“My name is Hans Moust and I run a repair shop for guitars and related
instruments in Breda, which is in the Netherlands.”
As long as I can remember I've been interested in musical instruments and
stringed instruments in particular.
Like so many other kids I started frequenting the local music shops at an early age.
Picking up catalogs was one of the things they allowed me to do and, at that time, looking at the
pictures
seemed like the next best thing after actually owning the instruments.
Obviously most of the instruments in the catalogs I could only dream of but being brought up with
woodworking tools around the house, I was really motivated to try and improve the instrument that I
could afford at the time. By the time I was ready to get a place of my own I was doing set-ups and small repairs
for the friends I used to play music with. To me that was still a hobby, since making music was the
one thing I liked doing the most. It must have been around 1975 that it became clear to me that making
music as a career was not for me and since I enjoyed repairing instruments that much, it seemed like a logical thing to do for a living.
It was at that same time that more and more people were getting interested in 'older' instruments.
Before that, any guitar that was not new had been called a used guitar but they were now referring to them
as 'vintage’. ' Vintage' guitars were not readily available in Europe and I started looking for sources in the U.S. to buy
these instruments from for my customers. It didn't take long before I was making trips to the other side of the
Atlantic. There I got to know some wonderful people and at the same time I was exposed to all these instruments that I
had not even seen in catalogs. I became more active in trying to get older guitar catalogs because they often were the only source of
information available about a specific brand or maker and my catalog collection was steadily growing. I found myself
acquiring more and more information on the instruments that I came across. Not just when they were made but also how
they were made, what they were made of and what their place was in the evolution of the instrument.
I also wanted to know who the people were that designed them and where they were coming from. I made photos
of the ones that I thought were historically interesting, took notes on changes that had been made in the
construction of instruments from different periods and all that information was filed in my archives.
Guitarchives
Guitarchives is the name I started using some time during the mid-'80s when I was playing with
the idea of maybe publishing some of my findings but at that time I wasn't sure how I was going to do
that. That changed after I met commercial photographer Edward Susanna and soon after that we started our
own publishing company.
In 1989 we launched our Sweet 16' postcards and poster and in 1995, after a good 5 years of intensive
research, we came out with The Guild Guitar Book-The Company and the
Instruments, 1952-1977.
For a while now we've been working on Part II of the Guild Book, which will bring Guild history up
to date.
The 'Guitarchives' section will list some of the publications we've done ourselves plus all kinds of
other guitar-related literature. I still collect guitar catalogs and I also have a lot of spares that I
like to use for trading against literature I don't have yet. I hope this site will help me to find people
who are interested in exchanging guitar information.
Parts
One of the other reasons to start this site was the possibility to offer some hard-to-find
guitar parts
to a wider audience.
Getting the right parts has become extremely difficult and sometimes outrageously expensive in
the world
of vintage guitars.
Being a repairman I've always been on the lookout for older parts that I would store for future
repairs.
Since writing the Guild Book I've been getting a lot of requests for original parts that people need
for
their older Guild guitars and during the last 5 years I've been trying really hard to locate older
Guild
parts or find sources for parts that are no longer available from the Guild Company.
After the Westerly plant closed in 2001 a lot of old stock was discovered in several different rooms
of the
factory and I was really lucky to be able to obtain some of that stuff. It even included some boxes
that had
been moved from Hoboken, NJ to Westerly, RI around '69 -'70 and had not been opened yet. Some of it
will be
offered on the 'Parts' section of this site. 'SPECIAL NOTES' on parts: A large percentage of the
parts in
this section is no longer available from Guild or anywhere else. There's hardly a chance that I
will be
able to buy these again and consequently some of the prices will reflect that. This also implies
that I
cannot offer them at wholesale prices.
There will also be a lot of 'other-than-Guild' parts available for brands like Fender, Gibson and
Gretsch
and keep in mind that some are not necessarily guitar-brand-related. Parts from ABM (Müller),
Bigsby,
Centralab (CRL), Clarostat, CTS, Dakaware, DeArmond, Gotoh, Grover, Kluson, Kolb, Waverly, Schaller,
Stackpole and Switchcraft have been used on a variety of brands. I'm always interested in buying
parts. Just
'contact' me if you have anything you would like to sell or trade. If you are looking for a part
that is not
available from the 'regular' parts sources you may contact me as well, since I might be able to get
it for
you.
Gallery
This is supposed to be the entertainment part of the site but at the same time I hope that it
will be
somewhat educational as well.
Every month I will present an interesting guitar in the 'guitar of the month' section; sort of like
a centerfold but without the staples. Obviously there will be some additional historical and/or
specs.related information as well. There is also a 'photo of the month' section and other sections will be
added in the future. I hope that you will enjoy this site and hopefully you will find something here that
you wouldn't be able to get somewhere else. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to
'contact' me.