The Gibson ES-335

Old wood will always be old wood. You can age the crap out of new wood and it will still be new wood. You can roast the new wood and it might approach the tonal qualities of old wood but maybe not. If you can’t afford the vintage guitar you want, you can build one slowly. This 60 husk sold for about a third of what the entire guitar would have cost.

Not everyone can afford to play in the vintage sandbox. I get that. When I started buying vintage guitars, they were a lot less expensive but I had a lot less money. My limit back in the mid 90’s when I started doing this was around $1000. The first vintage guitar I ever bought was a 62 Epiphone Crestwood. It was refinished and had a lot of changed parts and it cost me $600. It sounded great. Within a year or so, I was spending up to $6000 which was enough to score a 1960 ES-345 with PAFs (and a Bigsby). It was all original and there was a lesson in that…it is easier to sell a no issues guitar than it is to sell one with issues like changed parts, repairs or a refinish. By the early 2000’s, prices started taking off and I felt like I was chasing the market up and I was spending as much as $15,000 for guitars. I still wasn’t a dealer-it was just a hobby so when the market tanked in ’08, I only had five or six guitars and I got beat up pretty good but not as badly as many dealers. That lesson stuck with me. It is still easier to sell a no issue guitar than to sell one with issues.

That lesson is of no use at all if you don’t have the budget to buy a no issue vintage guitar that you will want to play. So, given a limited budget, what do you do to protect your investment and still get a guitar you want to play? Do you buy a guitar that’s refinished or repaired? Do you buy one with lots of changed parts? Do you buy a husk and build from there? Lots of good questions but there are lots of good answers.

I have strong opinions on the subject and you can listen to me or dismiss me. They are, after all, opinions. Two factors spring to the forefront…tone and playability. We can add investment potential to that as well. It’s a little like the real estate rule of location, location, location. Just as you can’t easily change the location of the house you buy, you can’t undo many of the issues that keep guitar prices down to affordable levels. You can’t undo a repair. You can’t undo a refinish. You can’t make new wood into old wood except by waiting a very long time. You can change parts though and that is key here.

One solution is to buy an old guitar that is all there but not currently all that valuable. 70’s guitars have not run up in value all that much but a lot of 70’s guitars are crap. 80’s guitars are generally better quality and are often very affordable. So, if you’re willing to wait for your investment to mature over the next twenty years or more, then buy an early 80’s 335 or maybe a 76 Explorer. Or even a BC Rich. A general rule is to buy the best guitar of a given era. But what about getting into vintage cheap without having to take a chance on whether your 70’s or 80’s guitar is going to go up in value? Buy old wood. I’ll say it again…old wood is the location, location, location equivalent.

Husks (body and neck) are not easy to find. If you are lucky enough to find one, it’s the perfect way to “build” your investment guitar. Can’t find a husk? Buy an old guitar with lots of changed parts. That way, you can, over time, replace the repro or incorrect parts with correct ones. Make sure the neck is in good shape. Fixing a backbow or a twist can be expensive and the results aren’t always good. Try to find a guitar that has a properly functioning truss rod that isn’t all the way loose (very common). If the guitar you find is playable and sounds OK with repro or changed parts, then it will only improve as you swap in the correct parts. parts like tuners, tailpieces, bridges and plastic don’t affect tone all that much so maybe start with the electronics. PAFs are crazy expensive right now but there is no substitute (other than early patents which are the same). Plenty of boutique PAFs sound as good as the real thing but if you’re building a vintage guitar, you need vintage parts. Parts should hold their value even through bad times. In 2008, the price of parts was barely affected.

You can get a great deal with a refinished or repaired vintage guitar and it can adequately fill the bill for playability and tone. The problem is the investment angle. Refins and repaired guitars are usually poor investments. Don’t care about the investment value? Buy a well repaired or properly refinished vintage guitar and have fun. When it’s time to sell, don’t expect big profits or an easy sale. But if you bought an old husk and slowly built it out, you will reap the same benefits as you would if you had bought that guitar you couldn’t afford five years ago. Correct parts aren’t the equivalent of original parts but many buyers don’t care as long as the parts are correct. The exception to this is mint or near mint guitars. But if you’re buying a husk or a guitar with lots of changed parts, it’s pretty unlikely that it will be in that kind of condition anyway.

I recently sold a 60 ES-335 husk for $18000. An average condition no issue 1960 is a $60,000 guitar. Buying all of the parts to make it 100% correct will cost you somewhat more than one that is original but you will have the luxury of doing it slowly. I would make it playable right away with inexpensive repro parts and play it while I build it out. When you’re done, you might just have the guitar of your dreams. If you don’t, you’ll be able to sell it without having to make a lot of excuses. I think that beats buying a guitar from the 70’s or 80’s and hoping the market “discovers” how great guitars were in the 70’s and 80’s. The problem is that guitars from the 70’s and 80’s weren’t great. They might be old but they don’t quite fit the somewhat fuzzy description of “vintage”.

Friday, July 18th, 2025 at 11:07 am • Gibson General • RSS 2.0 feed • leave a response or trackback