The ones that got away......

John_P

For me it's the Tokai strat I had nicked from a rehearsal room in 1990...  

It was a birthday present in 1983 (I was only 2 at the time - I wish!!! lol)    
Almost certainly it's as much to do with getting comfortable and used to my first guitar but it took me a lot of guitar buying over the years before I found anything that felt "right" to play...  
I still keep an occasional eye on the tokai's for sale - a blonde strat with a rosewood board and a cig burn on the headstock if anyone spots it

TTony

It was a long, long time ago.

Just after my 40th birthday.

That's relevant, because my lovely wife had just bought me a PRS Santana SE (v2 as it happens) for my 40th birthday.  We didn't have a stack of cash back then, and it was a major purchase for us.  It was also my first new guitar in many years.  I loved (still do) that guitar, for many reasons.  It's one of my "never sell" guitars, for many reasons.

Anyhoo ...

A few months earlier, I'd started looking for a Kawai KS11xl.  My first, proper, guitar was a KS12xl (in the early '80s), and it had been a toss-up at the time between the KS11 and the KS12.  I'd always wondered what a KS11 would have been like.  With Google and evilBay now available, I started out on a quest to see if I could track one down.

Not long after the arrival of the Santana SE, a KS11xl appeared on evilBay.  It was immaculate.  Completely original.  All unmarked.  The original case.  The price was low, so I bidded.  The price went up a bit, so I bidded a bit more.  The price went up some more, so I bidded some more.

Naturally, in the final minutes, the price doubled/trebled and it was suddenly over £300.  Didn't really have that much spare cash.  And I'd only just been given the birthday present guitar.  Buying another would be greedy.

I decided that it would be silly to spend so much on an old guitar, for purely sentimental/inquisitiveness reasons, so I let the Kawai go to the other bidder.

To this day, 10 years later, I still remember it.  I still wonder who got it (and why they've never contacted www.kawaiguitars.com).  And it prompted a very expensive change in approach. 

For the following 10 years, if I saw a Kawai, I pretty much bought it.  There have been some exceptions, but not so many. 

For my 50th birthday, my (still lovely) wife bought me the Kawai Moonsault.  And that's really been the conclusion of my Kawai quest.  It took 10 years, but I think I'm over it now.

 

Though, if anyone sees a mint condition, with original case, Kawai KS11XL up for sale ... don't let me know.

IanSavage

I found a Fender Tele once in Johnny Roadhouse in Manchester; weird thing, halfway between a 'normal' Tele and a Keef-style '72 Custom, I guess someone had done a bit of customising. The neck was the thing though, I've never found another one like it; total baseball bat with quite an aggressive 'V' profile at the lower end, evened out to a (still chunky) 'C' at the dusty end. 

Same as monquixote though, was a student at the time and even though I technically could have afforded it I would have been living on beans for a month; umm-ed and ah-ed, went back to get it and it'd gone. Boo. 

geepers0677

A PRS ce22 I sold on to take my girlfriend on holiday - we are now married with two little dudes, so worth it, but I wish I'd found the cash somewhere else!

axisus

I haven't regretted selling any guitars (yet!), but I procrastinated, and missed out on 2 guitars a few years ago, and missing them still feels like a thorn in my side. One was a Nash strat. I've since seen a lot of Nash strats and not liked them at all, but this one was a true peach. I still look at the pix and go all doe-eyed. The one that I REALLY wanted was a weird tele hybrid made from Warmoth parts. Carved top, floyd trem and rather fascinating. Needed doing up as well which made it even more appealing. Damn, I so should have bought that!

grungebob

No pictures of it but I still kick myself over selling my old westone prestige 250 for two reasons, 1 because it was a damn fine guitar and possibly the best I've played and 2 I got £350 for it in 2004 and now they fetch £850

Phil_aka_Pip

should have bought the ES-135 when it was there to be bought and I had the money

octatonic

My old Gibson ES295- I owned it for 4 years.

http://www.jamesrichmond.com/misc/es295.jpg

I would have loved to have kept it, based on looks and cool factor, but it was a total pig to play and fed back on stage like nothing else I've tried.

I do miss it though.