Dumb guitar mishaps...

trevorus

Modsterbator
Well, got a couple of these stories, actually. One just happened. I was in my garage/jam room, and my wife was letting the dogs in from outside, and they were muddy, so they go in their kennels for a bit to dry off a little. Well, the littlest one was able to slip through a door my wife was going through, and was running into the house. Well, that dog knows to listen to me when I get that tone, and so I run to go assist, but I have my guitar in my hands. I try to close the door behind me so the cats don't go the other way, and my peghead of my Tele gets pegged by the edge of the door. It snaps the post off of my tuner on the low E. I hear that noise that sends a shock down the spine of every guitar player. It's the same one that allows you to move faster than a speeding bullet when a guitar is about to fall over. But, the damage was done, and now I am trying to track down a single tuner, because buying a new set to replace one kinda sucks. If I have to I will, but dangit, I just hate that sort of thing. BTW, check out the trading post if you think you may have one around.

The second one is when I got up off the couch and my guitar was resting on the cushion next to me. I started to lose my balance, and stepped right on the edge of my guitar, and pushed the top edge into the edge of my pedal board case. Now I have a ding through the binding even. This is on a Reverend Jetstream, so the one solution i have come up with is to add the chrome armrest like the old ones have to cover it up. It should cover it completely and look pretty cool. I borrowed the one from my bass to try, and I kinda like it anyways.

Another one was kind of nobody's fault. I was working at a guitar store and we had just gotten a shipment of guitars, and we were hanging them on the wall. We had just set up and tuned a see thru green American Deluxe Strat, and put it on the guitar hanger. I went back to my bench to work on the next one, and a couple minutes later, I hear a thunk, crack. The peg holder wall broke in that spot and dropped the guitar and hanger. The guitar fell but end down onto an amp beneath it, and pitched forward and landed on the headstock. It got cracked from just past the second tuner to the nut on the high E. We had to send it back to Fender and get a new neck, and sell it as B stock. That was a painful sight.
 
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I once dropped a '69 SG that had a heavy-duty straight plug sticking out of its front-mounted jack. The plug hit first, and tore a 1" x 2" hunk out fo the face of the guitar.
 
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I had a double guitar stand at a garage-style gig. The two guitar positions were pretty vertical, so they really needed the provided rubber retaining straps to keep the guitars safe. Well, one of them was missing, but I told myself I didn't need it. I had a Jackson Soloist in one side, and a Kramer Baretta in the other. I went to pick up one guitar -- the one with the strap protecting it -- and in doing so, I knocked the other one out of its stand, where it headed face-down towards the floor. On the way, one of the tuners caught the heavy, armor-plated chassis of my Mesa/Boogie V-Twin pedal. When I picked it up, I realized that the tuning machine had been liberated when the fall ripped off a triangular piece of the headstock that was hanging on by the tuner bushing and very little else.

Which guitar do you think it was? It was the Baretta.

Fortunately, it was the Korean Music-Yo! neck-through, reverse-headstock, floating trem kind that bears little resemblance to a Baretta made when Kramer was still Kramer. I wanted a repair that was worthy of the instrument, so I glued it myself with Elmer's wood glue and left a large, visible joint that I can treasure always. Nothing says "mileage" like an obvious amatuer headstock repair.
 
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Almost twenty years ago:

My bass player left a gig with three of my Les Pauls in his car. His girlfriend was driving. On the way to the hotel (out of town gig) a ground hog appeared in the middle of the road and the girlfriend tried to steer the car out of its way. Instead, she bounced off one ditch and into the other several times before finally comming to a stop. The car was totaled. There were two guitars and two basses in the trunk, all OK but the bass cases were ruined. Two hours after the accident and investigation someone noticed a guitar case several yards away in a ditch across the street from where the car had came to a stop. My 76' Les Paul Deluxe had been in the back seat of the car. It bounced up, went thru the back window and shot across the road landing in the ditch......The guitar somehow survived! The case was scuffed majorly and the handle broken..........I was lucky!

I transport all my own gear these days.....
 
Re: Dumb guitar mishaps...

Almost twenty years ago:

My bass player left a gig with three of my Les Pauls in his car. His girlfriend was driving. On the way to the hotel (out of town gig) a ground hog appeared in the middle of the road and the girlfriend tried to steer the car out of its way. Instead, she bounced off one ditch and into the other several times before finally comming to a stop. The car was totaled. There were two guitars and two basses in the trunk, all OK but the bass cases were ruined. Two hours after the accident and investigation someone noticed a guitar case several yards away in a ditch across the street from where the car had came to a stop. My 76' Les Paul Deluxe had been in the back seat of the car. It bounced up, went thru the back window and shot across the road landing in the ditch......The guitar somehow survived! The case was scuffed majorly and the handle broken..........I was lucky!

I transport all my own gear these days.....

Wow, that's amazing! Very lucky. That's why hardcases are a great investment. Especially if it's the girlfriend driving...
 
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Two, thankfully none of them fatal.

The first was when I was "showing off" my Strat in front of some kids/friends at the harbor while I was waiting for the ship to come and take me away (see how I put it? Actually I was returning from summer vacation :9:)
So, there I was, doing some tricks while wearing it with the strap when the strap slips and the guitar falls face down to the solid and VERY uneven concrete!
I picked it up in horror to find out that the trem bar had absorbed ALL of the impact leaving the entire guitar intact with just the plastic tip on the bar getting disfigured like it was burned:
bangtjx.jpg

Needless to say I immediately bought those plastic strap holders which I later replaced with Schaller strap locks.
Eventually I bought a Wilkinson trem for that guitar (it's an MiM) so now there's no sign of this dreaded thing ever happening :)

The other was when my godson was in my room looking at my guitars when (and against my repeated warnings to NOT touch anything) went ahead anyway and pressed the button that sets the height of the stand sending the guitar on it on a freefall!
Thankfully the decent stopped when the bottom strap button "hit" the stand's leg and again thankfully, the wood never split/cracked not did it touch anywhere else.
Honestly that was even more frightening than the first one...
 
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I once dropped a '69 SG that had a heavy-duty straight plug sticking out of its front-mounted jack. The plug hit first, and tore a 1" x 2" hunk out fo the face of the guitar.
Which is why I ONLY use straight jacks with Strats (the front angled mounted kind)!!!
 
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I wanted a repair that was worthy of the instrument, so I glued it myself with Elmer's wood glue and left a large, visible joint that I can treasure always. Nothing says "mileage" like an obvious amatuer headstock repair.

This phrase just gave me chills down my spine... :eek5:
 
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I had a nearly mint Epi Coronet that I used for a while and one night someplace in Nebraska someone helped us load out. Our 'helper' put the guitar behind the van...thinking it was loaded, we backed up to drive away. Right over the Epi...instant firewood. I still have the pickups.
Moral: never let anybody else handle your guitars.
 
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A few years ago, I was sitting on a stool stringing my guitar, and suddenly a big bolt of lightning flared up in front of me........scared the crap outta me! I looked down and saw a smoldering guitar string, turned into ash, burned into the lid of my pedalboard and part of my carpet. Luckily, it didn't lay across the face of my guitar.

What happened was a dangling string poked into a power strip next to my amp, and it ignited like a flash of lightning. It's a good thing it landed on the ground, not on my legs or guitar!

But here's the worst part......I also had the guitar plugged into my Valvetronix modeling amp, using it to tune the guitar. The electricity traveled from the burned string, down into the digital circuitry of the modeling amp. The motherboard was fried! Luckily, the amp was still under warranty, so I took advantage of that and got it fixed.....but that burning string ordeal was a real trip!
 
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As a 4 year old I sat and broke my plastic 'toy' Strat! Though it was Right handed, it probably set back my picking up a guitar by 13 Years! Probably may also have set me back as a Lefty as well!
 
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i've had many..

but when i worked in a repair shop for a month or so for sh**s and Giggles the real repairmen told me that many many and many more people leave their guitars behind their cars and back overthem.. a lady had come into the store with a crushed guitar and case... i was laughing my butt off in privite about it... but they told me it happens a lot!!!! People think they put it in the trunk and drive over it!
 
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Pretty lame in comparison to the others, but I recently dropped $50 on some a superswitch and some push pull pots for a wiring scheme only to have them not fit in the cavity.

Although I categorize every time I try to play something on my guitar a dumb guitar mishap.
 
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