Rick Hogue writes the Modern Collectable Column for Musicians Hotline Magazine. He welcomes questions about Modern Collectable Guitars and can be reached via email at gpguitars@usa.net. Rick is the owner of Garrett Park Guitars in Annapolis, MD (www.gpguitars.com 410-267-6200). Rick has been in the guitar business since 1981 and has traded in vintage guitars, amplifiers was one of the first to buy and sell vintage effects. Rick and Garrett Park Guitars specialize in Modern Collectable Guitars from Fender, PRS, Gibson and others. Notable clients include Jay Mascis of Dinosaur Jr, Chris Duarte, Bob Dylan, Stevie Ray Vaughan, David Gilmore, Robben Ford, Tom Kiefer of Cinderella, Vernon Reid, Marshall Crenshaw, Vernon Reid, Bootsy Collins. Bruce Cockburn, Steve Earle, and Joe Satriani.

As the vintage market bloomed in the 1980s, American guitar builders began to offer collectable series guitars in an attempt to capitalize on the guitar collecting craze. In this first of a series article, I would like to categorize these instruments which have been made since 1980 as modern collectables. We will explore guitars from American builders that are now highly collectable and will include guitars that were intended to be so, as well as others that have achieved that status on their own merit.

It can be argued that much of the modern collectable market has been spurred on by the vintage market. Some of the first guitars that were made for collectors were the recreations of the vintage Gibson Les Paul's of the late 1960s. These were guitars that were built to vintage specifications at the request of dealers such as Guitar Trader of Red Bank, New Jersey. My first experience with guitar collecting grew from days of pouring over Guitar Trade monthly magazines and viewing their amazing selection of vintage guitars. It was in those pages that Guitar Trader introduced what was the first Modern Collectable guitar; the Guitar Trader Gibson 1959 Reissue Les Paul. We will discuss the Guitar Trader, Leos Les Pauls and Strings and Things Reissue Les Pauls in later articles. At about this same time period, Paul Reed Smith was building guitars in a small shop in Annapolis, Maryland. It is very easy to see that PRS guitars have had a tremendous influence on several segments of the guitar building art, but as collectables they have consistently led the market. The very first guitars that Paul made are now highly sought after. Many of these guitars are back in the PRS archives as PRS has reacquired many of these from original and subsequent owners. The actual numbers of guitars that were made prior to the opening of the PRS factory in 1985 is not exactly known. Paul has told me that he made about 100 guitars and that about 20 percent of these had maple tops. In my opinion, the most valuable PRS in the world would be the first guitar that Paul made for Carlos Santana. This is certainly one of the most valuable of all Modern Collectable Guitars in existence and if ever sold could demand numbers that compete with guitars that were owned by Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.

There are other guitars built in the period that command incredible prices when they surface. These are the real pre-factory guitars, ones built prior to PRS opening its factory in 1985. These guitars fall roughly in the group of solid mahogany guitars and mahogany guitars with maple tops. Of these the maple top guitars are the most valuable. The guitars in the maple top category fall into three distinct groups, the Santana style guitar, the Sorcerer's Apprentice and what we now know as the Custom. Most of these guitars are still intact and are all exceptional instruments. Some have sold for sums in the $40,000 price range. These instruments were, for the most part, special orders built for individual customers who learned of Paul from an article in Guitar Player in the early 1980s. Still others saw Carlos Santana, Peter Frampton, Neil Schon or Howard Leese and contacted Paul through those channels.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice was a model name that Paul came up with to describe what now appears to be a grouping of only about five or six guitars. There were two in blue, one with a tremolo, one with a stop tail piece, a red 12 String, a Santana yellow and a white mahogany model. These guitars featured handwound pickups that resembled P-90s-two of which were ganged together to produce a humbucker, hand made pickup covers, 26 frets and six position rotary knob. All of these instruments were handcrafted by Paul and John Ingram and all were painted by Bud Davis. Others had a hand in the hardware such as Eric Pritchard and John Hildebrand. These guitars were built by Paul in the shop at 33 West Street in Annapolis, Maryland in a walk-up shop that was part loft and part workshop. I remember stopping in the shop on several occasions while looking for vintage guitars and vividly remember Paul saying that he would be glad to build a guitar for me and that his guitars would one day be collectable.

As I think back of what was then a bold statement, I can only marvel at how Paul went about in making that statement a reality.

In fact, of all the guitars that have passed through our shop the one consistent thing about the owners is that they were all told by Paul to hang onto his guitars and that they would one day be valuable enough to pass on to their grand children. In about 1983, PRS began to build guitars that were actually the prototypes for the Custom. These had 24 frets a 25.5 inch scale length, two humbuckers, a five way rotary switch and tremolo. Paul used a Schaller locking tuner back in those days and most were a chrome color with an arrow on the top. It was at this time that Paul began to envision this as the PRS body shape and in 1984, PRS and a small team began to build prototypes that were intended to be shown at the NAMM trade shows in early 1985. During 1984, it became clear that Paul was spending lots of time in company development and not as much in actual building of guitars. There were about two sets of guitars that were built at this time for the NAMM shows, and these became known as the NAMM 8 and NAMM 20.

Rick Hogue
Garrett Park Guitars
410-267-6200
www.gpguitars.com
gpguitars@usa.net