"Some folks thought I would sell the JF30-12 after I bought the F512. I find myself playing each of them the same amount of time."
It's taken me years to learn this listen lesson, but the one you already had is the one, and the ones after that are just GAS.
Maybe it's ear pre conditioning. That one, the one you fell in love with, it's still the one somewhere in your mind. You just cast it aside for another, even temporarily.
But when you play it again, especially after a long spell put away, you remember why it was so great, in fact for me usually much better than anything that came after it, and you realize it's the real keeper.
Time and time again, my '73 D35 is a good case in point, I bought it just to have a Guild again without a lot of expectations, and it would send me on these crazy trips every time I played it, really inspirational. Then I took it to a local Harvest Festival, it sounded fantastic and I wrote a few songs while there that I attribute to the guitar. Not surprisingly, those songs sound best on this guitar.
I then bought another D35, because it was cheap, then others, D25's, luckily they all good resale values. I only buy one owner guitar in original cases being peddled by pickers who usually know nothing about guitars if I can help it. They all sound wonderful, but at the end of the day, half a dozen guitars later, none can replace my #1.
