Rick Turner of Renaissance Guitars restored Buddy Holly’s Gibson J45 in 1990. Gary Busey purchased the guitar at auction for about $250,000. The guitar a crack all along the sides and to further complicate the restoration, it was covered in tooled leather – by Buddy Holly himself. Gary wouldn’t let him remove the leather so he had to fix it from the inside. With the restoration process, he refretted the guitar.Gary gave him the original frets and Rick kept them for 20 years.. Peter Bradley from the UK later purchased the frets. Peter later wanted Rick to make 18 replica GibsonJ45 guitars (for the 18 original frets). Coincidentally, Rick has known John Thomas for years – John is the world’s expert on 1942 to 1946 Gibsons.. Rick was finishing a book on Banner Era Gibsons and had much material got to Rick.
Rick suggested to Peter they form a non-profit to help raise money for music and they envisioned forming the Buddy Holly Guitar Foundation to get the guitars in the hands of prominent and not so prominent guitar players.