The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
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Agileguy_101
Master of his Domain
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
I'd rather have it it Hammett's hands than the old white guy that collects bursts. At least Hammett can play a song that isn't Mustang Sally and plays it for millions of people to enjoy.
I'd rather have it it Hammett's hands than the old white guy that collects bursts. At least Hammett can play a song that isn't Mustang Sally and plays it for millions of people to enjoy.
Falloffthebonetone
New member
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
Hammet has always been very careful with his guitars, especially the botique and antique ones. He brings cheaper guitars out for shows and tours and leaves most of the expensive stuff at home.
Hammet has always been very careful with his guitars, especially the botique and antique ones. He brings cheaper guitars out for shows and tours and leaves most of the expensive stuff at home.
MatelotFripon
New member
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
I'd pick up Johnny Ramones white Mosrite any day ! (not the most valuable, I admit, but pretty cool !)
I'd pick up Johnny Ramones white Mosrite any day ! (not the most valuable, I admit, but pretty cool !)
jon the art guy
Nerdy Nerd
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
There an Elvis guitar floating around out there?
There an Elvis guitar floating around out there?
RobertPaulGoode
New member
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
Hank Garlands 1958 Gibson EB 1 six string bass Used on many Elvis recordings valued at $1.6 Milllion, One of a kind Prototype or his 1958 Gibson Stereo 345 prototype , played on more recordings than any other guitar in music history, valued at $1.2 million
Hank Garlands 1958 Gibson EB 1 six string bass Used on many Elvis recordings valued at $1.6 Milllion, One of a kind Prototype or his 1958 Gibson Stereo 345 prototype , played on more recordings than any other guitar in music history, valued at $1.2 million
Chickenwings
Alnico 6/8
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
where are jimis axes?
The white one from woodstock, or the red one he toasted?
where are jimis axes?
The white one from woodstock, or the red one he toasted?
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
I would definitely put in my score sheet. Construction,How many shows did it do?,All the onboard features,In my books who touched would be at the bottom and only because this an obsessive society.
The winner by miles n is a 10 in every category Is the"Tiger" built by Doug Irwin from"Alembic" with a close second or third which had onboard midi pup n processor inside and banks n patches are injected via 2momentary switches(red)and blend knob. The other close as far as onboard is the axe built by a wood worker and just made as a gift and sent to gd headquarters for present to Jer. It had all the features of the tiger n rosebud but also had a piezo incorporated into the gibson style tune-o-matic saddle holder attatched to a blend knob as well. It was a hippie sandwich too.
Here's my winner:
The guitar is called Tiger because of the inlay on the battery/preamp compartment cover. Doug worked at Alembic guitars for a year and half or two. Tiger was built in the Alembic "Hippie Sandwich" tradition. "Hippie Sandwich" is several different layers of wood sandwich together which creates the beautiful layers of the guitar. Tiger's top layer being Cocabola, then a Maple stripe, a layer of Vermillion and a Flame Maple core. A brass binding is set around the body of the guitar and across the front. There's a beautiful inlayed on the back side of Tiger's body too. The Western Maple neck has a hardwood section of paduk inlayed in the back and the ebony fret-board has a brass binding. 13 1/2 pounds of muscle and beauty, which is where a major part of Jerry's rich deep tone comes from.
Garcia played with high action 7/64" at the 12th fret, with .030" relief in the neck. At the nut, the strings where also quite high at about .030" above the 1st fret. The ebony fingerboard has a 16" radius and sports. .105" x.45" frets. The neck and middle pickups are 10/64" from the strings, and the bridge pickup sits 14/64" away. (The bridge was made by Schaller for Gibson, and the tailpiece was custom made for the guitar.) The brass nut is scalloped between the strings, and the spacing -as specified by Garcia- is equal between the edges of the strings (as opposed to the centers of the strings being equidistant, which is more common). Garcia used Vinci strings, gauged .010 - .046, but from time to time used an .011 on the highE and a .047 on the low E.
The guitar features a single-coil in the neck position, as opposed to the humbuckers you see in other configurations. Garcia used a DiMarzio SDS-1 Strat-style pickup in the neck, and DiMarzio Super IIs in the middle and bridge pickups.
The guitar's wiring is unusual. The pickups are switched by a standard 5-position pickup selector. The neck and bridge have a tone control, and the middle pickup has its own tone control. The ouput of the pickups goes directly into a unity gain (no boost) preamp powered by a 9-volt battery. The preamp protects the guitar signal against high end loss due to cable capacitance by lowering the output impedance.
Unity-gain buffer Pre-amp for Electric Guitar designed by John Cutler for Jerry Garcia. Use long cables between your Guitar and Amp Low-Z output, 9-volt power.
From the preamp, the signal goes to an onboard effects loop switch, which routs the signal either directly to the guitar's volume control or to Garcia's effect (via a TRS jack), and then back into the guitar (through the same TRS jack) to the guitar's volume control. From there, the signal finally goesout the main output jack.
The genius of this wiring is that it allowed Garcia to keep full volume going to the pedals while controlling his output volume from the guitar. The advantage is that the tone and response of the pedals would not change with the guitar's output volume, as it normally would if Garcia plugged directly into them. The wiring also allowed for a true bypass of the effects when they weren't in use.
Again, The Tiger has two Dimarzio Super ll pickups and one Single coil Dimarzio SDS1 in the neck position. The humbucking pickups are wired with Black and White wires together in true single coil switching mode. There is a 5 way strat style pickup selection switch, two 3 way toggle switches for coil selection on the humbuckers (hum/canceling dual/single coil) configuration of the dual-coil pickup and one toggle to turn the effects loop on and off. There are two 500k tone pots one for each humbucker and one 25k volume pot. There are two output jacks, both are stereo type jacks. The mono cable uses a stereo jack so it will turn the battery off when you unplug the guitar. The mono cable runs straight to the Fender Twin. The stereo jack runs out of the guitar to the effects rack and then back into the guitar BEFORE the volume control.
Here is the important stuff. By running the effects loop from the guitar you are able to shape the sound of the effects with the tone controls of the guitar. In the effects loop is a Unity Gain Buffer. It is a little op amp that keeps the gain of the signal in the loop constant and makes the output of the guitar low impedance. The Buffer is always ON and seeing a signal no matter if the effects loop is on or off. You can get one from EMG www.emginc.com . The model number is JG1. (or now a JG-2) Since the loop is wired pre- volume, the effects are always seeing the same full output from the pickups. When your signal from your guitar is not going up and down with volume you know right where your effects levels are going to be. Most importantly this allows you to shape the tone of your effected signal with the tone controls of your guitar. When you daisy chain stomp boxes in between your guitar and your amp you are sucking a lot of tone away and when you kick in any effect it takes over your signal and you have no control over it. Try turning on a distortion pedal and switching your pickup selectors or turning your tone knobs, you see very little change in the sound. With the effects loop and unity gain buffer you have 5 different distortion tones and you can roll the tone off to get real cool horn like sounds. In this way, Garcia was seamlessly painting with an incredible number of varying tones that were controllable right from the guitar and one control foot switch.
Just imagine Owsely,Gary Brawer,Jerry,Lesh just trippin for nights on end tweaking everything that effected tone. His pre's he gutted from 64-67 ab763 fender twin's were mounted vert as well a revrb spring pan. The tubes would wiggle out and the spring could hit the side of the shallow fender pan. Jer loved the orig fender revrb.
Funny that guitar companies now a days are throwing emg buffers,push pull tone knobs for 250/500 k or coil modes for buckers like paralell,split,series(standard. Yet they still don't build some of them correct. With any active pups you should use a 20,25 or the most 50k audio taper volume pot. On board fx loop with bypassswitch. Ofcourse youre going to get a diff tone more or lack there of the effect if you adjust youre guitars volume b4 the fx. Some pedals there's a horrendously noticeable diff. This the most stable way to run a guitar and is the most sensible of a these appearing features. With a guitar like this you can preset your entire preamp and all your fx. Jerry used a white chalk pencil. He took the best features of all the guitars availible went 100 yards farther then had one created. I think took 7 years to build n was his 2nd official Irwin built for touring. So it played solid for 11 years and the Dead averaged 180 shows a year aka like 1200 shows and did appear several other times since Jerry played other guitars until he died in 95. They were gear heads more than anything. They had to have and create the cleanest tones. They used 53 McIntosh 2300's to power their 74 wall of sound. All bridged @ 1ohm and was also Jerry stage amp for his Fender pre. Everything was a science down to vertical 4speaker cab spread the sound way wider than the traditional 4by12. So this Guitar would be the cherry on top of a cake of guitars that make up the cake and some the icing. Jerry played it being sold and built by hand crafting luthiers all with years of extensive guitar experimentation. He even played a Travis Bean with the all aluminum neck with the frets all one piece. There is however a sad ending to this guitar. Jerry returned the guitars to their creators. Doug Irwin auctioned the Tiger for just a little over a mill to the owner of the Indianapolis Colts. The Dead have the rest including the rusebud,wolph n cripes and only auctioned one other one made by Doug but was never used live. It did however ever look cool. It had really small n symmetrical ears. Kinda like either Fender or Gibson made a guitar called genisis. That's what we need!!! A new wave of small eared guitar. Make it super easy to get to those high 24 frets.
I would definitely put in my score sheet. Construction,How many shows did it do?,All the onboard features,In my books who touched would be at the bottom and only because this an obsessive society.
The winner by miles n is a 10 in every category Is the"Tiger" built by Doug Irwin from"Alembic" with a close second or third which had onboard midi pup n processor inside and banks n patches are injected via 2momentary switches(red)and blend knob. The other close as far as onboard is the axe built by a wood worker and just made as a gift and sent to gd headquarters for present to Jer. It had all the features of the tiger n rosebud but also had a piezo incorporated into the gibson style tune-o-matic saddle holder attatched to a blend knob as well. It was a hippie sandwich too.
Here's my winner:
The guitar is called Tiger because of the inlay on the battery/preamp compartment cover. Doug worked at Alembic guitars for a year and half or two. Tiger was built in the Alembic "Hippie Sandwich" tradition. "Hippie Sandwich" is several different layers of wood sandwich together which creates the beautiful layers of the guitar. Tiger's top layer being Cocabola, then a Maple stripe, a layer of Vermillion and a Flame Maple core. A brass binding is set around the body of the guitar and across the front. There's a beautiful inlayed on the back side of Tiger's body too. The Western Maple neck has a hardwood section of paduk inlayed in the back and the ebony fret-board has a brass binding. 13 1/2 pounds of muscle and beauty, which is where a major part of Jerry's rich deep tone comes from.
Garcia played with high action 7/64" at the 12th fret, with .030" relief in the neck. At the nut, the strings where also quite high at about .030" above the 1st fret. The ebony fingerboard has a 16" radius and sports. .105" x.45" frets. The neck and middle pickups are 10/64" from the strings, and the bridge pickup sits 14/64" away. (The bridge was made by Schaller for Gibson, and the tailpiece was custom made for the guitar.) The brass nut is scalloped between the strings, and the spacing -as specified by Garcia- is equal between the edges of the strings (as opposed to the centers of the strings being equidistant, which is more common). Garcia used Vinci strings, gauged .010 - .046, but from time to time used an .011 on the highE and a .047 on the low E.
The guitar features a single-coil in the neck position, as opposed to the humbuckers you see in other configurations. Garcia used a DiMarzio SDS-1 Strat-style pickup in the neck, and DiMarzio Super IIs in the middle and bridge pickups.
The guitar's wiring is unusual. The pickups are switched by a standard 5-position pickup selector. The neck and bridge have a tone control, and the middle pickup has its own tone control. The ouput of the pickups goes directly into a unity gain (no boost) preamp powered by a 9-volt battery. The preamp protects the guitar signal against high end loss due to cable capacitance by lowering the output impedance.
Unity-gain buffer Pre-amp for Electric Guitar designed by John Cutler for Jerry Garcia. Use long cables between your Guitar and Amp Low-Z output, 9-volt power.
From the preamp, the signal goes to an onboard effects loop switch, which routs the signal either directly to the guitar's volume control or to Garcia's effect (via a TRS jack), and then back into the guitar (through the same TRS jack) to the guitar's volume control. From there, the signal finally goesout the main output jack.
The genius of this wiring is that it allowed Garcia to keep full volume going to the pedals while controlling his output volume from the guitar. The advantage is that the tone and response of the pedals would not change with the guitar's output volume, as it normally would if Garcia plugged directly into them. The wiring also allowed for a true bypass of the effects when they weren't in use.
Again, The Tiger has two Dimarzio Super ll pickups and one Single coil Dimarzio SDS1 in the neck position. The humbucking pickups are wired with Black and White wires together in true single coil switching mode. There is a 5 way strat style pickup selection switch, two 3 way toggle switches for coil selection on the humbuckers (hum/canceling dual/single coil) configuration of the dual-coil pickup and one toggle to turn the effects loop on and off. There are two 500k tone pots one for each humbucker and one 25k volume pot. There are two output jacks, both are stereo type jacks. The mono cable uses a stereo jack so it will turn the battery off when you unplug the guitar. The mono cable runs straight to the Fender Twin. The stereo jack runs out of the guitar to the effects rack and then back into the guitar BEFORE the volume control.
Here is the important stuff. By running the effects loop from the guitar you are able to shape the sound of the effects with the tone controls of the guitar. In the effects loop is a Unity Gain Buffer. It is a little op amp that keeps the gain of the signal in the loop constant and makes the output of the guitar low impedance. The Buffer is always ON and seeing a signal no matter if the effects loop is on or off. You can get one from EMG www.emginc.com . The model number is JG1. (or now a JG-2) Since the loop is wired pre- volume, the effects are always seeing the same full output from the pickups. When your signal from your guitar is not going up and down with volume you know right where your effects levels are going to be. Most importantly this allows you to shape the tone of your effected signal with the tone controls of your guitar. When you daisy chain stomp boxes in between your guitar and your amp you are sucking a lot of tone away and when you kick in any effect it takes over your signal and you have no control over it. Try turning on a distortion pedal and switching your pickup selectors or turning your tone knobs, you see very little change in the sound. With the effects loop and unity gain buffer you have 5 different distortion tones and you can roll the tone off to get real cool horn like sounds. In this way, Garcia was seamlessly painting with an incredible number of varying tones that were controllable right from the guitar and one control foot switch.
Just imagine Owsely,Gary Brawer,Jerry,Lesh just trippin for nights on end tweaking everything that effected tone. His pre's he gutted from 64-67 ab763 fender twin's were mounted vert as well a revrb spring pan. The tubes would wiggle out and the spring could hit the side of the shallow fender pan. Jer loved the orig fender revrb.
Funny that guitar companies now a days are throwing emg buffers,push pull tone knobs for 250/500 k or coil modes for buckers like paralell,split,series(standard. Yet they still don't build some of them correct. With any active pups you should use a 20,25 or the most 50k audio taper volume pot. On board fx loop with bypassswitch. Ofcourse youre going to get a diff tone more or lack there of the effect if you adjust youre guitars volume b4 the fx. Some pedals there's a horrendously noticeable diff. This the most stable way to run a guitar and is the most sensible of a these appearing features. With a guitar like this you can preset your entire preamp and all your fx. Jerry used a white chalk pencil. He took the best features of all the guitars availible went 100 yards farther then had one created. I think took 7 years to build n was his 2nd official Irwin built for touring. So it played solid for 11 years and the Dead averaged 180 shows a year aka like 1200 shows and did appear several other times since Jerry played other guitars until he died in 95. They were gear heads more than anything. They had to have and create the cleanest tones. They used 53 McIntosh 2300's to power their 74 wall of sound. All bridged @ 1ohm and was also Jerry stage amp for his Fender pre. Everything was a science down to vertical 4speaker cab spread the sound way wider than the traditional 4by12. So this Guitar would be the cherry on top of a cake of guitars that make up the cake and some the icing. Jerry played it being sold and built by hand crafting luthiers all with years of extensive guitar experimentation. He even played a Travis Bean with the all aluminum neck with the frets all one piece. There is however a sad ending to this guitar. Jerry returned the guitars to their creators. Doug Irwin auctioned the Tiger for just a little over a mill to the owner of the Indianapolis Colts. The Dead have the rest including the rusebud,wolph n cripes and only auctioned one other one made by Doug but was never used live. It did however ever look cool. It had really small n symmetrical ears. Kinda like either Fender or Gibson made a guitar called genisis. That's what we need!!! A new wave of small eared guitar. Make it super easy to get to those high 24 frets.
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Lovegun
Active member
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
Or it could have gone to somebody who puts it in a glass case. Then puts the case in to a climate controlled safe. I think it is great that Hammett plays it.
Or it could have gone to somebody who puts it in a glass case. Then puts the case in to a climate controlled safe. I think it is great that Hammett plays it.
Ashurbanipal
Well-known member
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
Guess it's tricky with Jimi, because he went through them and the ones that are around are difficult to assign to him sometimes, but the Woodstock one was 'saved' and has provenience.
One of the toasted ones was rebuilt and is used by Dweezil Zappa.
Guess it's tricky with Jimi, because he went through them and the ones that are around are difficult to assign to him sometimes, but the Woodstock one was 'saved' and has provenience.
One of the toasted ones was rebuilt and is used by Dweezil Zappa.
Kam
Shaftologist
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
I'd rather not have an instrument of any description in Hammett's hands.
I'd rather not have an instrument of any description in Hammett's hands.
Ironjose
New member
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
it really depends on the value you give to the guitar... for one thing is the blue book value and other is the "sentimental" value... but since we're discussing "money" i would say Brian May's guitar.... super ultra rare...
it really depends on the value you give to the guitar... for one thing is the blue book value and other is the "sentimental" value... but since we're discussing "money" i would say Brian May's guitar.... super ultra rare...
Crazy_Guitar
New member
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
Yes, definitely the RS. Also, Les Paul's "The Log" and the early Tele/Strat prototypes.
Yes, definitely the RS. Also, Les Paul's "The Log" and the early Tele/Strat prototypes.
Wattage
High Voltologist
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
Last I saw Greeny's LP was up for sale for $2mil, don't know what Hamster paid for it.
I think either of Pages real LP's, the burst or the Custom would beat that. I would guess Pearly would too.
Beck's Oxblood is probably worth a few sheckles. I may be wrong but I don't see May's guitar bringing in a million but you never know.
Rick Nielsen's '58, Perry's '58 big dollars
Garcia's main axe would likely bring some crazy money I am sure.
What about EVH's main Strat?
Last I saw Greeny's LP was up for sale for $2mil, don't know what Hamster paid for it.
I think either of Pages real LP's, the burst or the Custom would beat that. I would guess Pearly would too.
Beck's Oxblood is probably worth a few sheckles. I may be wrong but I don't see May's guitar bringing in a million but you never know.
Rick Nielsen's '58, Perry's '58 big dollars
Garcia's main axe would likely bring some crazy money I am sure.
What about EVH's main Strat?
Gearjoneser
Gear Ho
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
For pride of ownership, I'd be wanting SRV's #1.
For long term collectibility, I'd be looking at the definitive Beatles guitars (Gretsch & Casino) and McCartney's Hofner Beatle Bass. I'm talking about the early ones like the ones seen on the Ed Sullivan Show. That stuff will fetch ridiculous money a hundred years from now.....if we last that long.
For pride of ownership, I'd be wanting SRV's #1.
For long term collectibility, I'd be looking at the definitive Beatles guitars (Gretsch & Casino) and McCartney's Hofner Beatle Bass. I'm talking about the early ones like the ones seen on the Ed Sullivan Show. That stuff will fetch ridiculous money a hundred years from now.....if we last that long.
InbredJunk
New member
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
Kind of off topic. Doesn't Joe bonamassa pay to play people's old les Paul's on stage?
Kind of off topic. Doesn't Joe bonamassa pay to play people's old les Paul's on stage?
ItsaBass
New member
Re: The world's most valuable electric guitar. Discuss.
Monetarily valuable...I don't know.
The most valuable to me, all things considered (not just money), would probably be one of the first run of thin-bodied, black, pine Esquires from early 1950. Only a few dozen were made, and most have bit the dust or had the original non-truss necks factory replaced. They were primarily used as NAMM guitars or for "field trials" by working musicians. B.B. King also briefly ended up with one of them, evidently (as he has stated that he had a Fender, but it didn't have a steel rod in the neck, so it warped on him). After feedback from NAMM and from those musicians, 1/4" was added to the body thickness, the wood was changed to ash, and the black paint was changed to translucent white (and a truss rod and a neck pickup were added, of course).
Monetarily valuable...I don't know.
The most valuable to me, all things considered (not just money), would probably be one of the first run of thin-bodied, black, pine Esquires from early 1950. Only a few dozen were made, and most have bit the dust or had the original non-truss necks factory replaced. They were primarily used as NAMM guitars or for "field trials" by working musicians. B.B. King also briefly ended up with one of them, evidently (as he has stated that he had a Fender, but it didn't have a steel rod in the neck, so it warped on him). After feedback from NAMM and from those musicians, 1/4" was added to the body thickness, the wood was changed to ash, and the black paint was changed to translucent white (and a truss rod and a neck pickup were added, of course).
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