May/June Highlights

Mon Jun 30 2025

It’s been a big year at Joel’s Vintage Guitars with operations full steam ahead after the showroom opened in Gladesville, Sydney.

In late May, we travelled up to Brisbane for the annual vintage guitar show there. The show is a great way to catch up with other dealers and meet keen players and collectors, while having the opportunity to showcase our latest stock. We met lots of new friends over the two days and managed to sell four incredible pieces to some happy customers including a 1953 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop, a 1963 Gibson ES335TDC, a 1966 Fender Telecaster, and a 2006 Fender Eric Clapton Masterbuilt Stratocaster.  After a successful weekend we made the journey home with more than a dozen extra instruments as well. The Brisbane trip is one we love doing, and we hope we get the chance to do it again next year.

We have had a busy 2 months since the store opened here, with dozens of vintage and used instruments finding new homes – however there’s one sale we had in June that we want to share with you all. One of our favourite things about vintage guitars is the history and stories that come with each instrument. Each one has its own tale to tell – most, we will never even get to know and will forever remain a mystery. Early last month, by absolute chance, we managed to reunite a 1976 Fender Stratocaster hardtail with the family of its original owner over 40 years after it left them.

A few weeks earlier a regular customer of mine Mark Evans traded this guitar in at the store– and it lucked out, that the moment we advertised the guitar on social media, Dan, the son of the original owner of the guitar saw our ad and recognized it immediately. Dan raced down to the store the next day – where he was reunited with his father’s guitar 40 years after it was sold.

It's moments like these that make the job. The look on Dan’s face was priceless. This exact guitar was the one Dan first learnt to play on and searched for decades for after his father made the hard decision to sell it in the 1980s. The guitar was more than just a musical instrument to him and his family, it was a sentimental memory of his father that couldn’t be replaced, after his father sadly passed away a few years ago. It was such an incredible experience to be a part of Dan’s reunion with it, and we are so glad that here at Joel’s Vintage Guitars we had even a small role to play in helping Dan find his father’s beloved guitar – just an amazing day.

Things don’t seem to be slowing down here at the shop – keep an eye out for new items being updated regularly to the website as stock is constantly being refreshed. Until next time– Joel and the team