BLACK MAGIC

DAVID DAVIDSON IS no stranger to rare guitars. As the owner of Well Strung Guitars (formerly We Buy Guitars) in Plainview, New York, and COO and curator of the Songbirds Guitar Museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee, he’s sourced vintage instruments for players and collectors for more than 40 years. His expert eye remains focused on rarities from the scarce to the absolutely unique, yet to this day he retains a soft spot for those all? time classics that piqued his interest in the beginning.

“It was the Les Paul Custom that did it for me,” Davidson explains. “I remember watching Bill Haley & His Comets in [the 1956 film] Rock Around the Clock, and the guitar player, Franny Beecher, was playing a Les Paul Custom. I thought that was just about the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I said to myself, Wow! That is just beautiful. In that black-and-white film, it just bounced off the screen.

“I’ve opened up well over 10,000 guitars in my life,” he continues. “It’s a lot of fun, and I still learn something new every day. You never stop learning, and as an old hand, I love helping and teaching people about guitars. That’s what the [] museum was all about in the first place. The educational aspect of guitars is very important to me and, at this stage in my career, it’s about teaching the next generation before all this stuff turns into firewood.”