The Guitar Museum

I don’t like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for a couple of reasons:

1) They’ve never acknowledged the Misfits

2) Lady Gaga thinks she’s going to get in it

3) There’s not enough emphasis on the guitar

I think that, as guitarists, there needs to be more offered to us because not all of us like rock and roll, or even what gets into the R&R HoF. But we like guitar. We like different kinds of guitars just like we like different kinds of guitarists. Some people really identify with the happy guitarist, all smiles on stage as he rips through lick after lick while some prefer the somber, brooding guitarist who is obviously using his/her instrument as a cathartic tool.

Don’t forget we like different music too.

That’s why I think there needs to be a Guitar Museum.

Now, to be fair, there are websites called the Guitar Museum, and there are establishments with the same name but even the most promising lead focused on American-made instruments and I think that’s too narrow-minded. Where would jazz guitar or even guitar in general be without Django’s mangled but guiding hand and where would HE be without his trusty French-made guitar?

No, there needs to be a more broad Guitar Museum. It needs to feature hallways lined with glass and on the other side of the glass, guitars that show you progression of companies or genres. How far has bluegrass gone from pre-war bracing (for instance)? Just how much has a Strat changed in looks over the years? There should be videos from companies and historians showing differences or what made a particular brand/model/style popular to whatever market.

The museum should be focused just as much on making you a more educated player as it is no doubt causing a buying panic as you drool over the sultry orange stain of vintage Gretsch 6120s.

Stock should be rotated as private collectors and company owners are willing to share their collections for a time and then take it back and as sad as it would be to see a lovely guitar collection move on, it’s OK because this isn’t a warehouse where one trip would be all you need. There would have to be displays and focused sections. How cool would it be to walk into a large room and see Metallica’s touring rig from the Justice For All tour lined up like you may have seen it on stage?

Perhaps a good display would be guitars that companies THOUGHT were a good idea only to be underrated or underappreciated by the mass public (or even just plain flops all around)? I always thought that Schecter’s Cello Blaster should have been way more popular than it was.

And how cool would it be for companies who do crazy things for events like NAMM (Gretsch, for instance featured a ton of hand painted guitars and cases at the most recent Winter NAMM) to donate those guitars for a little while before moving them on to the buyers so that the public who couldn’t go to NAMM can get a glimpse?

Perhaps you could even convince collectors who have a LOT of guitars to donate almost their entire collection to take up an entire room? Billy Joe Armstrong from Green Day has more guitars than Guitar World could photograph in one wide picture. I think in that case, the impact of a single guitar would be lost, but it would stagger my mind to see that many guitars and think that ONE person owns them all and I may be inspired to start my own guitar collection.

Now, there are those that believe that guitars are made to be played and if you fall into this category, I completely agree with you but I think it may be a little short-sighted. While these guitars would be behind glass, well-lit and beautiful, the goal here is to educate and inspire, not to create a Guitar Center-like shop where everything is playable by everyone. They don’t let you climb a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton at the natural history museum after all.

Is the idea of a Guitar Museum niche? You bet. That’s why we need to open the scope as much as possible and only have displays that focus in. Perhaps a display of the greatest examples of American guitars would be one. But overall, if it’s a guitar, it should be allowed in the museum (at the very least be considered).

-Pappy