Don't know your man in Kilkenny but it must be a little outside the town for I haven't come across it but much obliged for the heads up.
He's in Thomastown, a bit south of Kilkenny town itself, but sounds savvy and his prices are civil. In my day, the top address was Foley's in Carlow. At the time, the only musicians with money to spend weren't rock or folk musos, they were showband guys who would trade in their gear every two years or so.
Because these guys travelled a lot overseas, they brought back some nice pieces sometimes, and when it came time to pay taxes, they would often go to Foley's, invest in new gear to offset taxes and look for cash trade-ins on the stuff they had picked up on their travels.
In the 70's in Dublin, Walton's were the official Gibson importers for Ireland, but usually had only one Les Paul in the window, if you asked, they'd say "What colour? What model? We'll order it for you", which meant buying sight unseen and was a bit daunting when you consider the new prices for such instruments at that time. So for us impoverished musos, Dublin had nothing to offer.
Foley's, however, was literally a terraced house in a housing estate in Carlow, with two shipping containers in the back. One was the shop, the other was full of gear, the cigar chomping Michael Foley used to say "I haven't a clue what's in there, but its worth a million quid"
.
I bought a Vox AC50, a 60s Telecaster (wish I still had it!) and a bunch of broken SGs (out of three wrecks I got one serviceable guitar) there in 1979 for half nothing.
On the walls were old Flying Vs, Les Pauls, Explorers, Strats, a billion Teles (due to the plague of 60s/70s Country'n'Irish :? ).
Most of the customers were from everywhere except Dublin, of the showband ilk, and only had eyes for Teles and Twins. If I'd been a bit older, with a modicum of common sense and a bit more wedge, I could often have have made a killing there.
Crowley's in Cork was also better than anything Dublin had to offer.
Slight veer, but relevant to buying guitars in Ireland, later I worked for Rory Gallagher, who bought his iconic '61 Strat from Crowley's in McCurtain St., Cork city in the mid 60's.
The only reason Rory bought that guitar was because the original customer who ordered it wanted a red Strat like Hank Marvin's and didn't want the tobacco sunburst one that got sent over through some screw-up by Leo's shipping Dept.
Rory jumped at it for 100 quid and played it almost exclusively until he died. I had the privilege of hearing that Strat on stage and in countless hotel rooms, what a guitar, what a player and what a stroke of luck!
Not relevant, but I bought a mint '64 Fender Mustang from Michael Crowley (RIP) in '77 for 125 quid, my GF at the time used to hate going there with me because I would spend hours checking out what he had in stock :twisted: .
Anyway, thanks for stimulating the part of my brain that had held this useless info for the last 35 years and good luck on your search for the ideal Guild in Ireland
(which is an early 70s all hog D25 )
