The best guitar you never loved....

[Hot _Grits]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

you are not alone... back in the mid 80's all of my group of friends were getting Kramers... i saw some friends sell some nice LP's for like $500... one guy i went to high school with was a huge Jimmy Page fan and he had a nice mint mid 70's LP Standard in cherry burst... he ended up trading it for a 1987 Kramer Focus... within 2 months he wanted his LP Back...

i saw lots of that going on

That basically sums up almost all guitar purchases from 1984-90. Pretty much every 35-50 year old guitarist you meet has some head-slapping story about trading a '63 strat or goldtop for a Charvel model 6...

Though to be fair, a lot of dudes were swapping late-Norlin gibsons and late 70s fenders, so you could feasibly argue they were upgrading in many of those cases.

 

[FAC]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

Rickenbacker 360/12......
........Don't get me started......

me, too! I really, really wanted to like it...and I certainly liked looking at it...but I simply could not stand playing it, so I finally worked up the nerve and sold it.

 

[WhoFan]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

That basically sums up almost all guitar purchases from 1984-90. Pretty much every 35-50 year old guitarist you meet has some head-slapping story about trading a '63 strat or goldtop for a Charvel model 6...

Though to be fair, a lot of dudes were swapping late-Norlin gibsons and late 70s fenders, so you could feasibly argue they were upgrading in many of those cases.

yes in some cases it was an upgrade.. my 76 lp is not a great lp... never was... but these darn 70's axes are oddly starting to raise in value a lot... many mid-late 70's Deluxes and Standards like mine are selling for what a new Deluxe or Standard sells for in Toronto... $1800-$2400 range... How much would a Model 6 sell for on the used market these days... $400-$600 maybe...

The 80's were also bad for people wrecking vintage toys with Floyds and Kahlers

 

[Tele-Bob]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

Rickenbacker 360/12......
........Don't get me started......

Me either! LOL!

 

[Tele-Bob]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

me, too! I really, really wanted to like it...and I certainly liked looking at it...but I simply could not stand playing it, so I finally worked up the nerve and sold it.

I sold my 360 and scratch built two of my own with all the corrections needed to make them totally playable guitars instead of the ergonomic nightmare that is the 360. I love the look, but man they're a ***** to play.

The maple one has SD Hot P90s in Toaster Covers from the SD Custom Shop. Sweet pickups!

 

[scottish]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

ive bought several LP copies over the years and sold every one of them. Ive never come to grasp the shorter scale length. I want to love it, lol, but i cant it. Im just gonna end up building one with a 25 or 25.5 scale neck.

 

[Tele-Bob]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

ive bought several LP copies over the years and sold every one of them. Ive never come to grasp the shorter scale length. I want to love it, lol, but i cant it. Im just gonna end up building one with a 25 or 25.5 scale neck.

I hear ya man! That's next on my list to build too. A 25 1/2" scal Les Paul with P90s! I have a 1955 Les Paul Custom that doesn't get much gig time because I'm not thrilled with the scale length.

 

[phil_104]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

I hear ya man! That's next on my list to build too. A 25 1/2" scal Les Paul with P90s! I have a 1955 Les Paul Custom that doesn't get much gig time because I'm not thrilled with the scale length.

I'll take it off your hands if you don't want it....

 

[lex666]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

ESP/LTD EC1000 Deluxe
ESP/LTD Viper 400
Fender Jimmy Vaughn Strat

 

[darnright]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

Hey Tele-bob...I LOVE those guitars!! They are SO sweet!!!

-dave

 

[Tele-Bob]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

I'll take it off your hands if you don't want it....

$14k and it's yours!

 

[Tele-Bob]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

Hey Tele-bob...I LOVE those guitars!! They are SO sweet!!!

-dave

Thanks man! 7 months went into those guitars. I will say one good thing for the Ric 360 though. I got all my money back when I sold it!

 

[MattPete]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

you are not alone... back in the mid 80's all of my group of friends were getting Kramers... i saw some friends sell some nice LP's for like $500... one guy i went to high school with was a huge Jimmy Page fan and he had a nice mint mid 70's LP Standard in cherry burst... he ended up trading it for a 1987 Kramer Focus... within 2 months he wanted his LP Back...

i saw lots of that going on

Yikes! The Focus was a mid-range guitar -- todays equivalent of an Ibanez! What was he thinking? At least the Pacer was equivalent of a Charvel (and my Les Paul had a broken truss rod and sucked/had mini-humbuckers).

Oh, to be young and foolish again.

Actually, I might have bought the Kramer with lawn-mowing money. The Les Paul Deluxe might have been sold to buy a Roland JC-120. You laugh,. but a JC-120 and ratty DOD distortion pedal was all I used for years, and when set-up right, can have a pretty killer tone.

Now, the most money I ever wasted was on a POD. All hype, no substance.

 

[J Moose]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

I bought (and still own) a really really killer low-serial # Eric Johnson strat... it's possibly "the best" guitar I own, it's alive... resonant, responsive, harmonically... pickups are so well voiced & balanced it's unreal.

I don't love strats... and it's a really expensive strat.

I sold two others & paid a little bit of cash to get it... new.

The neck is HUGE. I like 'em big but this is really big. Soft V, but hUge till about the 7-8th pos & then it gently turns into a hUge C. It's almost too big for me. I could shave a 1/8 to 1/4" off and it'd be PERFECT... but there's a huge collector value attached... and there's no real good reason to muck with it.

It plays great.

It's doing better then some of my stocks... and I get to play it!

But I dunno...

Sometimes I wish I'd have spent that much coin on another Lester or a Tele...

I kinda miss my old candy apple red '90s american standard. That was a cool guitar... had it for like 10 years but that neck was too thin...

hahaha

:dunno:

 

[MikeS]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

My '06 MIK BC Rich NJ Classic Mockingbird. In many ways this was my best guitar: it practically played itself, looked great, the body shape seemed to it well, and it was as well put together as anything else I've owned. Still I never came to grips with the way a maple neck-thru sounds. It was too harsh, to brittle, and after several pickup swaps I decided to part with it.

 

[fenderiarhs]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

lol! Any guesses?

HAHAHAHAHAHA Ι'll bet my money on the cannabis sativa.....:burnout::burnout::burnout::burnout::burnout::burnout:

 

[ImmortalSix]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

I usually have the opposite problem --- I fall head over heels for a $60 guitar (my Jackson) or a $99 guitar in the case of my '51 and then I leave my 4-digit guitars a-hangin on the wall.

 

[Gunny47]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

SGs and PRSs

 

[BigAlTheBird]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

HAHAHAHAHAHA Ι'll bet my money on the cannabis sativa.....:burnout::burnout::burnout::burnout::burnout::burnout:

lol Nope! It's Japanese Maple.

Yeah, that's it...

:fing2:

 

[Hot _Grits]

Re: The best guitar you never loved....

yes in some cases it was an upgrade.. my 76 lp is not a great lp... never was... but these darn 70's axes are oddly starting to raise in value a lot... many mid-late 70's Deluxes and Standards like mine are selling for what a new Deluxe or Standard sells for in Toronto... $1800-$2400 range... How much would a Model 6 sell for on the used market these days... $400-$600 maybe...

The 80's were also bad for people wrecking vintage toys with Floyds and Kahlers

Yeah, guitar center are responsible, at least in part. In the 90s, when 60s instruments were getting scarce, GC HQ put out word to stores to start paying more for 70s guitars and hoarding them.

For me there's always going to something wrong with most 70s guitars being considered vintage. After all it's 70s fender and gibson quality that started the clamour for older instruments...