Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware)

Neville Marten recalls how playing thousands of good and bad instruments has gained him a degree from the guitar university of life’

Back in the old days we had to learn about guitars from experience, or from the few books at our disposal, many of whose ‘facts’ it turned out were rather questionable. Thank goodness for Professor Google! I was a total ignoramus when I first started buying guitars. My first quality instrument was a 1967 Tele, and my next the infamous ‘Jimi’ bitser Strat. The Tele was the round-lam rosewood-fingerboard type, while the Strat had a slab neck. I therefore presumed all Teles were round lam and all Strats slab ’boards. It was years before I found out. But I took them both to bits and learned how they were put together and how the geometry of the guitar’s action worked. It set me in good stead for later.

Then came a Gibson ES-335. I’d heard the owner was selling two, and I was to be given a choice. He turned up at my house and opened two cases. One had a gloriously dark see-through cherry finish with gorgeous swirly grain, while the other was a brighter red. The dark one was a 1962 model and the lighter one a ’67. “The newer one’s got the narrower nut width,” the seller told me. “That’s got to be good,” my ignorant brain reasoned, swerving me towards the later guitar (which, at £140, was also 20 quid cheaper).