Gallagher Custom 72 Special Brazilian Rosewood Acoustic Guitar (2014)

About Gallagher Guitars

Gallagher Guitars has built handmade flattop acoustics in Wartrace, Tennessee since J.W. Gallagher made his first one in 1965. The shop became internationally known after Doc Watson took home a G-50 in 1969 — the instrument he came to call "Ol' Hoss" — and played it on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's 1972 Will The Circle Be Unbroken, the recording where Merle Travis said it "rings like a bell." The company has passed through three generations of Gallaghers and, since 2019, has been carried forward by David and Reina Mathis using the same patterns, molds, and jigs J.W. built. Production stays small — about three months and 70 to 80 hours of bench work per guitar, with the same workmanship across every model regardless of trim level. …

About Elderly Instruments

Elderly Instruments has been a Lansing, Michigan institution since 1972 — founder Stan Werbin opened the shop in East Lansing with fifteen used instruments and no cash register, then spent fifty-plus years growing it into one of the largest specialty music retailers in the country while keeping it family-run (Stan still leads; daughter Lillian is the next generation). The store moved to its current home in a renovated old lodge hall in Lansing's Old Town district in 1983 and runs today with about forty employees, many tenured 20+ years. Their catalog is famously broad — Taylor, Martin, Fender, and Yamaha alongside Collings, Bourgeois, Lowden, McPherson, Santa Cruz, Goodall, and Atkin — and the in-house repair shop, a separate 3,000-square-foot space with a spray booth, inspects and sets up nearly every instrument they sell. A specialty music store that's outlasted every shift in retail and stays known for its repair expertise and customer care.

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