Rick Sell, Owner of PureSalem Guitars (puresalemguitars.com), started his company after 21 years as a police officer. PureSalem manufactures several vintage-inspired guitar models, and offers every one of its models in righty and lefty versions. “It started as me being a frustrated lefty player and never being able to find the weird kinds of guitars that I liked to play,” explained Sell. “As a righty, you can walk into Guitar Center and see 300 different guitars on the wall, but if you’re a lefty, you go in there and you see a Tele, a black SG and a Les Paul. And you probably can’t afford two of them because they’re super expensive. So, my goal was to make guitars that I would like to play. And that’s what I did.”
For Sell, the NAMM show represents an encapsulation of all of the reasons he decided to take the plunge into the MI industry. “After 21 years of dealing with pissed-off people and hopelessness and depression, now I’m dealing with people that are passionate about guitars and music,” he said. “So it kind of restored my faith in man. I’m meeting a bunch of super wonderful, nice people. They say that the show pays off in the months to come, but, if this is all that I get out of it, it was well worth it.”