Vintage Guitars
Steve Fulton was born in California but quickly made his way to Austin to perform in bands all over town. Although he was originally a drummer, he was struck by the aura of the guitar and switched instruments. Steve purchased an already established guitar store and began to collect older guitars...
Eric Schoenberg opened his own guitar shop in Tiburon, California after working music retail on the east coast for decades. Over the years he watched the vintage guitar market grow and develop. He also designed his own line of Schoenberg Guitars beginning in the 1980s. The folk craze of the late...
Frank Ford was beginning to build guitars and mandolins when he met Richard Johnston. The two guitar lovers decided to open a repair shop in Palo Alto, California called Gryphon Stringed Instruments. Before long he had a need to expand and the shop became an important retail store for the emerging...
Michael Simmons is a co-founder of the Fretboard Journal and the author of several articles and books about vintage guitars and other fretted instruments. He began his career at Gryphon Guitars in Palo Alto, where he caught the bug for the history of the instruments. Over the years he has...
Ed Seelig opened a small guitar shop when he was a teenager, having already made connections within the concert circuit selling used gear to traveling musicians. The store, Silver Strings Music and Repair in St. Louis, Missouri opened in the early 1970s. He organized one of the very first vintage...
Tom Wittrock remembers the very moment he decided to dedicate his career to the guitar: when he purchased his first Les Paul sunburst in the mid-1970s. Many of his friends thought he was crazy when he paid more for a used instrument instead of getting a new one cheaper, but Tom knew just what he...
Richard Gellis remembers the early days of the vintage guitar movement when greater value was being placed on "used instruments." As his small store grew in Santa Cruz, California, so did his reputation for knowledge and customer services that helped make Union Grove Music the go-to place for...
Fat Dog is the founder of Subway Guitars in Berkeley, California. Since the 1960s, the store has become a hub for musicians to gather to discuss everything from politics and human rights concerns as well as music and poetry. The level of social awareness that Subway had was in Fat Dog's...
Bill Paige is one of the six founders of Heritage Guitars! The idea to start Heritage Guitar began when the Gibson Guitar Corporation closed its Kalamazoo, Michigan factory in September of 1984 and moved all production to its other plant in Nashville, Tennessee (in operation since 1975). When this...
Greg Golden was in the vintage guitar business back in the days when such instruments were referred to as simply “used.” Along with a handful of key dealers across the United States, Greg played a vital role in developing the vintage market by not only offering top quality instruments and setting...