Ah, another pleasant Mudcat exchange of ideas that I can't resist adding my two cents worth to.

One of the few nice things about being old (and gray haired) is that you can walk into the high-end room of any guitar store in the US, pick up a multi-thousand dollar instrument, and play to your heart's content-all day if you want-without some asshole clerk or owner haranguing or harrassing you. Especially if it's a small shop and you make a point of parking your German-made automobile right in front. As such, and because I am still being treated through a 12-step program for GAS (my wife says if I take even 12 steps toward the nearest guitar merchant, she'll kill me)(the treatment works), I have spent an inordinate amount of time playing and sometimes owning high end guitars.

The folks in Nazareth still makes some awesome instruments, but to limit one's self to just American Martin or Gibsons is, IMHO, placing unnecessary restrictions on your potential enjoyment. Collings, Alvarez-Yari, Yamaha, James Goodall, Santa Cruz, Olson, Guild, Takamine all make some guitars that are, 'to die for', and that doesn't begin to touch the small-shop makers (try a Petros sometime). I've played or owned models from all of these companies, and while some are superb, some too, are just plain shit.

Craftsmanship is a montage of training, materials, experience, and conscience. No single nationality has cornered the market, not in guitar making or anything else for that matter. What part of Brooklyn was that Antonio Stradivari guy from?

My all-time favorite guitar to play belonged to a late picking partner of mine. A No-Class off-brand that cost about $300, so go figure. I still own three guitars, all Martins (D-19, J-40M, and a Brazilian D-41), and I gotta tell ya Martin Gibson, I think flooding the market with cheap-shit CFMs is not marketing genius, but a big, big mistake.

And somebody needs to tell those previous posters with their expensive axes under the bed to get them out and use them.
You want an investment, buy stock. You got a guitar, go enjoy it.