For guitar players, visiting Dave's Guitar Shop is an awe-inspiring experience. Upstairs, owner Dave Rogers' collection of vintage guitars grew to become a museum of electric guitar history. Fenders, Gibsons, Rickenbackers, Gretsch, Paul Reed Smith. I have personal favorites like Fender Stratocasters, Fender Telecasters, Gibson Les Pauls, Gibson ES 335s. I mean the stuff that, you know, everybody wants. Though worth a fortune, the guitars in Dave's collection are not for sale. We try to save, like, the best example of whatever of those versions there are. Like on the Fenders, the desirable years are from about 1950 up to about 1965. We try to have one of every year of the best example of that. So starting over there, you've got a '54 Strat, '55 Strat, just continuing on. And some of 'em are custom colors. Some of 'em have odd features about 'em. Then over here, we've got the Telecasters.
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This is a 1953 Telecaster. Again, considered like the best year for Telecasters. My older brother played guitar in a band. You always look up to your older brother and everything like that. I'd go follow him around. Watch him play at the teen youth center in Marshfield.
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Probably actually started picking it up a little more seriously, 10, 11 years old. With my brother playing, he had a great album collection in the house. I remember looking at Derek and the Dominoes, the Eric Clapton album. His Strat was laid out there with a bunch of dominoes all over it. I was going, "If I could ever get a '50s Strat in sunburst that, you know, I'd never need another guitar the rest of my life," or whatever. Now that I own some, I'm going, "This is like a dream come true for me. You know, pinch me. You know, wake me up."
electric guitar
I never made a living in a band. You know, I was never good enough for that. I tried to make a living playing guitar and that was a rough living. You know, lived on a lot of Campbell's Soup, I guess. Dave scaled back his musical ambitions, and opened his guitar shop in 1982. I can still play and have fun, but I'd be working with guitars, the thing I really love. I had 15 guitars of my own and I just put 'em all out for sale just to get the business going. That was hard to do 'cause that was my lifeblood. You know, that was everything I had collected up until that point. Every dime I took in at the shop, I just reinvested in the shop just to build inventory. Dave didn't start rebuilding his own collection until years later, when a business deal went wrong. A friend of mine wanted this guitar that was down at a shop in Iowa, that I knew of. It was a very rare color, '57 Strat.
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He said, "Get that for me and I'll buy it from ya." So I bought it and I had to beg, borrow, and steal to get the money to buy this guitar. The guitar came in and the guy came and looked at it. He says, "Oh, it's not clean enough. I don't want it." I was like, "Oh no, you know. What am I going to do here?" But I was like going, "Well this guitar is just the coolest guitar ever." So you can see that it's definitely gotten some use. And that was the first guitar of the collection now. I ended up keeping that one.
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It turned out that the turquoise Stratocaster was exceedingly rare, and highly sought-after. There's a picture of Eric Clapton playing it up there. At the time, he was interested in buying it. Unfortunately, I had to say no, so. Money has never really meant a whole, whole lot to me. There's been a lot of times where I'll be like going, "Oh boy, should I eat or should I buy this guitar," or whatever. I always opt for buying the guitar. There's been a lot of times where we've been offered exorbitant monies for some of these guitars that, you know, it's never tempted me, really. I almost feel like they're not my guitars. I'm just kind of tending 'em for the next generation. So it's just like I never feel like I own this stuff. It's not a possession thing. It's just like I'm taking care of 'em. And to me, to not share 'em with the people that'd come in, it'd be like a greedy thing or something like that. Like, "Oh no, no, no. These are my guitars" or whatever. They're not my guitars. I'm just taking care of them right now.
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