There's something in the way guitar wood smells, something in how old amps diffuse the scent of burning dust and mellowing speaker cones that draws in guitar players. Sure, it's all about chords and arpeggios and scales and the like, but there's also an undeniable comfort that settles into the fretboarded mind when it's surrounded by 40-year old Gretsch hollowbodies with frightening pricetags and grimy amps with tubes all aglow.
Stores like Blue Note guitars, where vintage equipment lives on in the present, function almost like shrines. Some such places have loquacious owners who'll eagerly show you the latest finds, and others are inhabited by trollish luthiers who despise being interrupted by mere guitar players. And one expects to find the jewels of the past polished into splendor and ready for the future in places like this very small basement room near the Iron Horse on Center Street in Northampton. At Blue Note, you'll find many an old guitar on the walls, and the kind of serendipity that mostly happens in places like this, where you're likely to walk in and see someone you know (or will soon know, thanks to the size of the room) trying out a guitar.
When once I walked in for a whiff of vintage air, I spotted the kind of treasure you'll only find in such spots. There sat an old Vox Super Berkeley III amplifier, just like the one I got back in college in Texas. A small wound had ripped through the corner of the metal to one side of the controls, a wound inflicted on the Vox circa 1993—by me. I checked the serial number (I seem to remember things like serial numbers). Somehow my amp had made the rounds since I sold it years before, and ended up here. This fairly amazed me. The guy behind the counter seemed underwhelmed. Still, I know he would have been impressed had I told him that when I got the amp, I removed the back to check the speakers, and there I found two unopened packs of condoms from 1974. I left them there, figuring they were responsible for the sound of the amp. And you just won't find things like that when you buy a Peavey at the mall.
