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Given that he has no formal guitar training and isn’t (yet!) a professional musician, you might wonder why Half Moon Bay’s guitar-repairman extraordinaire Mike Gold decided to fork out $5,000 each for two custom guitars crafted by Michihiro Matsuda (aka Oakland’s luthier extraordinaire). “As a repairman, my eye is much more discerning than [that of] the average guitar player or collector—I know the long list of things that could potentially go wrong,” says the 39-year-old former New Yorker, who began to strum alt-country, folk-rock and Americana covers at coffeehouses in San Jose in the early ’90s, not long after he learned to sing and play his first song, “Pancho’s Lament” by Tom Waits. “I wanted investment pieces that were the epitome of how guitars should be made: understated and elegant, with a structural integrity that would last a lifetime. I’ve seen so many instruments that are great to look at, but absolutely horrible to play.” In 2001, Gold commissioned Matsuda—whom he met while they were both working as repairmen at Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto—to create an acoustic guitar from Honduran mahogany, a dark wood with Gold’s “ideal sonic characteristics.” Two years later, Gold commissioned his second instrument from Matsuda—this time an electric guitar—and judging from Matsuda’s increasing popularity, Gold’s order came just in time. “Michi’s current waiting list is almost five years long,” Gold says. “It’s understandable, though. Playing his guitars is a really rich, tactile experience.”
Given that he has no formal guitar training and isn’t (yet!) a professional musician, you might wonder why Half Moon Bay’s guitar-repairman extraordinaire Mike Gold decided to fork out $5,000 each for two custom guitars crafted by Michihiro Matsuda (aka Oakland’s luthier extraordinaire). “As a repairman, my eye is much more discerning than [that of] the average guitar player or collector—I know the long list of things that could potentially go wrong,” says the 39-year-old former New Yorker, who began to strum alt-country, folk-rock and Americana covers at coffeehouses in San Jose in the early ’90s, not long after he learned to sing and play his first song, “Pancho’s Lament” by Tom Waits. “I wanted investment pieces that were the epitome of how guitars should be made: understated and elegant, with a structural integrity that would last a lifetime. I’ve seen so many instruments that are great to look at, but absolutely horrible to play.” In 2001, Gold commissioned Matsuda—whom he met while they were both working as repairmen at Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto—to create an acoustic guitar from Honduran mahogany, a dark wood with Gold’s “ideal sonic characteristics.” Two years later, Gold commissioned his second instrument from Matsuda—this time an electric guitar—and judging from Matsuda’s increasing popularity, Gold’s order came just in time. “Michi’s current waiting list is almost five years long,” Gold says. “It’s understandable, though. Playing his guitars is a really rich, tactile experience.”
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