Official Luthiers Forum!

Umeå is a university town in northern Sweden , about 1.5° latitude south of the Arctic Circle and 1-hour's flight from Stockholm. I've been coming here in my professional capacity as a quantitative forest geneticist for over 20 years, but 2014 (even in the dead of winter) is an especially good time as Umeå is the "European Capital of Culture for 2014". My discovery on this latest trip is "Guitars - The Museum", which opened earlier this month: http://www.guitarsthemuseum.com/. It's located in an old school building opposite the opera house, and just a block away from my hotel!

The museum is largely based on the huge collection of twin brothers Samuel and Mikael Åhdén. It focusses on American electric guitars of the 50's and 60's, and is heavily weighted to Gibson models. I'm not terribly knowledgeable in this genre, but I still spent 2-1/2 hours looking over the collection that is beautifully displayed on the top floor of this former school building. The lower floor has a bar and restaurant, and the middle floor houses an impressive instrument store.

If you are generally interested in guitars, you'll enjoy this place, and if you're a fan of 50's and 60's Gibsons, it should be on your bucket list and well worth the effort to get here.

BTW: if you happen to have a 1958 Gibson Explorer gathering dust in your closet, these guys would like to talk to you -- they consider it the "missing piece" in their collection.

Tell 'em to join the club.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince