After many months in the making I am proud to represent and announce “The Frank Meyers Collection” of guitars available for sale exclusively on Guitar Gavel. Frank is the "Wizard Of Odd" columnist for Premier Guitar magazine, author of "The History of Japanese Electric Guitars", and founder of the Drowning In Guitars website and YouTube channel. 

Frank and I share a mutual love for the history of guitars, especially oddball guitars from Japan and other foreign manufacturers of the 1960s. Similarly as Joe Bonamassa describes himself as a custodian of vintage guitars, Frank is a curator. His YouTube channel boasts over 600 demos of guitars, pedals, and amps. Many of the guitars took a lot of professional work to make them daily players and that was one of Frank’s goals. It’s been a labor of love, a true passion story and Frank (with the help of Mike Dugan and Dano Dave) unequivocally created the best archive and catalog of bizarre guitars and gear in the world.

The backstory: In the summer of 2022 I reached out to Frank asking him to be a guest on the Guitar Gavel podcast. He immediately responded “yes”, but Frank is the father of two teenagers and a school teacher in Pennsylvania so it took six more months for the stars to align. Basically he was swamped until Christmas break and when the day came for our recording session I battled through a case of laryngitis to get the podcast across the finish line, Murhpy’s Law. That was the beginning of our friendship and lead to the discussion of Frank selling his guitars through Guitar Gavel.

So here we are today… the initial batch of Frank Meyers’ guitars are available for sale now and newsletter subscribers are the first to know. The public release of Frank’s collection begins tomorrow. Most of it will be exactly what you would expect, crazy cool Japanese guitars from the 1950s and 1960s, European oddballs from the same era, and some American made or American branded guitars. Some of theses guitars are insanely rare in America, others are literally a one of one that Frank personally found in Japan. There are also a handful of modern day exceptions and a few of those are included now.

All of the guitars are in playing condition and have been demoed by Frank’s friend and professional musician Mike Dugan. Furthermore, nearly every guitar has been professionally setup or worked on by Dano Dave D’Amelio.

Full transparency: Due to Frank’s schedule we’ll dole out the guitars a handful at a time and it will take months to go through his entire catalog. If you are a longtime fan of his website or go on a recon mission through his catalog and have questions about whether a specific guitar will be available for sale, email me at david@guitargavel.com. Please note Frank hasn’t kept all of them and of course he’s not parting with everything :-).

Thanks for reading and please share the news with your friends! After you've had the first pass of course...

Guitar Gavel Lick Of The Week with Stevie K - Trailing Tones

Trailing tones ascending in the key of E Major. Get your fingers out of the way :-)! Thank you Steve for sharing you time, treasure, and talent.