A dumb guitar metaphysical question

[GuitarDoc]

I gotta back pedal on my 1st answer a bit. I've had a couple guitars that were lifeless and uninteresting. New pups, (usually Duncans), made them "new" guitars, that I loved.

Perhaps the new pups just brought "new life" to your old guitars.

[GuitarDoc]

So, that just made me think of another question...
If your old guitar becomes lifeless (dead) for some reason, say bad pickups. And putting new pickups in them brings them back to life, are the guitars now zombies?

[ArtieToo]

Perhaps the new pups just brought "new life" to your old guitars.

Perhaps. And I might steal that "zombie" moniker when I concoct my next project.

[Seashore]

Closer to Frankenstein's monster than a zombie, since we're talking about replacement parts.

[RanchManSandy]

zombies don't come back to life, they're still dead, just re-animated.

[MikeS]

I gotta back pedal on my 1st answer a bit. I've had a couple guitars that were lifeless and uninteresting. New pups, (usually Duncans), made them "new" guitars, that I loved.

Same guitar, it was just going through a phase. My Soltero went through a P-Rails phase and I practically stopped playing it. When I installed a Super Distortion with a 36th Anny PAF it found its voice again. Same guitar, though.

[ArtieToo]

Same guitar, it was just going through a phase. My Soltero went through a P-Rails phase and I practically stopped playing it. When I installed a Super Distortion with a 36th Anny PAF it found its voice again. Same guitar, though.

But the question was metaphysical. "As I perceive it." It's a different guitar.

[GuitarDoc]

zombies don't come back to life, they're still dead, just re-animated.

So then the guitar was resurrected? Or reincarnated?
Or maybe it's just a guitar and there's nothing metaphysical or ethereal or mystical about it. Just wood and metal. And you can call it whatever you want to.

[Chistopher]

So if changing the scale length of the neck makes it spiritually a different guitar, what if I remove the frets on my bass. It's a completely different instrument without any new components.

Also we keep connecting this discussion to replacing parts rather than changing what you have. If Hank get's painted, body contouring, neck reprofiling, a different string gauge and tuning, and the trem blocked, is it any less of a Hank than if he had been replaced piece by piece with identical OEM parts?

[RanchManSandy]

So then the guitar was resurrected? Or reincarnated?
Or maybe it's just a guitar and there's nothing metaphysical or ethereal or mystical about it. Just wood and metal. And you can call it whatever you want to.

If it was previously life-full, became lifeless somehow, and then was brought that previous state of life-full-ness, sure that could be a resurrection, or perhaps resuscitation.

Reincarnation, no... that is when the "soul" (let's use that term in a broad sense) transfers or is born again in a different body/form. So I guess if you had a guitar "die" (so to speak) but then found a different guitar somewhere that had the same vibe, that could, perhaps, be considered reincarnation.

But is a guitar truly ever "dead"? If anything on it stops working it can be replaced and continue functioning more or less normally. Like getting an organ transplant while alive. (since we don't usually do transplants on dead people and expect them to recover lmao)

Guitars are basically immortal with interchangeable parts.

They're noisy LEGOs.

Maybe they're Highlanders? I can only think of one way to truly kill a guitar: burn it to ash.

Hm, or maybe guitars are like classical golems--crafted from inanimate components and brought to a sort of "life" through magic (our imaginations expressed via mechanical articulation). Not totally unlike frankenstein's monster. And that monster is certainly not a zombie (if it bites you, you do not turn into one).

[BeKindRewind]

My mains are two Stratos, they both have kinda worn frets especially the older one and I have considered replacing the necks on both. In those cases, I would still consider it the same guitar, but if I replaced the bodies instead, I wouldn't. so thats my answer