Does Buying a Gibson Guitar Make Me a Hypocrite?

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I have espoused the virtues of $500 guitars for years.

I’ve talked about how incredibly good they’ve gotten. How you could play guitar your whole life with one and not be missing out. How even pro musicians often leave their pricey guitars at home, preferring to tour with Mexican Strats.

And then, in July of 2024, I went and bought this:

Oh my.

A Gibson SG Special with a list price of $1,599.

Now it’s definitely not the top of the line when it comes to expensive guitars; there are, in fact, few cheaper Gibsons in their current lineup. But it is four times the price of the Epiphone I had been playing up to that point.

Looking back over the last several decades of purchasing, playing, and promoting inexpensive guitars, I had to wrestle with one question: Does upgrading to a Gibson make me a hypocrite?

What I learned from decades of owning inexpensive guitars

The truth is, if it weren’t for my decades of buying and playing inexpensive guitars, I would never have even considered buying a Gibson.

Over my life, I have owned close to two dozen guitars (or maybe more—I’ve kind of…