Every three months, our magazine features some of the most beautiful guitars, banjos, mandolins and ukuleles known to mankind. Sadly, they usually belong to a music legend and aren’t for sale. With our new, weekly Catch & Release column, we scour the web, eBay and forums for some of the more interesting instruments that you can actually buy. In a few cases, the instruments may cost as much as a house or a car, but isn’t that what dreams are for? Here goes…

Circa 1970 Micro-Frets Calibra 1
Micro-Frets guitars were only made for a few years in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Their most interesting feature was the Calibrato, a vibrato unit that allowed the player to raise or lower the pitch of a chord while remaining in tune. Micro-Frets were well made, and sounded quite good, but they never really caught on in a big way. This fine Calibra I can be found at Retrofret for $1750.

Early 1950s Kay K-27
Kay built inexpensive guitars, banjos and mandolins for a variety of catalogs and department stores from the 1930s through the 1960s. While their instruments weren’t quite as well made as the offerings from Gibson or Martin, Kays had a cool vibe all their own and actually sounded pretty good. This K-27 is basically a budget variation of the J-200 and now, as then, it only costs a fraction of the price of the fancier Gibson. You can find it at Intermountain Guitar and Banjo for $1500.

1940 Stromberg Master 400
Stromberg’s Master 400 was one of the finest archtops ever built and this particular example was made for Freddie Green, the guitarist who held down the rhythm guitar chair in the Count Basie Orchestra for years. This Master 400 shows the signs of a life lived on the road–the pickguard, for example, was lost years ago–but it is still strung up with the actual strings Green played the day he put it away. It’s a little pricey at $90,000, but how many chances will you get to own a bit of jazz history? If you’re feeling rich, you can find this guitar at Gruhn’s.

1903 Martin 00-42
With its ivory bridge and Brazilian rosewood sides and back, this 00-42 will not be passing any CITES inspections in the future and will probably be spending the rest of its life in the US. Still, it’s a lovely instrument that was built a couple of decades before Martin started bracing its guitar for steel strings. I’ve played a number of guitars from this era that were strung up with nylon strings and they do sound wonderful. If you’d like to give this 00-42 a new home, get in touch with Stan Jay at Mandolin Brothers. (And Stan, thanks for the shout-out in the description.) Asking price is $25,000.

1924 Gibson F-5
This Lloyd Loar-era F-5 is priced at $Inquire, which I’m guessing means Very Expensive. Still, it’s a fine example of one of the most revered fretted instruments ever built. This label on this example bears a March 31, 1924 date, which places it near the end of Loar’s tenure at Gibson. It has the Fern headstock inlay pattern, which personally I like more than the earlier Flowerpot. If you’d like to buy this Gibson F-5 for me as a present, please contact Elderly.

See a cool instrument for sale somewhere that you think we should share in a future Catch & Release? Send us a note here.