A child of the 60s I almost missed the crowd starting to the big mass market music (btw: the mmm seems to be one of the grandfathers of www:-)). I followed ten years later. Chains of small effect boxes filling the floor between me and my amplifier, a really bad Klira was changed for a Fender soon. After torturing my parents with noises produced with a tape machine and an old tube radio, my cabel finally plugged into a AC30 (do I have to mention: the chain...) and short time later into a Marshall, really playing in a band with gigs and a rehearsal room (the kind of room mushrooms love). Though normally more engaged killing humm or soldering broken cabels than playing, a time of peace and everything felt ok. First strike to this short and silent period was finding out there were other interesting instruments, different from my beloved Strat, but not perfect enough to be a complete substitute.

That was where the mess was born: I began buying guitars and selling them to buy others and worst of all : collecting them. The number of guitars I couldn't decide to let go increased. As A quick minded boy I found out in a hurry, collecting guitars was meeting interesting people, listening to funny stories, buying materialized history and personal experience. Worlds to explore, dramatic tales coming with every instrument, landmarks of lost youth, broken dreams and faded illusion as well as victims of upgrades and decision. All those emotions trapped in wood and iron (ok, and plastic:-) Different sights, sounds and backgrounds. Leaving the common system of value on the market, cheap Asian products or expensive American brands, I searched for strange bargains and lost treasures, everything looking exotic or sounding different became my companion.

Trying to find out more about companies and modells I started for books. Bad luck in the late 70s and early 80s, especially German language didn't seem to be writer's preferred way giving their knowledge to the world. One or two tuning books that promised high end results for nothing, using saw and solder didn't keep my interest after I had seen some of the crippling marks they left on guitars. I decided for purism. I still thing this is a fine dogma to follow. A producer's spirit is in the product, a combination of craftmanship and spirital power, that should not be altered for temporary needs. (... I will never forget the '69 Stratocaster "renewed" with a modern trem unit and a stringholder fixed with screws through the neck...) So my instruments survived the brass saddle period without being touched.

To get overview was hard to manage, catalogues of Japanease and American brands was all you could read. Every European modell was a surprising event of just personal history and value. This dramatically changed in 1987 when "Elektro-Gitarren Made in Germany" by Norbert Schnepel & Helmuth Lemme came out. Collecting systematically started being possible, the lost treasure was up in the gallery. I could date and list, fix values, reconstruct missing parts and view similiarities. Unfortunately this book made prices increase slightly, every seller had a real expensive and rare bird to offer, no matter if it was a professional high end guitar or a cheap super market deal. The golden age of bargains was over.

Right now my fever has gone, and I like that state. I still know what a nice guitar is and honor a strange stringed construction, but I don't have to own it.