Fred wrote: I read the posts some of you guys submit about your 50, 40 or 30-year-old guitars, and I wonder what it must be like, how it feels.

This brings up an interesting point. I am 63. I had a first "batch" of instruments that were all acquired for me (mostly by my parents) before I was thirty, e.g. the Washburn 12-string guitar mentioned above. A quarter of a century later, it was worn out, and some of the others getting long in the tooth. So I've recently acquired several new instruments of one sort or another.

And they are notably different. The obvious example is that almost all high-end guitars nowadays are acoustic-electric. But, also, the woods have shifted (as some become rarer and more expensive), and there are occasional new variations on construction techniques and other things. The instruments you get today are not the same as those of thirty, forty, fifty years ago. Better? Worse? Depends on context, probably. But how will they hold up in another fifty years?

I'll never find out, but it's a genuinely interesting question.