Today we’d like to introduce you to Jack Brunson.
Hi Jack, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My business started as a “side hustle.” I was working at a pretty prominent luthier in Murfreesboro — Mario Guitars / Guitar Mill. I got a job there right after college, and worked there for seven years. Somewhere around 2-3 years in, I realized that I should start using the skills I was learning on the job – so, I bought some broken guitars with the intention of repairing and “flipping” them.
I spent $500 (which was a lot of money to me at the time) and bought around 10-12 broken guitars, fixed them, flipped them, reinvested the profits in more broken guitars. I just kept repeating that process over and over again. I kinda joke that I am not 100% sure how the whole thing got this big. I just kept pulling at the thread and somehow knitted a sweater instead of unraveling it.
In April 2021, I was able to quit my day job at Guitar Mill and in November 2021 we signed the lease on our location on the square in downtown Lebanon. It has been a lot of hard work — waking up and working for 2-3 hours before going to work for 8 hours and coming home to work for another 2-4 hours. Six day workweeks, nights of little sleep, missed social engagements; stuff like that. Hell, I really only started paying myself a couple years ago, and I have been doing this for ten years this July.
I have a lot of people who come in to the store and say some variety of “You are living my dream, man!” and I am not going to sit here and try to tell you that owning a guitar store is not a sweet way to make a living. It beats the pants off of working fast food or retail, but I think if most people actually saw the day to day, and all the work it took to get here, they might reconsider. It was and continues to be a lot of work. We have a saying around here that “The Ride Never Ends.” As soon as you get through one pile of guitars, there is another two piles waiting to be processed. I fix guitars a lot more than I play them these days, and I think most people see owning a guitar store as an excuse to sit around and play guitar all day. Frankly, my experience has been the opposite.
All that being said though, I am not really sure I could see myself doing anything else. I wake up every morning feeling like I am on the right path, and not a lot of people can say that.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I don’t think there is such a thing as a “smooth road” to business ownership in the year 2026 – but the growing pains just mean we are growing.
Scaling up happened so naturally, warts and all, that I am not sure I noticed it. There are times that I kind of “wake up” and realize how far down the rabbit hole I am with this ‘selling guitars on the internet’ thing. I take it for granted day in and day out; I zoom in some days and realize I am standing in a store with 300+ guitars in it with my name on the door.
I started Jack’s Guitarcheology in a spare bedroom, fixing guitars up on an ironing board. I set aside $500 and spent it buying about a dozen broken guitars that I fixed up and flipped online. I nearly doubled that $500 and reinvested all of that money back into the business. For five years, I treated the business like a hobby and reinvested nearly every dollar I made back into tools, or new inventory or better storage.
That is how, when I decided to open the brick and mortar in 2021, I already had 150-200 guitars waiting in the wings. I have told multiple people, if I had waited to start stocking up on inventory until I knew I was going to open a physical store, I likely would not have been able to do it. The financial burden of investing in hundreds of guitars all at once would have been very daunting.
The decision to start the brick and mortar is where a lot of the bumps in the road came in. Before the store, I ran everything myself. After the store, that became pretty impossible, so I had to bring Jayme into more business functions and eventually hire employees. Since we were just two pretty normal people with no business degrees or anything like that, we hit some snags along the way. We learned that being an employer is not easy, and the taxes that come with it certainly are not easy.
I remember one big snag was that we didn’t know that payroll taxes were quarterly filings and we accidently missed three filings, which landed us with some pretty steep late fees and back taxes. We ended up needing to come up with around $12k in thirty days. It was a skinny month, but we did it – and we never got behind on taxes ever again!
I guess, in summation, my advice for anyone looking to scale up would be to do it in baby steps. If you want to open a store one day, start buying and selling inventory online now while your overhead is low. Whatever your business idea or passion is, start working on it now, little by little. No one wants to eat the elephant all in one sitting, but if you take it one small bite at a time, you are through the platter before you even know it. If you stay the course and do good work, the scaling up should come fairly naturally.
But there is a caveat – you do have to take the occasional risk. For us, it has been things like signing expensive dealership contracts, recognizing when we needed to hire help or the decision to rent a second location for our workshop and storage. The stars were not all aligned, but we knew we needed to jump on these opportunities to grow. Sometimes it can feel like you are making a big mistake, but if you trust your gut and keep an eye on your field, luck will stay in your favor.
We’ve been impressed with Jack’s Guitarcheology, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Jack’s Guitarcheology is a Nashville, TN area purveyor of weirdo and specialty guitars, vintage to modern. My name is Jack and I am a guitarcheologist with an affinity for all things funky and drenched in mojo. We take long-forgotten guitars and give them new life in the hands of working musicians at affordable prices.
We are specifically known for odd, strange and downright weird guitars. We like to hear the sentence “What the hell is that?!”
We are proud of the impact restoring used guitars has on the environment. The “green” aspect of our business is not one that we particularly planned, but one we have proudly leaned into. Saving guitars from the landfill just feels good!
We offer guitar, bass and other stringed instrument sales, repair and consignment. We also offer friendly gear consultation services – whether you buy from us or elsewhere, we are always happy to help you make the right decision!
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
Honestly, in the past few years, my industry has become incredibly hard to predict. The guitar market used to be as steady as the housing or commodities market, but in the last few years, it has mimicked the volatility of the stock market. From the 1970s until about 2023, guitars – especially vintage guitars – were a seller’s market. An absolute gangbuster of a bull market for nearly fifty years.
This market peaked during 2020 because of the covid pandemic; people were stuck at home with nothing but time, so they decided it was a good time to finally learn how to play guitar or bass. Well, you know what they say about good intentions and their paving ability. A lot of people who bought guitars in 202o-2021 never picked them up, and one day in 2023 these people decided “Well, I never learned to play that thing, might as well sell it.”
The market flooded, and it drove guitar prices down considerably. I had one customer who appraised a guitar for $5k in early 2023, they came back in later 2024 / early 2025 for a reappraisal and the value of the guitar had sunk $1k. A full 20%.
In mid-summer of 2025, the “covid overstock” was beginning to sell off and prices were stabilizing – just in time for the word “tariff” to be uttered in the halls of governance. This was an unmitigated disaster that sent me into the slowest four or five months my business has had since opening. However, the holiday season in 2025 bounced back in a big way, and I am hopeful that this is indicative of trends to come into 2026. We are well through January and the sales have not quite slowed down like they normally do this time of year.
I think that broadly, my field is changing. There is a sort of “changing of guard” happening right now. What sells is changing. What business strategies work is changing. For a decade or so, the industry has been grappling with the “how do we sell guitars online” question. So many people still want to hold a guitar before pulling the trigger. The next ten years, I think, will be grappling with the changing definition of which guitars are worth money and why.
As the boomers age out, and the Millennials age in, I firmly believe that the guitars that are worth money will change. Younger guitarists are not as beholden to the vintage spell as the older guitar buyers are right now, and the prices of traditionally expensive guitars (’52 Teles, ’54 Strats, Early Quilt Top Les Pauls, etc.) will likely diminish in favor of more player grade vintage and quirky models.
This is already being reflected in the list of the most expensive guitars ever sold. Ten years ago, that top spot belonged to David Gilmore of Pink Floyd’s main Stratocaster. Now, the two top spots are held by guitars that were owned by Kurt Cobain of Nirvana. The rock stars that are being idolized are changing, and thus the gear is too. As the market base changes generationally, so will the hottest items in gear, and a lot of success for people in this industry will come from correctly predicting and adapting to these trends.
Pricing:
- Setups are $70 plus strings
- Student Setups (Under 18 or valid student ID): $60 plus strings
- Cheapest repair rates of any store in greater Nashville.
- We sell guitars for any budget – from $100 to $10,000.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jacksguitarcheology.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jacksguitarcheology/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCStC_gcp0LYDM7HbA09Ysuw
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/jacks-guitarcheology-lebanon
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacksguitarcheology/
- Other: https://reverb.com/shop/jacks-guitarcheology
