I started playing guitar when I was 11 and joined my first band when I was 14. We couldn’t afford good guitars and made our own speakers. More than anything I wanted  a Fender Stratocaster,
a ‘Strat’, because it was what my guitar heroes — Clapton, Hendrix, Gilmour and Beck  — played. The Strat is the most beautiful and ergonomically designed thing that the human race has ever manufactured and it’s remained almost unchanged for nearly 60 years. 

In 1976, I got my wish while working during university holidays at Alan Kingsley-Smith’s music shop. A new ‘Sunburst’ Strat came in and Alan let me work it off by doing guitar repairs and making speaker cabinets. I still love that guitar and have since acquired a few others.

I don’t ‘collect’, as such, I just occasionally find a guitar and fall in love with the feel of it. Some are American originals; others are cheaper Asian re-makes which I modify to suit my style. I also love guitars for the sheer of beauty of their design and sometimes their use of stunning ‘tone woods’.

I own mainly ‘classic’ guitars, Strats, ‘Teles’ (Telecasters, immortalised by Keith Richards) and Gibson Les Pauls as used by Jimmy Page. 

I also have a few wonderful acoustic guitars, including a beautifully simple ‘student’ guitar made in Naples in the early 60s. I got that when I was 15. My go-to guitar is ‘Blackie’, a ’93 black Strat that feels like an extension of my fingers, but all my guitars get played. Three different ones go to band practice each week and all have their own sound and feel. I still can’t quite believe that I own the exact models that most of the ‘guitar gods’ owned. It’s sort of like owning one of Michael Schumacher’s championship-winning Ferraris, but unlike cars, my guitars get better with age and use. They are all worth more now than I paid for them. What more could you want from a ‘collection’?