Editor’s Note: Excerpted from Chad Phillips’ forthcoming book, “Guitar Therapy”

When I bought my first decent acoustic, I was fifteen years old and had worked all summer mowing lawns in order to save up enough cash for that guitar—a $350 Alvarez. It was good guitar for the money, but it wasn’t an exceptional instrument. Still, compared to its predecessors, that Alvarez was solid gold—a good value, and I played the snot out of it. But it wasn’t right for the style of music which would become…