Chris Lowrey
SHAWVILLE April 2, 2018
Thanks to a generous donation by Harry and Anelle Searle, the students of Pontiac High School will be able to get their fingers on six newly-acquired guitars.
Along with the new guitars, the Searles donated an amplifier and an effects pedal so that students can crank it up and melt faces.
The Searles donated an Epiphone Les Paul electric guitar, a Hondo II electric guitar, another unnamed electric guitar, an Esteban acoustic guitar, a Vagabond acoustic guitar and a GK acoustic guitar.
The donation represents more than $1,000 worth of musical gear.

“There’s an Epiphone Les Paul that’s basically unused,” said PHS music teacher Matt Lottes. “I looked that up and that’s $700 just by itself.”
Lottes said that the Searles were originally looking to sell the guitars on Kijiji but decided they’d serve a better purpose in the hands of PHS students.
The new guitars supplement PHS’s existing stock of aging instruments.
The school will go from having just two electric guitars to now having five, allowing for more students to access the axes.
On the acoustic front, the school already had a healthy amount of them, but many are older and are starting to show their wear.
The donations are especially welcome considering the fact that so many students use the school’s guitars.
Every lunch period, Lottes opens the doors to the music room to any interested student.
“Every lunch there are always kids playing them,” Lottes said. “So that new guitar gets played for an hour or more every day.”