Indeed, many newer guitar dealers operate solely online.įor dealers such as Westgor, 48, it’s about the loyalty and word-of-mouth of longtime connections. Online commerce, he says, has made store location irrelevant. “Only two kinds of guys can afford this stuff – rock stars and guys who don’t play,” says Barnes, who lives in New Brighton and opened his store because it was close to home.
Hanging in Barnes’ store is every guitar from Gibson’s TV line, each designed to look good on screen during the early years of television.
The stores also stock amplifiers you can’t find through the chains.Īt, you’ll find some of the first Marshall amps ever made, with nameplates stamped in block letters on metal graveyard markers. Guitars at both stores sell at the low end for just under $1,000, and some list for tens of thousands of dollars. Neither store is for the first-timer, hobbyist or weekend warrior, but Willie’s has a greater variety of guitars and is far more open and inviting to browsers who want to plug in and play. Nate Westgor, who went by “Willie” as a blues guitarist in Chicago before moving to the Twin Cities and opening Willie’s American Guitars, helped get Barnes into the business, and Barnes’ No. There’s a mild tension between the stores. Paul, is the only other Twin Cities outlet with a collection to rival Barnes’. Willie’s American Guitars, which opened about 20 years ago at St. The actual storefront of, across Old Highway 10 from Mounds View Administration Building, is more of a climate-controlled warehouse than a showroom. Vintage guitars – those made before 1970 – are a surprisingly stable investment, and a hot one, according to “The Official Vintage Guitar Magazine Price Guide.” Vintage solid-body electrics are the focus for Barnes, who is among a wave of newer dealers doing the bulk of their business online.
“I’ve been offered a half-million for it, but I won’t sell it. “There were only 19 of them made in 1958 and three in 1959,” Barnes says. Rather than open his safe, Barnes points high on a wall to a framed photo of Eric Clapton, taken about 40 years ago, performing in concert with a 1958 Gibson Explorer. “And that’s where it stays,” says Bruce Barnes, who opened and named almost seven years ago, just as the Internet boom went through its first bust. You’ll never know the reality of that scene until you walk into, an anti-retailer in a squat Mounds View strip mall, where one of the world’s most expensive guitars is locked in a fireproof safe. In the mock documentary “This is Spinal Tap,” the character Nigel Tufnel shows off a guitar that can never be played, touched, pointed to or, ultimately, looked at.
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