About Us

Firstly, may I take this opportunity to thank you for getting this far and visiting our little corner of the Internet. People often ask me, why call yourselves ‘Modern Guitars’ when everyone else out there who sells ‘old’ guitars likes to be referred to as ‘vintage’ guitar dealers? Well we are vintage guitar dealers and love any old, usually American, guitars. But we do want to be different and stand out from the crowd, and therefore sell guitars from the ‘modern’ era which roughly means the 1940’s through to the 1980’s hence “Modern Guitars”

We mainly prefer what we call fretted Americana but will sell U.K. and European hand-built originals and some high end Japanese guitars. Sorry but we don’t buy in or sell mass produced budget or intermediate level import guitars. There are other volume players in the industry who do this more profitably than we can, so we don’t go there!

We seek to serve the needs of collectors and investors as well as players. For 20 years we have played, bought, repaired and restored and sold old guitars, bass guitars, banjos, pedals and amplifiers. Our personal collection spans a wide range of fretted instruments from the mid-1880’s through to tomorrow’s vintage instruments being manufactured today.

We pride ourselves on being able to find great guitars that are a joy to play as well as being collectible investments. We enjoy tracking them down and buying them almost as much as selling them and seem to find great guitars at prices that some of the other dealers don’t! When required we take on a sympathetic restoration in order to return a great instrument to how it should be. This will also be outlined in any listing and mentioned in our discussions with a potential buyer.

Because we are an internet only business we are happy to sell by phone or by email. We don’t use Ebay or Paypal but can take card payments over the phone and can supply an IBAN number for bank transfers. We are however, much more happy to meet you at the many guitar shows we attend in the U.K. and Europe, as it is great to put faces to names and meet up and chat about guitars. We always seek to provide a friendly service to all and have built up a large client base over the years including some famous guitarists. We also provide a ‘plug into your own rig’ service for established bands. Contact us on 07895355482 to discuss this.

We buy guitars, can sell on consignment, value a collection or individual instruments and provide services to the insurance and loss adjustment industry. We are happy to haggle and will always ‘stand behind’ a guitar as our reputation relies on it. We would rather retain valued customers by being honest about a guitar rather than ‘stiff’ them once to make a quick ‘buck’ and get a bad reputation.

So sit back, check our stock and scroll through the pages of wonderful instruments designed and built by Martin, Fender, Gibson, Gretsch and others. If you hover your mouse over the black and white images you will notice they change colour, then its only a single mouse click to find out more about that instrument, or of course you could just click “More Info” but that’s not as much fun!

We hope that this “About Us” page serves as our way of introducing ourselves, and we look forward to hearing from you or be dealing with you soon.