Vintage Guitar Shows… watch this space for future events…

History of the National Guitar show in Canberra

In the mid 2000s, when I was running a small vintage guitar business called Dr Zot’s Zone of Tone, I was reflecting on my earlier shared adventures in Adelaide with my friend and long-term vintage guitar afficionado Terry O’Riley.  Way back in the ’70s I met Terry when I was playing bands in Adelaide and he was working along with Nick Cawthorne, at Regent Music, in Grenfell Street in Adelaide’s CBD.  Around 1977 Terry came up with the idea of asking his and Nick’s muso mates who had older and/or rare guitars to bring them in to display for a few days in the store.  So I brought in my 1960 Melody Maker which joined a couple of dozen instruments under the stairs area at Regent Music.  A black and white photo of the event does exist ……. if I can rustle up a copy I’ll post it here!

Fast forward about a decade. Older Strats and Les Pauls and some amps were starting to get a reputation for being desirable and the concept of ‘vintage guitars’ as collectables and investments as well as players, was becoming a thing. Having heard about ‘Guitar Shows’ in the USA through magazines and personal contacts in those pre-internet days, Terry and I decided to do a guitar show together  in Adelaide.  We hired the top room at the Arkaba Hotel for a weekend and sent out invitations to anyone we knew that might like to bring some gear to display or sell, or just come along. It worked better than expected. The attendees ranged from lots of local musos, to older gentlemen from the once very active Adelaide Steel Guitar Club, through to a few guys from the Sydney vintage scene such as ex-ACDC bass player Mark Evans who was our house guest for the weekend.

Subsequently Terry and I ran a couple more sucessful vintage guitar and amp shows in Adelaide. During that time, my day job was increasingly taking me to Canberra, and my family moved to the ACT in 1996. By that stage I’d acquired a few more guitars, eBay was becoming an exciting new option for buying/selling internationally and so in addition to playing around town a bit, I started up Zone Of Tone, a small online vintage guitar business.  A that stage there wasn’t anyone else really focusing on vintage gear in Canberra and I had alot of support from local players, the Canberra Blues Society, the local media, and from industry guys like Matt at Better Music.  So it seemed like a good idea to start up the vintage guitar show concept again, and with great support from all of the above, we ran a number of annual events at the Statesman Hotel in Curtin in the years leading up 2012.  At that point I retired from the day job and we moved back to Adelaide.  By this stage Terry’s own shop, Twangcentral Guitars, had become ‘the’  vintage store in South Australia and before long I was happy to be working there part-time, getting up very close and personal with the moving feast of vintage Martins, Fenders and Gibsons that Terry specialises in.

Back in Canberra for 2023 and beyond, it’s great to renew musical contacts here and especially to bring forward some ideas, developed with my Canberra friend Simon Wilkins, to launch a vintage specialist partnership here in the ACT.  Along with showcasing excellent gear at our Capital Vintage Guitars start-up, we’re keen to bring back the National Guitar Show back to Canberra in 2023, hopefully in Spring over the October Long Weekend. More info to come, we’ll keep you posted!

Cheers, Ian