Joe Dampt has loved guitar ever since he started playing when he was 10 years old. A few years later, after buying and selling a guitar for the first time, Dampt realized something: He could play as many rare vintage guitars as he wanted if he bought and sold them.
With a business degree and a love for old instruments, Dampt founded Joe’s Vintage Guitars. Now he earns a living shopping for, refurbishing and selling guitars. He wouldn’t give away too much about how he finds guitars, but he’s traveled as far as Kentucky and West Virginia to pick up gear and instruments. He’s built up quite the collection.
Dampt runs his business out of a small warehouse in Mesa. The one-story gray building on Stapley and Main doesn’t have any signs indicating what’s on the inside. That’s by design. You can only look at Dampt’s vintage guitars online or by appointment. The main workspace holds a few hundred guitars. The walls are lined with shelves holding rows of guitars and glass cases with guitar pedals and other gear. Most of the floorspace is taken up by a maze of amps and guitar cases stacked on top of each other.
The Show’s Amber Victoria Singer met with Dampt in a cozy corner of his warehouse, where he showed off a few of his favorite pieces.
Full conversation
JOE DAMPT: My name is Joe Dampt, I’m 29 years old and I’m a vintage guitar dealer. I probably have in the neighborhood of … 500 to 700 hundred right now. ...
I started selling guitars when I was, pfft, I mean the first one was probably when I was 14, when I purchased an instrument for myself and then sold it on the open market and kind of realized there was a potential there to make some profit. And from then on out, I used it as an opportunity to try all kinds of gear out, things that I enjoyed, and acquire guitars that I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise … 698 guitars at once was the most we ever bought.
And we’ve done 300, 100, 400, and sometimes I’ll drive across the country for one guitar if it’s the right guitar. The farthest I’ve ever gone there was to Maine. I think the most expensive single guitar I ever sold, I think it was a 1954 Strat in factory Blonde finish that I got $69,000 for.
So this guitar is really cool. This is a 1971 Fender Mustang, and the finish is called Competition Blue. The competition is actually talking about a little racing stripe on the corner. The cool thing about this guitar is that it was made in 1971, and if you look at the sticker right here inside the case it says Milano Music Center, Mesa, Arizona.
So this was bought new in 1971 at Milano Music, which is like 2 miles down the street. These were marketed towards kids at the time actually, so this would have been like a Christmas present for someone or like a starter guitar, but they’ve kind of obtained a following because they are actually quite well made and really cool looking guitars.
So this one is a 1959 Gibson Case. It’s got the brown leather exterior and it’s got the pink interior. It’s funny you ask about the Case, this is actually my favorite type of Case, I just think that brown and pink look so good, and it’s very iconically Gibson, because for the '50s, to have a bright neon pink interior for a case was a little out of left field.
As for the guitar in the case, this is a 1959 Gibson ES 355. ES stands for electric Spanish guitar, because back then steel guitars were popular with the slide, so you have to differentiate, and the steel guitar was called an electric or steel guitar, and you had to say Spanish guitar when it had frets. The number initially, this changed over time, but initially the number was how much it cost. So in theory, an ES 355 would have cost $355 back in the day.
Okay, this guitar is a 1966 Fender Stratocaster. It’s a standard Sunburst finish. This guitar, in really nice condition is probably worth about 15,000. It just has a great sound, it’s super worn in, you can tell it’s been played a lot. And there’s kind of an old adage in the guitar world that the good ones got played a lot. So if you see a super worn in one, it’s probably a good sounding and playing guitar.
So this is a lap steel guitar. Kind of known for that Hawaiian sound, or if you’ve ever seen Spongebob, you’ll hear a lot of this in Spongebob. They don’t sell that well because not many people like them or play them, but I kind of have a little bit of a, of a illogical obsession with them.
But this is actually a Rickenbacker, really early 1930s Rickenbacker, but it’s rebranded Mary Stephen, probably for sale at some department store that wanted to rename it or whatever. This has an all Bakelite body. It’s all one piece of molded Bakelite, and it’s got that very cool — normally they would color these, make them black or whatever. But the cool thing about this one is they kind of just kept that natural Bakelite Brown. Just to give you a sense of what the Hawaiian lap steel kinda sounds like when played moderately well.
