Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

Favorite Instrument Stores

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I’d like to check out Artisan Guitars in Franklin one day, heard it was nice.

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You do need to go to Artisan Guitars. I don’t think they are a Martin dealer if I remember right, but they have have plenty of others: Collings, Santa Cruz not sure about Bourgois. They have used and vintage too including Martin.

I’ve only been there once and would love to go back. I was lucky enough to be there when they had Tony Rice’s Santa Cruz in the store. It may be the same one Ben played. It was fairly new to the store and they had it priced at $55,000.00 I think. I saw it had later dropped considerably, the low 30’s I believe. I paid less than that for my first house. Alot less :blush:

I kept looking at it (more like staring) but I never touched it. The salesman must have read my mind and he calmly said “You’re welcome to play it instead of just looking at it. Well that was all it took. So I played it. And boy, I was stunned. I couldn’t play it. The neck was shaved down so thin and the action was so low, it was impossible for me to play. I didn’t know if it was a good sounding guitar or not because I couldn’t get past the string buzzing! I couldn’t fret anything without touching at least two strings at the same time either. I asked, “how does he do it? This is awful.” I felt bad after I said that but the salesman said " don’t worry, it’s the same reaction we always get.”

I didn’t play it long, but it was cool to actually have a guitar that Tony used to make his living with in my hands and I thought about how this very guitar was the one on different albums still bringing joy to the ears of so many Tony fans. And that guitar, wherever it is now, will forever have a voice to be heard thanks to Tony and the recording industry. I got to hear that guitar’s voice in person along with much added buzzing I should add. But really I didn’t, only Tony with that guitar could do that. Just like us, we are all unique with our own instruments.

What was this post about? Oh yeah, go to Artisan. You’ll like it and the people there are fantastic. They said Brad Paisley’s a regular there too btw.

Great story! What a thrill that must have been. I’ve heard about the setup on that particular guitar. I figured its definitely meant to be played in front of a mic. I’m with you though, I’d be honored to just hold a guitar that belonged to one of our flatpicking heroes.