested. The guitar became known as the “Doc Watson” model and has been a mainstay for Gallagher Guitar Company ever since.
J.W.’s intention was never as much about growing some megalithic guitar company as it was about being a one-man-show while building the best guitars he was capable of producing, one guitar at a time. He went on like this for years and eventually had his two sons come of age and come to work in the shop, but, other than a regional bluegrass following, they were struggling with where to go with the company as J.R. was fast approaching retirement. Unfortunately, his sons elected to follow their own paths, but just in the nick of time, good fortune smiled upon Gallagher Guitars and, in 2019, while keeping the Gallagher name and vision for utmost quality, the company was acquired by a local couple (the Mathis’s) who have since made all the right moves and Gallagher has grown into a brand that is competitive with the best boutique brands on the market today. David Mathis is president and CEO and it is his vision, combined with remaining true to J.W. Gallagher’s wishes, that provided the necessary spark to turn the embattled company around. If you’re a fan of high quality acoustic guitars but you haven’t heard the name, you will.
The Fender was part of a 60th Anniversary celebration of the Telecaster, one of the two most iconic guitars in guitar history. It was one of eleven other limited edition designs, one for each month of the year in 2011. The lot of them was referred to as the “Telebration Series”. It was my first electric guitar and though I have others that are dressier and more expensive, I have a unique bond with this one. The only mods I have made were to replace the black ”Bakelite” pickguard with one made of fine celluloid faux tortoiseshell, and swap the Fender ’52 spec pick-ups for a much warmer sounding set of Porter Nine-T’s.
While I own guitar models made by many different brands, the Fender Telecaster has remained my favorite. I prefer its natural shape and size, its 25.5″ scale, the one piece maple neck option, its ease of maintenance, and outright simplicity and tone. I find the famous Telecaster tone to be extremely malleable, able to cover ample ground across a wide range of music, from country, to classic, Southern, and contemporary rock, to blues and, my favorite genre, blues rock. By design, it is an historically lightweight and well-balanced music making machine which is suitable for hours of playing without the usual fatigue associated with much heavier guitars.
After fifteen years of buying, selling, and trading guitars, I have managed to maintain a good-sized, high-quality collection of the best of them. I am thoroughly satisfied with what I’ve curated and have no real plans to remain in the buying and selling game. It was tremendously edifying while it lasted, but my algorithm for collecting was heavily dependent on having a healthy and competitive market to work with. With the arrival and extended duration of COVID there were literally millions of “impulse purchases” and when most of those guitars landed on the used market between four and six years ago, the overall market suffered a point of over-saturation and prices for both used and new guitars plummeted, leaving individual “traders” such as myself with no outlet for selling and acquiring with any kind of margin. I had used highly targeted “buys” and profitable “sells” to pay for my post-retirement hobby and entire collection, without the usual cash outlays.
Those days are gone and the market still hasn’t recovered. For those of you with the desire to start your own collections, there’s never been a better time to buy. However, should the need or desire arise to sell any of those acquisitions, you will invariably lose money in the process. It is very much a “buyers” market but selling has become a “no-win” endeavor. In my case, I was fortunate enough to both enter and exit the buying and selling game at precisely the right time and walked away unscathed and holding a fine, eclectic collection of both electric and acoustic guitars.
The best analogy that comes to mind is being heavily engaged in playing the commodities market during one of its better windows of opportunity and having the knowledge and forethought required to read the signs and time your exit without ever encountering a loss.
