“If you’re not going to use it, it doesn’t make any sense”: Slash bemoans people spending huge sums of money on vintage guitars as investment pieces
In what will be no shock to anyone, Slash is a total guitar addict. Back in 2018, divorce documents revealed that the Guns N’ Roses legend owned 221 guitars, with a combined value of around $2 million.
However, despite spending millions on guitars himself, Slash has spoken out about collectors overspending on vintage guitars. In a recent interview with Reverb, he insists collectors buying expensive vintage models only for them to collect dust are doing it for the wrong reasons.
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“I’m an addict… I buy guitars because I love guitars,” he explains to Reverb. “[But] I honestly believe that you can get an excellent, as good as you’re ever gonna need, new guitar that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.”
In Slash’s eyes, spending too much on a guitar is “absolutely not worth it”, and says once the sum goes over a certain threshold, there’s not much variation in quality. “There is a line there that you cross where you are just spending money for the sake of the name or the label, or whatever it is,” he says. “You have to spend a little bit of money for quality. But you don’t have to spend exorbitant amounts of money for it.”
He goes on: “People who buy a million-dollar, $500,000 guitar, are the same people – mentally, anyway – as people who buy Rolls-Royces.”
Slash views his guitar collection as a toolkit, filled with instruments designed to be used, not simply put on display. “If you’re not going to use it, if it doesn’t give you whatever it is that you are supposed to get out of an instrument, for that much money, then it just doesn’t make any sense,” he says.
Collector pricing also impacts average guitar enthusiasts keen on experimenting with vintage gear. Joe Bonamassa has spoken out about it in the past on the Tone-Talk podcast, condemning “elitist” collector culture.
“As a player there’s real disadvantages now,” Bonamassa said. “I feel bad for people who are into old things, who always wanted to experiment musically with them – which is what they’re for – that can’t justify $55,000 for a ‘57 Fender Stratocaster.”
“At the end of the day it’s just a fucking Stratocaster!” he exclaims. “It’s not going to sound much different to something you can buy new for a thousand bucks or less.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
