Collector Starts Court Battle to Regain 87 Guitars

Eighty-seven vintage electric guitars are imprisoned in the Ventura County sheriff’s station in Simi Valley, stacked like logs and cordoned off with string.

Tags on their battered Leatherette cases only hint at their past.

Court papers and law enforcement officials give no clue about their future.

The only thing certain about the 87 old, exotic and possibly valuable guitars is this: Their owner has begun a court battle with the Sheriff’s Department to get them back.

If the Sheriff’s Department wins, the guitars will be auctioned to help finance its anti-drug units.

If the department loses, William Herbert Budnik will keep the collection that he spent several years building--a steel-stringed menagerie with colorful names such as Firebird, Jaguar and Mustang.

Budnik, 32, of Thousand Oaks, was arrested Sept. 20 on drug charges, after sheriff’s deputies used a search warrant to enter his home and found marijuana, hashish, cocaine and psilocybin, according to court documents. They confiscated $76,155 in cash, a 1988 Camaro and the guitars, which they alleged were profits from drug sales by Budnik.

Budnik denied the claim, arguing in court papers that he had legitimately acquired the guitars, the cash and the car, which he said had a combined value of $185,000.

He pleaded guilty to possessing marijuana for sale. Two lesser possession charges were dropped, and he began serving a one-year sentence at the sheriff’s honor farm in Ojai last week.

Budnik refused to talk to The Times about the guitars.

His father, Bill Budnik, of Newbury Park, said that Budnik will give up his legal claims to his car, his money and his guitars.

“He’s got enough on his hands to try to get himself squared away” after the arrest, the elder Budnik said. “This has been very traumatic for our whole family.”

But as of last week, no papers had been filed in Superior Court to withdraw the claims.

Neither sheriff’s detectives nor county prosecutors will comment on what they say is still an ongoing lawsuit.

And the guitars remain on the shelves, unplayed, locked in their cases, gathering dust.

There are identification tags tied to the handles:

One is a black-bodied ’64 Fender Mustang with tortoise shell pickguard, its old steel strings staining the plush yellow lining of its case.

A ’57 Music Master shares shelf space with a 1952 Gibson Les Paul Gold-Top, which gleams softly under fluorescent lights in the evidence room when sheriff’s evidence technician Judy Thompson holds it up.

A mint-condition Gold-Top built during the model’s first production year is probably worth $2,500, according to the manager of Norm’s Rare Guitars in Reseda in the San Fernando Valley.

Budnik “bought three or four guitars from me over the years,” said the manager, who asked not to be identified.

The manager said some of the other guitars are probably worth money: a ’65 Firebird could sell for $1,000, a ’64 Fender P Bass might be worth $800 and a Gibson ES-140 would fetch at least $450.

“The stuff he bought from me, he’s bought good stuff,” the manager said.

To connoisseurs, Budnik’s collection contained some valuable gems. To the Sheriff’s Department, it is property to be liquidated.

“If the court does not return it back to the owner, then it’s auctioned off like anything else,” Thompson said. “There’s no way the county could use that many electric guitars.”