How Much is Too Much?

I recently took the tour of the Taylor Guitar factory in San Diego. Naturally, being a musician and all, I had to play a number of the guitars they had in the store. It's like the candy store: you can't get enough until you're sick... or broke. Despite finding guitars that were very playable and had a great sound, I left empty handed. Some of this was my wife shaking her head at the thought of me blowing 4 grand on a guitar and some of it was "Don't you have enough guitars already?"

This question is often posed by the unbelievers or those with more sense.

In fact, I have 14 guitars, but I always note that they are all different and do different things rather than being a collection of say Gibson Les Pauls. That is, of course, disingenuous, but it's mine and I'm sticking with it.

But it is an interesting question: can you have too much? Which in this case means guitars. (We'll leave, for the moment, all the other musical and recording ephemera one can waste money on whether needed or not.)

The rational answer is yes, you can have too much.

Though 14 guitars is not actually that many and I wouldn't mind having many others, practically speaking, it would be impractical.

Why?

Because inevitably, you end up playing 1 or 2 guitars while the other collect dust. Even when recording and utilizing the different sounds each guitar provides, that doesn't mean it's played very often. I think of my 12-strings, which I rarely play and which I chide myself for not playing more! And, adding to that, what happens, as with my recent purchase of a jazz guitar (I know, right?), is that the guitar I had been playing the most, a Mexican Martin, is now doing time in a DADDAD tuning, which, oddly, has its perks: forcing me to write in that tuning, but I don't don't play it much of late.

And yes, having just bought a jazz guitar, which I didn't previously have, does it make sense to spend money on another acoustic, of which I have many?

According to my wife, the answer is "No!"

Not that I'm pinning this on her...

©2019 David William Pearce