Well, the conclusion of a month of very hard work and over three hundred bucks in expenses would have been today. When I bought my 1976 Ibanez Les Paul Copy it was in terrible shape.
And I subsequently applied everything I learned from working at Knooren Guitars for eleven years and counting in the restoration of this guitar.
So I figured that when it was time to sell it on, I would get an honest price for the effort and Money and the hours I put in this guitar, it's a Lawsuit Ibanez, a collector's item and it plays better and sounds better than ever before.
So when I went to the shop where I bought the guitar they were all "Look at that, is that REALLY the same guitar?", "That must have taken a lot of work.", "Well done!"
But when I placed my cards on the table and let my intentions known about wanting to sell the guitar, their facial expressions suddenly turned into strained facial expressions. The manager told me "This guitar is unsellable."
So I went "What?"
"Yes, this is a vintage Ibanez from the desirable period, yes, you did a killer job restoring it but the guitar is NOT in original condition, NOBODY wants a completely overhauled guitar, it's just not what people want. " He then gave me an estimate of what the guitar would be worth and it wasn't even enough to pay back the money I put in.
I can't remember feeling so grief stricken before as I felt after he told me that. "So you're basically telling me that I did all of this: the stripping, the filling of the hole, the re-routing of the pickup holes, the hours of sanding, the hiring of somebody who would paint it in a professional way, the buffing by hand so it would shine like a mirror for nothing? WAS ALL MY WORK A WASTE OF TIME?"
I guess they saw that they stepped on my soul here, they became aware that they severely rubbed me the wrong way. So they began to say say something among the lines of "No, you had fun doing this didn't you?" and "You can always hang it on the wall and show it to people." but that's not the point here. "I restored this guitar so it could be played, the way it is now means that somebody can use it as their main instrument for years and years to come. I SIMPLY DO NOT RESTORE GUITARS JUST TO HANG THEM ON THE WALL AS SOME KIND OF TROPHY!"
I left that store a broken man: I love working with wood, I love building guitars, I enjoyed every minute of restoring this Ibanez but it doesn't pay. NOBODY wants to buy my self build guitars and now it has been pushed in my face that even after such a successful restoration, it didn't earn me a dime.
Sometimes I wonder why I even bother...
