The "AS IS" Collection (October 1, 2017)

As all of you now know, I’ll be closing my store after forty-eight years, and fifty-three overall in this business of getting to play with my favorite stuff, guitars. Over these five decades or more I’ve come across many instruments that I thought were extremely interesting, or unusual, or fabulous, or, in most cases, all of the above, with absolutely none of them (well, maybe a very few) being in the usual Martin-Gibson-Fender vein. Every single one of them has a story, mostly unknown and unfathomable but most with clues or better, and every single one of them so tremendously interesting that I just couldn’t let them go, had to hold on to them to savor, and save, for the ages. Some are by American makers of minor fame; some are by makers of much fame but small output; some are unlabeled; most are by immigrants, as is every American, of one generation or another. Those not by immigrants were made by those who stayed, in France, in Italy, in Germany, when America was a faraway place that it probably never occurred to most of them to want to go to. All of these instruments are as I got them, same condition, many close to perfect and some not so much, but every single one of them worthy of saving, possibly waiting for the right master to bring them back, and all are offered As Is. I sincerely hope that everyone who gets these will appreciate them as much as I have; they are all terrific.