Tag: Guitar Collecting

Originally Posted on Quora

I hadn’t posted anything on Quora since around Thanksgiving last year, but jumped on to find a post I’d written at some point during that June or July. This typically fun to answer question was in my feed from one of the guitar-oriented “Spaces” for which I had been a regular contributor, so I couldn’t resist. As is often the case, I dove in a little deeper than I’d intended.

Though this question has been asked many times here on Quora and every guitar forum I’ve been on over the years, I never find it easy to answer. The proverbial “Burning House” guestion is quite different from the “Desert Island” question primarily because we’re talking about the complete destruction of a person’s guitar collection, whether it consists of three, or thirty guitars. Perhaps they have just one cherished guitar, in which case the question becomes easy to answer. I had a quick peek at another player’s answer and I feel the same way about my dogs as he does about his cats…yes, I would shout at the top of my lungs: “Please take any or all of my guitars while I go into the fiery house to fetch my dogs!”.

My ’66 Martin D-18 has certainly earned the right to be saved first, as it has already stoically survived sixty-years on the planet. But my deepest connection is to my very first guitar, a 2011 “Reclaimed Redwood” Fender Telecaster made from an appropriation of timbers Fender acquired when the famed Brown’s Canyon Bridge (built during the Gold Rush, in 1850’s Northern California) was being dismantled due to obsolescence (a narrow-guage railroad trestle bridge that hadn’t felt the weight of a train in many decades), neglect (as a national treasure), and obvious safety considerations (a high-risk accident just waiting for the last hiker to attempt a crossing).

The Fender “Reclaimed Redwood” Telecaster story is really quite fascinating, in part because it remains difficult to this day to separate fact from fiction. I’ll provide this summary : While a sizable fraction of the 500 Telecasters (and 500 like Stratocasters) were crafted from the dismantled Brown’s Canyon Bridge, there was some significant percentage that were crafted from “Reclaimed Old Growth” redwood timbers sourced elsewhere. There was no plausible explanation for the error and the story was essentially and quickly snuffed by Fender. There were more than enough timbers to craft the entire production run of 1,000 “Brown’s Canyon Old Growth Redwood” Telecasters and Stratocasters, so it remains a mystery as to what happened and where those “other” timbers came from.

Few people are aware of this, but these guitars are highly collectable, but it calls into question which guitars were actually from the Brown’s Canyon Bridge, and which one’s were not. If you’re a Telecaster (or Stratocaster) collector, this is something you should be aware of as the true value of these guitars is questionable. Taken as a whole, they have risen considerably in value. But, as a real Fender collectable and historical artifact (to railroad enthusiasts, the Brown’s Canyon Bridge was known worldwide and should have been cared for as a National Historic Landmark) these guitars have risen in value on two distinctly different levels. When this occurs with any valuable collectable item, the lower value is taken to be the correct one.

I googled the story using several different searches just now, and there is nothing that comes up (anymore) which describes the entire story other than a post I wrote for my blog a few years ago. The post is chock-full of great photos of my own Fender “Brown’s Canyon Bridge” reclaimed redwood Telecaster. Here is the link:

https://lessonsfromastone.com/2024/03/30/fender-reclaimed-redwood-telecaster/

My collection grew quickly from that first electric to many more guitars, both electric and acoustic, but that redwood Telecaster would have to be the one I would retrieve from the flames of Perdition. And not only for nostalgic reasons. It remains the best playing, most storied, and rustically beautiful guitar I own. It is also at least a half-pound lighter in weight than any other electric guitar in a collection of electrics curated, in large part, for weight. Though I do have a nine-and-a-quarter pound Les Paul, it is what I would refer to as a “statistical anomaly”. But who has a respectable guitar collection (on the electric side of life) without having at least one Gibson Les Paul?!

2011 Fender “Telebration Series” Old Growth Redwood Telecaster. The special neck plate supposedly separates the guitar from the others, as described. I have not been able to confirm this, but there was more information available online immediately after these guitars were launched onto the marketplace and I had read that there were two differing neck plates, one without the engraved redwood tree. Much of that early information seems to have been lost to time.