Should your best guitar be your main guitar?

[Pete Galati]

Re: Should your best guitar be your main guitar?

Alright. I for me am just saying that your best guitar isn't always your main... I don't see why it has to be at all. Your main is usually either your favorite, either the most adapted to whatever you do with it.

That's my feeling. Why would your best be your main guitar, or your favorite, or the one that you're the most adopted to?

Why do so many people think that everybody's best guitar fits their needs as a player? Or that you have some sort of obligation to sell something you're not using?

Pete

 

[wahwah]

Re: Should your best guitar be your main guitar?

YOU'VE WORN THE FRET BOARD AWAY??? WOW.... so does the board now seemed sort of scalloped? Now I guess that guitar has MOJO!

No, the guy's done a great job on the refret, he was really careful with the remaining rosewood. But when these frets wear down, he's got a few pieces of 35 year old rosewood that he bought from a German violin maker and we'll probably replace the board. Not something I'll be in any rush to do!

Here's some pics I posted a while ago of it having its refret...

And here it is after the operation...

Cheers.........................wahwah

 

[sosomething]

Re: Should your best guitar be your main guitar?

Hey man, if it hasn't been said already... Why not just gig with your less valuable guitars, and use the more valuable / toneful guitars to record?

The tonal benefit you're going to see over your other LPs is going to virtually disappear in a live situation anyway.

 

[sosomething]

Re: Should your best guitar be your main guitar?

Oh and BTW, Wahwah -

Custom shop "relic artists" only wish they could replicate the way your Strat looks.

 

[TheArchitect]

Re: Should your best guitar be your main guitar?

I would say no. My PRS' have been parked in favor of my SA2200 Semi Hollow and the two 'bucker eqiped Warmoth Strats(Mahagony and swamp ash) I finished recently.

Its not like I don't play the PRS's anymore. I do. the other guitars are just giving me what I want to hear right now.

 

[Pete Galati]

Re: Should your best guitar be your main guitar?

Hey man, if it hasn't been said already... Why not just gig with your less valuable guitars, and use the more valuable / toneful guitars to record?

The tonal benefit you're going to see over your other LPs is going to virtually disappear in a live situation anyway.

Warren Hayne's guitar tech Brian Farmer, going through Warren's arsenal of guitars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzNOC5Lk8e0

They don't take much vintage gear on the road with them. He has plenty of vintage pieces, but those ones get used mostly for recording.

Pete

 

[The Golden Boy]

Re: Should your best guitar be your main guitar?

All I'll say is guitars are meant to be played, that doesn't mean gigged.
If you love playing a guitar at practises or recording but you don't want to risk gigging it then don't.
But if it's not getting played then that's a different matter.

Forgive me if I seem to be picking on you- your post just reminded me of an attitude that I find so... foreign to me.

I believe it was another forum, there was a dude who got an R8. He was very proud of his guitar. However, he only played it at home- I think he said '"in the safety" of his own home' and it didn't leave the house. Not to a bar, not to a studio, not to a rehearsal. I don't understand that line of thinking at all.

I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination. My "best" guitar is my best guitar. That's what I play. It's got dents, dings, scratches, rivet rash and the works- and it's only 6.5 years old.

As far as vintage guitars being outperformed by stocks and other investments... If you'd have forked out $50K for a Burst 15 years ago, you'd be looking at around $200K now. When I got my 58 Special, it cost me $3K, within 3 years it got me $5K on selling.

Was that 58 Special ever my "best" guitar? No. It was my second most expensive guitar, but not the "best." That's a lot of the reason I sold it.

When I got interested in acquiring guitars, there were guitars, old guitars, and there were vintage guitars that were affordable, and unaffordable vintage guitars. 50s Juniors were $500 guitars. I remember paying $900 for a 60 Jr, and I overpaid. My 65 Jazz cost me $1,100, and I overpaid. My 59 LP Special cost me around $700, and that was about right. At one point, the "old" guitars became expensive. That's when I started paying attention to what I was bringing to shows. I'll occasionally play the vintage stuff, but the Jazz excells in recording situations, but the G&L is a better live bass. My 01 R8 is a great guitar, and I like playing my MIJ Tele for what it does, moreso than the other guitars. Yes, vintage value does play some part in it- but it's more about what the guitar does than what it's monetary value is.

 

[d1dsj]

Re: Should your best guitar be your main guitar?

No, the guy's done a great job on the refret, he was really careful with the remaining rosewood. But when these frets wear down, he's got a few pieces of 35 year old rosewood that he bought from a German violin maker and we'll probably replace the board. Not something I'll be in any rush to do!

Cheers.........................wahwah

Man, that's awesome! You know I would do exactly what you're doing.... keep on playing it until it needs that "operation"! The L.P '59 R.I I used to have (seriel number 008 of 010 and made by Mr. Murphy... sigh..... ) was sold to me by a guy who used to deal in pre CBS Strats mainly, and I was fortunate enough to have at least played 30+.... ranging from butchered ones made from various old parts and therefore NOT 100%, right through to mint 100% Strats. Someone on here nailed it when they said the guitars that get played,dented and dinged... sound and feel the best (in my opinion look the best too!). We compared loads and loads, and the mint ones NEVER sounded as sweet.. and we did test them back to back. At first when this guy told me I didn't believe him.. I could not argue with the demonstrations!! I remember him selling a real deal one that was the so called Salmon pink colour for £12,000, and to our ears it didn't sound that much different to a re-issue?? But my favorite was actually a '69 large headstock (I think?) and it sounded HUGE, must have had overwound pups on it... VERY Hendrix sounding... VERY used too!! Anyway, fantastic piece of wood Mr. WahWah.

 

[wahwah]

Re: Should your best guitar be your main guitar?

Man, that's awesome! You know I would do exactly what you're doing.... keep on playing it until it needs that "operation"! The L.P '59 R.I I used to have (seriel number 008 of 010 and made by Mr. Murphy... sigh..... ) was sold to me by a guy who used to deal in pre CBS Strats mainly, and I was fortunate enough to have at least played 30+.... ranging from butchered ones made from various old parts and therefore NOT 100%, right through to mint 100% Strats. Someone on here nailed it when they said the guitars that get played,dented and dinged... sound and feel the best (in my opinion look the best too!). We compared loads and loads, and the mint ones NEVER sounded as sweet.. and we did test them back to back. At first when this guy told me I didn't believe him.. I could not argue with the demonstrations!! I remember him selling a real deal one that was the so called Salmon pink colour for £12,000, and to our ears it didn't sound that much different to a re-issue?? But my favorite was actually a '69 large headstock (I think?) and it sounded HUGE, must have had overwound pups on it... VERY Hendrix sounding... VERY used too!! Anyway, fantastic piece of wood Mr. WahWah.

Yeah, I've had the same experience playing 50's and L series Strats that have been "collected" as opposed to played, and they were dead and useless as guitars. Pretty to look at, but useless. The "hugeness" of sound is not necessarily overwound pickups, quite often it is the sheer dimension of character in the guitar itself, and this is what I meant in a previous post when I said that well used guitars know they are guitars! Mine is a '68, which means it is of the same vintage as the guitars Hendrix would have been pulling straight out of the case, and also the same as Gilmour's black Strat. There's definitely something about them. It may be venturing into the metaphysical, but I swear that there is some form of "life-force" which permeates well used instruments, some sort of musical "Qi," and it is absent from cased collector's instruments.

I've had Warmoths put together by good builders, with one piece swamp ash bodies and identical circuitry and similar hardware, and they just sound ineffectual and weak compared to the "Old Dear." And the '89 PRS Custom, which I chose from over a dozen from the Australian distributor, just sounded tiny and lame by comparison.



Cheers............................wahwah

 

[JOLLY]

Re: Should your best guitar be your main guitar?

This is one of my favorite rock n roll stories ever. It's told by Gilby Clarke.

"I have this ’91 Les Paul Classic that’s all burnt up. I’ve had it since it was new. And that’s pretty much my main Les Paul. I got this guitar for the GNR tour and it was just a brand new Les Paul Classic that was completely stock and tobacco sunburst. But I would never play it because it just looked too **** new. It was just too pretty, so I always just used my black Les Paul and my Tele. My tech, Elwood, would keep handing me the guitar and telling me that it sounds great and I should play it, but I never would.

So one day, he comes up to me with it and it looked like it had been in a fire. He just did this artistic work on it, where he kept lighting it on fire and putting it out. He burnt the pickup rings, the knobs – everything. When I first looked at it, my reaction was, “You son of a *****! You burned my guitar!” But then it was, “Wow! That looks really cool.”

So I changed the pickup rings and the knobs, and just left the finish. But since then, it’s been my main Les Paul. I love that guitar and it’s stock – stock pickups, stock everything, except for the pickup rings and knobs."

 

[Ascension]

Re: Should your best guitar be your main guitar?

I have my workhorse guitars then there are the showpieces. The workhorses do all the dirty work and the showpieces only come out for the bigger gigs where they are "safe" and I am on the big stages under the lights :cool2:.

 

[J Moose]

Re: Should your best guitar be your main guitar?

As far as vintage guitars being outperformed by stocks and other investments... If you'd have forked out $50K for a Burst 15 years ago, you'd be looking at around $200K now. When I got my 58 Special, it cost me $3K, within 3 years it got me $5K on selling.

When I got interested in acquiring guitars, there were guitars, old guitars, and there were vintage guitars that were affordable, and unaffordable vintage guitars. 50s Juniors were $500 guitars. I remember paying $900 for a 60 Jr, and I overpaid.

Yeah, but man... those days I think are LONG gone aside from the odd find & estate sale here & there.

In the interknot age, everyone knows everything if they don't know anything! I think the levels & pricing has somewhat leveled out from what it was 10 years ago... now, maybe it's climbing, but it's not escalting 3 fold, 10 fold, 20 fold from what it was.

20 years ago an 'old strat' was an 'old strat' I think. A '56 or a '61... same thing really. Now, today... it's microscopic the things that people look for, and there's a lot more forgeries out there too...

Whoever thought that old guitars would be worth BIG money?!