Has that guitar earned it?

Relic guitars divide the guitar world in half. Absolutely split. And the argument I hear most, and the one that irritates me most, is: that guitar hasn't earned that.

A few points. One: the sort of guitars that have earned it, you will never be able to afford. In twenty-five years, when you possibly could, you won't be able to, because the prices have gone up and there are fewer of them. We all lust after the '59 burst, the '62 Strat, the '57 Nocaster. A '59 burst is six figures. Two: it takes decades of playing to get that out of a guitar, and how much are you playing? Three, and this is the one I believe with my entire being: every guitar has a story. Every guitar. It's in there somewhere. You've just got to find it.

If I'm building you a guitar, you're going to fill it with your stories. I don't know what those stories are, and quite frankly I don't care. They're yours. You'll get it home and something will happen at a gig, and there'll be a mark, and that mark will spread into the wear that's already there, because it's nitro and it's thin and it goes quickly. That's the point of starting it. A modern guitar with a poly finish will never do that. You can't relic a polyfinish. People try. It looks like somebody's taken an angle grinder to the corner. That's not a relic.

People also ask, can you build me another one of those? No. I can't build the same guitar twice. It's physically impossible — unless you want it showroom-new, and then I can. I've had one customer in the last four years want a showroom-new guitar, and they changed their mind. When one of mine is nearly finished it is, for a day, a perfect showroom guitar. Someone might want that. Then it gets its first story.