Jack's Guitarcheology

Jack's Guitarcheology in Lebanon, Tennessee restores and sells guitars, while also keeping a carefully curated selection of vinyl and books. The shop focuses on keeping playable instruments in circulation and accessible to working musicians and new players.

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Interview with Jack's Guitarcheology

"Guitarcheology" is a perfect word for what you do — digging up weirdo dimestore guitars, Silvertones and Teiscos, and saving them from the scrap pile. Where did that mission come from, Jack?

I have always had a soft spot for Silvertones, Teiscos and other old weird guitars. When I was eighteen, my band Uncle Skunkle opened for The Dex Romweber Duo and I watched in awe as Dex played a Silvertone 1448 through a Silvertone amp and I have been hooked ever since. He got so many sounds out of that guitar, all of them good!

A little later in life, I was working for Guitar Mill / Mario Guitars in Murfreesboro, and I learned a lot about guitar teching while working there. Around three years into my tenure, my cousin contacted me and said something to the effect of "you like old guitars right?" Turns out he had bought a storage unit in an auction, and it had a vintage Silvertone 1457 in it - vintage amp-in case included. It needed some work, but he sold it to me for $300. I took it to work with me and stayed late to fix it up one day. It took me about two hours to clean up and when I was done the guitar with the case was worth about $900. That was quite a profit for two hours of work. I never sold that one, I still have it, but it got the wheels turning about the business model.

Around that same time, I bought a Teisco bass and my wife's aunt (my aunt-in-law, I guess) asked if I wanted this "weird old guitar from her closet" and it turned out to be a Teisco Sharkfin. I similarly fixed these up, and the bass was one of the first guitars I sold under the Guitarcheology name. I still have the Sharkfin. These restorations really helped me complete the idea for the business - buy trashed guitars for cheap, fix them up or turn them into something else cool and resell them. I found I really like piecing old guitars back together, I assume much in the same way some people like doing jigsaw puzzles or building model airplanes.

The environmentalist aspect of it came later. I strongly believe that you do not need to be a wingnut to care about the environment, and at a fundamental level, we could all do a little more to reduce our waste. I started to take a 'why get a puppy when there are so many good dogs at the pound' approach to guitars. Thus, I expanded past the dimestore guitars and we will restore just about any guitar that needs it. I still love doing the old oddballs, but I also get a lot of joy in fixing up a Squier Strat from the 2000s that I can sell to a teenager who is hoping to learn for a very affordable price.

The mission stays the same - to save perfectly fine guitars from languishing in closets or worse, going to the landfill. How we pursue that mission has changed a lot in the decade since I first started the Guitarcheology Reverb store, but the mission is the same.

You make your own rubber-bridge acoustics and stock playable pieces of oddball art — how did the shop develop such a specific, characterful personality?

I will be the first to tell anyone that I did not originate the rubber bridge method - that honor would go to Reuben Cox at Old Style Guitars in California. I did, however, go to great lengths to pioneer my own method, sound and style of rubber bridge.

It all started five or six years ago, I was buying old Harmony Stella and similar vintage parlor guitars, fixing them up and installing a pickup to make them stage ready instruments. Sometime in the middle of the covid pandemic, I started getting a lot of requests for rubber bridge guitars. Like A LOT of requests. I think I got thirteen in one week once. So I came home to my wife and I said "I gotta figure this thing out." I spent about six months developing my rubber bridge method.

At first, I played with a bridge that mimicked the Old Style bridge, but I decided I wanted to design my own method from the ground up, so I began experimenting with wrapping wood with a certain rubber polymer instead of cutting the bridge out of solid rubber. This was the thread that led to my bridge. My rubber bridge sounds a lot less muted than the others out there, while still retaining the desirable "lo-fi" sound. It is crazy how popular they have gotten, I have done rubber bridges for Noah Kahan, The Goo Goo Dolls, members of Old Crow Medicine Show, Butch Walker, members of Under Oath, among many, many other notable names.

The rubber bridge craze has died down a little now, but I still do a few rubber bridge commissions a month and I will likely be doing them for the rest of my career!

You're in the Nashville orbit but doing something very different from the big vintage shops in town — who comes through Guitarcheology, and how's the local scene?

It seems foolish of me now, but I did not expect all the people I would get to meet owning a store in greater Nashville when I opened the shop.

I have customers that range from seventy-year-old Grand Ole Opry members to seventeen-year-old death metal guitarists, and I love them all. I have had tons of famous guitarists in over the years: Lizzy Hale, Madison Cunningham, Reverend Peyton, and I even sold a guitar to Elvis Costello online once.

I came up in the punk / metal / DIY scene, and I have been heavily involved in the Nashville & Murfreesboro music scenes since 2010, so a lot of my customer base are DIY musicians that I have met over the years. I like to keep my repair rates cheap enough for working musicians to afford...but that doesn't mean I don't get my fair share of Broadway players, Music Row session guys, and all other manner of professionals. We have a very diverse customer base, and it has taught me a lot about the guitar, guitar playing and people in general.

The guitar industry and luthiery scene in Nashville is second to none. There is almost no animosity or competition because there is so much business to be had. There are probably more guitars in Davidson and the surrounding counties than anywhere else on the planet, so we can all be friends without worry. Some of my best personal friends would be considered competition in any other major city. A few years ago, Dave Johnson at Scale Model Guitars contacted me about putting together a directory of all the luthiers, guitar stores and guitar techs in the Nashville area. We host that directory on our site now and it is a godsend. It allows us to refer out jobs based on each shop's specialty. If I can't help one of my customers, I certainly know someone who can now!

The shop's known as a hangout as much as a store, with a lounge area — how did that come to be?

This is something that was baked into the store from the very beginning. Jayme and I were very intentional in making it a place worth hanging out in, because ultimately that is what hobby stores - be they vinyl stores, guitar stores, gaming stores, computer stores, etc - are for. We wanted to cultivate a space where people could come hang out and play the guitars, or ask specific questions about their gear or setup.

When we were deciding how to lay the store out, we took more inspiration from record stores than other guitar stores. Guitar stores, in my opinion, often commit the sin of being too clinical with white slatwall and super corporate layouts. Record stores are often cozy, inviting and expect you to spend some time hanging out digging through crates and listening to music. We wanted our store to have that kind of "High Fidelity" vibe where you would walk in to my staff and I having a passionate discussion about which Talking Heads record is the best one.

I think ultimately, I was trying to build the place that my thirteen-year-old self would want to hang out at. I think about all I would have been able to accomplish if a shop like mine were in my hometown growing up, and I want my shop to be that kind of space for children of all ages - teenagers to senior citizens.

Vinyl's part of the mix alongside the guitars — how did records find a spot on your shelves, and what do you like to keep around?

Since we are on a public square where there is a lot of foot traffic, and a good portion of that foot traffic does not play the guitar, so I like to have other options. Books and records just seemed like a no brainer. Jayme and I are avid record collectors and both have been since high school. Our marital collection of records is over 1500 now, I think. The way I saw it, selling records at the store was an excuse to rebuy records I love that I already own and sell them to others!

The new records are curated by Jayme, mostly bought directly from independent labels. A lot of modern alternative, indie, punk, etc. The used records are usually things I personally love or have a soft spot for. I am a big fan of punk, metal, alternative, etc records, of course, but I have also always had a soft spot for mid-century novelty and bachelor pad music - Herb Alpert, Martin Denny, Rusty Warren, stuff like that - so I keep a healthy selection of that kind of stuff. I also seek out used records from guitar heroes, as I feel that fits the vibe of the store for obvious reasons.

Our selection of vinyl is not super extensive, but it is meticulously curated and I can probably tell you something I love about every record on our table.

What's the most unusual or surprising piece — guitar or record — that's come through the door?

In the records department, I currently have a Razzmatazz album that is full of glitter - like a liquid filled record, but glitter. I had never seen that before. It is fun to turn and stare at!

Guitars and basses, I think I could find something special about almost every one that comes in, but some that come to mind:

The previously mentioned seventy-year-old Grand Ole Opry member has his 1962 Stratocaster that he has had since he was sixteen years old. He has sanded it down, removing the original finish, which would usually greatly reduce the value of the instrument...but he has had every major player he has ever backed sign it. Some unbelievable signatures on that thing - BB King, Bill Monroe, Dolly, Tommy Emmanuel, Garth Brooks, basically anyone who has played country or blues in the last half century. It is an incredible instrument with an incredible history. I once had a customer bring in an unnamed banjo, and I got the pleasure of telling him it was a 1920s Gibson Goldtone that was redone in the 1970s. About a $20k banjo! It was a beautifully crafted instrument with gunstock carvings and gold hardware. Just beautiful. I bought a Phantom Guitar Works Stick Bass once, it was super cool and looked like a wing from the Adam West batmobile. The case had a bunch of festival stickers and backstage passes from festivals in the mid-1990s. I got curious and cross-referenced the lineups for those festivals and the only band that played all of them was Fishbone, so I suspect that bass once belonged to John Norwood Fisher of Fishbone. I can't prove it, but it seems to be too coincidental not to be true. I could probably write a book at this point about the guitars that stuck with me. Maybe one day I will!

Guitars and records both attract obsessive collectors chasing the rare and the weird — do you find it's the same kind of person?

Oftentimes, it is literally the same person.

I think it is incredibly individualistic, though, and there are subcategories of both record and guitar collectors. I notice in guitars that there are two main types of participants in the hobby, collectors and players. Collectors are concerned with originality, and often seek out items in pristine condition. Players are more concerned with how the instrument feels and plays. Collectors are looking to buy a historical item or a museum piece, and players are forever searching for "mojo."

I think vinyl collectors are similar. There are collectors who want all of their records to be VG+ and there are collectors that will buy a record with a torn sleeve if it is interesting or hard to find.

It seems in my experience, if someone is a collector in their guitar habits, they will be similarly picky about their vinyl habits....and players are always going to play!

What keeps a fiercely independent, one-of-a-kind shop like yours thriving?

Honestly, a lot of hard work and a lot of luck. I work 5.5-6 days a week most weeks and Jayme works that much or more. It takes a lot to keep the wheels turning. There is also a fair bit of being in the right place at the right time. As my Dad told me as a kid, "success happens when luck meets preparation."

I am not sure if being a "Jack of all trades" comes with being named Jack for other Jacks, but it did for me. My ability to be "kind of good" at a lot of different skills has kept us afloat and saved us a lot of money. I do our own web design, graphic design, guitar repair and I designed our e-commerce system, among dozens of other entrepreneurial touches over the years. Having to hire any one of those things out would have been incredibly expensive.

Similarly, Jayme is excellent with accounting, spreadsheets, data, taxes and money stuff. Her brain works in ways that mine is incapable of and there are whole sections of the administration of the business I do not have to worry about because she takes care of them. Those would also be very expensive to hire out.

I would also be remiss if I did not mention my staff. I have some of the best guys in the business, and they all work incredibly hard to keep the ship afloat. I am lucky to have all of them, especially my lead tech, Cade, who is a world class luthier. I learn new stuff from my guys all the time!

Lastly, my customer base. I have a very supportive base of regular customers and I would not have made it this long without them.

Last updated: 2026-09-06

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