Re: Headstocks that keep you from liking a guitar.
In my case as in many other cases I guess, I begun loving electrics cause I was in love with blues and rock music. I dreamed of beeing like my heroes and play the guitar the way they did (still dreaming).
From there I begun to love the electric guitars they played. In my case, my preferred electric was the LP only because its body shape was so classic, like a small version of a Spanish guitar with a single cut-away. Second to the LP came the Stratocaster, but only because it was the guitar that heroes like J.Hendrix or E.Clapton played, cause it’s shape was / is weird. Only after seeing lots of pictures of them playing it came to be engraved in me as an icon.
After the body shape came the details and within them, the most important: the headstock and the logo on it. It became a fetish thing. I wanted to learn how to play a guitar, I wanted a guitar and it had to be one of these: LP and / or Strat. And it had to be the authentic one with its logo on it – by that time I didn’t care that there were many LP and Strat models, some better, some worse -.
So, usually I tend to dislike - each day less and less - any guitar different from these two icons, either a completely different guitar or a copy with similar but not equal body and / or headstock shape.
Now I own a Fender Strat which I like cause it is a ‘real’ one. And I own a Heritage LP type which still seems to me strange, as if the headstock shape was ugly or didn’t fit in this body shape.
But I know that this is due to my fetish factor: it has to be the Gibson shape and say ‘Gibson’ on it. Had it been the other way around i.e. if the original LP guitars I used to love and dream with, had had the ‘Heritage shape’ headstock, I know that today it would seem strange to me to see a LP with a ‘Gibson shape’ headstock.
If I try to elimininate the fetish factor and see the Heritage headstock by itself, I come to the conclusion that it’s not by any means an ugly headstock design, quite the opposite: it’s a classic style and quite a spartan one, which is something I personally like. Compared to it the Gibson one is slightly rococo. Even more the Heritage snake head design – that has been used by Gibson in the past at least in some L5 models - allows a straighter, cleaner string pull. ‘The Heritage’ logo is also written diagonally in round letters, quite the way the old ‘The Gibson’ logo was in the past.
And then, finally, when it comes the time to play the guitar I immediately forget about the headstock shape.
But it is true that when I end playing and see my brand new Heritage lying on the sofa, the fetish factor tends to come back.
