Hello fellow players,
I have told hundreds of people over the past few years that steel guitars area great investment. They have been a good investment and have been eking up in value over the past several years. Overall this has been true, however because of the present economic situation being handled by our elected officials, the value of steel guitars has receded in the past few months, specifically over the past year.
This is no fault of the music business, players, stores or even the manufacturers, but is instead primarily a Washington D.C. factor. I will not get into politics because that is not what you want to hear in my tips newsletters. However, I want you all to know that there is somewhat of a recession going on, regardless of whether Washington wants to call it that or not.
Like steel guitars, many things have seen the bottom drop out of their values. Private aircraft, collector cars, guns, houses, about anything collectible with the exception of gold and silver which to me is not very much fun to collect because if you have it, all you can do is hide it and hope nobody knows you have it. At least, steel guitars can be used and they hardly ever get stolen because that crooked element of our society doesnÂ’t know what they are, the value of them or how or where to sell them.
Steel guitars may still be as good as anything to protect your assets. I notice the price of Bigsby steel guitars have come down a little. ItÂ’s not because folks donÂ’t want them just as much as ever, but because the loose cash required to invest in them is going several places that it didnÂ’t use to have to go, like food, gasoline, power bills and so on.
This is not to say your steel guitar has been a poor investment or that it wonÂ’t be a good investment in the future. I still feel that when it comes to musical instruments that if you buy the correct steel guitar you will have a very safe investment, but donÂ’t expect it to grow in value much like it hasnÂ’t in the last year.
Emmons push pulls, even though they havenÂ’t gone up in the last year, along with Bigsbys and some models of Sho-Bud, are still better to have your money in them than it is in most banks.
When it comes to amplifiers, little powerful amps with great tone are still the best investment. I think the Peavey Nashville 112 is probably as safe a place to put your money if you want to use what your money can buy for several years and still get most of it back.
Of course, if you want a steel guitar to play and youÂ’re not worried about investment and return on your money, I can still recommend the old standards, especially if you buy them from me because we discount all new and used guitars to the point of the manufacturer being mad at us for selling so inexpensively. We try very hard to undersell everybody everywhere on anything you want to buy in the steel guitar line.
Sometimes we have a price floor or bottom line that the manufacturer will tell us we cannot sell below, so what I do is bundle the guitar with many accessories that I can either give away or sell for half price. So overall, youÂ’re still getting a wholesale deal if you buy a package.
Anyway, one way or another I promise you I can save you much money to say nothing of the service and warranty that I can give because of our highly skilled technicians.
As you can see, thereÂ’s more than one reason to buy a steel guitar. Buy it to use, buy it to learn to play because itÂ’s easy and beautiful to do or buy it for just plain monetary investment. Most of you know as well as I do that times will get better. As a matter of fact, now is the time to buy. Now is not the time to sell.
IÂ’ll never forget my first trip to Las Vegas as a young, new, road player out of Nashville. I met the bus which was an older 4104 General Motors 36 passenger coach converted to a starÂ’s ego extension. Getting on the bus, seeing the smoke billow out as the big 671 Detroit diesel engine fired up, was very exciting.
Exciting that is until the star, who was driving the bus was backing up and asked the bass player, “Did you put my new custom built Gower rhythm guitar on the bus?” I noticed he said this with a tremendous amount of pride knowing that this beautiful hand-crafted guitar was just picked up by him that week.
The bass player said, “No. I didn’t put it on the bus, but I saw it leaning up against the back of it when I got on.” I jumped up, ran off the bus, ran to the back where it was last seen and there it was, right where he had run over it, crushed case with the guitar inside.
Not wanting to be the bearer of bad news, I called Mr. Grand Ole Opry star off the bus and said, “I don’t know where it is. Possibly you can find it. Go around the other side.” Naturally he found it. He was in a horrible mood. I thought he could never be anymore unhappy or angry until he put the bus in low gear and with an angry mood, let out on the clutch making a hard left turn leaving the parking and lot side-swiping his new Cadillac convertible.
Naturally my first trip out with this guy was a little gloomy. I remember when we got to Vegas, he bought us all a steak dinner before we went on stage the first time. We had borrowed a rhythm guitar for him from the act across the street at the Mint Hotel. He struck the first chord on it during the first song. It could not have been farther out of tune. It sounded like World War II with the original cast.
The audience was full of fair buyers, producers, bookers, other acts which included Judy Lynn and band, Buck Owens and his Buckaroos, some other famous acts and he turned around and looked at us with this horrible out of tune chord still ringing and said in a low voice, “You’d think a guy could get his guitar tuned for a steak dinner.”
Our band saw no humor in it at the time, but we never forgot it and ended up kidding about it a year or so later. So much for my first road trip in a big bus with a big star out of Nashville. Things have never been the same as they were in the sixties.
We have a very exciting brand new product that hundreds of you have been asking about for a long time. ItÂ’s a very light, very tuff bar that used with or without a Bobro or Dobro simulator, will add dobro quality to a steel guitar sound. These bars used in conjunction with the Bobro will give a very realistic Dobro feel and sound. Designed to absorb sustaining notes and overtones and deliver a true Dobro sound with the ambiance of the acoustic instrument youÂ’re trying to duplicate.
Many of you in the past have written me and asked me when these bars would be available. They are finally here. www.steelguitar.net/bars.html
Check out our monthly specials at http://www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html and weÂ’ll try to save you a lot of money.
Your buddy,
Bobbe
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour
www.myspace.com/bobbeseymour
Steel Guitar Nashville
123 Mid Town Court
Hendersonville, TN. 37075
(615) 822-5555
Open 9AM – 4PM Monday – Friday
Closed Saturday and Sunday
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