The Ultimate Guitar

My first guitar was a cheap instrument. It was at least 35 years old, not well taken care of, and the action was so high that it was essentially unp[ayable. It looked like it had fallen down several times from a long metal staircase, and its tone was pretty bad too. Hollow and clunky. Effectively, I had about the worst guitar anyone could own. This had one major advantage, because every other guitar I saw was much better than mine!
 

A 'built to order' guitar from Taylor. 
 

Every time I played someone else's guitar, it was the most wonderful experience. Whenever I walked into a music store, it felt like I had gone through the Gates of Heaven. Every single guitar in any music store was at least a hundred times better than mine. Clean, shiny, with a great smell and a mind-blowing tone. And completely out of my reach because of its price. I was just a little kid, and all I could do was dream about the time that I would earn enough money to afford these kinds of instruments. 

And that time has come. Today, when I walk into a music store, there are not many guitars anymore that attract my interest. This may sound arrogant, but it is not. Over the last 40 years or so, during my quest for 'the ultimate guitar', I have owned just about every guitar you can find in music stores. Most of the times I also sold them after a while, because I liked other guitars better and needed the money. After many years of buying and selling guitars this way, I have obtained a collection of instruments that I did not even dare to dream of what I was a kid. Top-of-the-line models of the most respected builders, and Custom Shop models, built for me personally according to my exact specifications (and a whole lot more expensive than the guitars I used to dream about during my childhood years). So it seems like my dreams have come true!

In one respect this is actually a little sad. Sometimes I feel some nostalgia when I think back to the years that all other guitars in the world were so much better than mine. The excitement was so easy to find! On the other hand I still find beautiful instruments now and then, which are so expensive that I cannot afford to buy them right away. Today it takes a little more effort than in the old days, but they are still there! And I am very happy about that. This way, I can keep dreaming about guitars. And that is good, because the guitars I still want to buy make me as happy as the guitars I already own!