Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

beggar_guitar

beggar_guitar

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Once upon a time I loved rosewood. I still love rosewood.

I only wanted rosewood on my fretboad. Strat, LP, Explorer...

Then I bought a strat with a Maple neck.

For years I have vowed to buy a proper rosewood neck (w/ big CBS headstock) but now everytime I see one listed on here or think I am about to bite the bullet... I stop.

I cringe.

Take the Maple off my Strat? Never! It wouldn't play right. It wouldn't sound right... It wouldn't FEEL right.

I still love rosewood on my Dean Icon. If I ever get around to buying an Explorer it will definitely have rosewood.

But on my Strat... Give me maple. And 4 more just like it!
 
Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

Heavily Figured woods ... I now really hate them on many guitars.

When I was younger I kind of like the look of abalone on guitars ... yet with Schecter and LTD putting it everywhere except the toilet lid (even then I suspect they might have done that as well), I find it looks extremely tacky. I even find it hard to like when it's been used in a tasteful manner.
 
Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

I never thought I'd want a Gibson until I got my LP Jr DC. Good guitar and it sees the majority of my standard tuning play these days.

So now I have 5 Fenders and 1 Gibson. None of Gibson's other models interest me though.
 
Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

When I was younger I liked all the "decked out" guitars... like Les Pauls and superstrats.

Now, I really like the tele and strat. I like SGs... obviously... but I don't think I could be up on stage and feel comfortable with a LP or some kind of superstrat. Though I do gas for those guitars all the time. I freaking love Ibanez's and LPs but I just couldn't buy one.
 
Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

For the longest time I was sure that trems made your guitar tone suck and wouldn't touch anything without a fixed bridge. My main guitar has a Floyd now.
 
Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

P-90's. Once I played a few guitars with them and finally bought one (SG Classic), I'm hooked. Even put one in my recent kit build, a SG Jr. I'm still a humbucker guy at heart but I do like good P-90's.
 
Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

Single coils.

I've always been a humbucker guy. I thought single coils sounded thin and weak. Luckily months of practice and a good amp changed my mind. Almost sold my strat becuz of that. Luckily I kept it and to this day its still one of my main guitars.
 
Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

I never ever thought I'd want a Telecaster. I was always very much a humbucker guy, in many ways I still am. But the humble Tele found its way into the collection, and there it shall remain.

As for the abomination that is the robotic tuner though, forget it...
 
Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

A 7th string. Lol
Now I'm in the market for say an rg7321 to get the ball rollin on that mess..
 
Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

Humbuckers ONLY.

I grew with SSS, SSH and HSH configurations. Got used to dealing with single coils.

Nowadays, give me individual push/pulls for splitting two humbuckers and two volume knobs and I'm ready.
In fact while I'm GASing for something with P90s, I'm not sure I really want that for me.

For some silly reason I've always had some sort of "vintage-correct" reminiscence on my guitars, and always thought I'd only get the sounds I want from a LP and a Strat/Tele.
While I'd probably be much more at home with something closer to a PRS.
 
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Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

Headless guitars. After playing them for awhile, they make so much more sense- better balance, quicker string changes, and lighter.
 
Virtual Kevorkian said:
Single coils, P90's, low output humbuckers. I love them ALL now.
Click to expand...

<head explodes>

That's awesome though.. glad you came around to the more textured, nuanced side of pickupdom.

You've always been a prodigy with getting killer tones. Id love to hear what you're doing with single coils.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk
 
Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

For me, I always have these weird hangups about guitar stuff that I wind up getting over later and realize were pointless or based on oddball assumptions that didn't make sense.

For a while I hated:

- bolt ons
- single coils
- tremolo guitars
- non-tremolo guitars
- non-maple fretboards on fenders
- unbound necks
- lacquered necks
- strats

I'm far less constrained right now.

About the only things I still actively resist are shred-thin necks, super-pointy guitars, and bolt-on guitars with painted necks - like solid colors. I can't say exactly why, but when I look at a bolt-on with the neck painted the same color as the body, I see it like an old gibson knock-off that used a bolt design to cut cost over the real thing. Just looks cheesy to me.
 
Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

Believe it or not....

I'm going to say Telecasters as a whole.

Why?

To begin with I thought they made no sense at all and I somewhat disliked the shape of the body, but when i walked into that local guitar shop a week after my birthday, I had to try the one I saw. Ok so it is a copy but a pretty good one at that. Mine is black and it looks beautiful in black with binding on the body, white pickguard, maple neck, sounded beautiful and played really well (which is why I bought it).

What also shocked me was I actually bought another guitar without cody contours as it felt more comfortable, which sounds odd, but I feel that a guitar is more wholesome without the contours...

strange, but it is so right in so many ways!
 
Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

Guitars are like women, I've never disliked any, just more attracted to
certain recipes.

I did however have somewhat of an "enlightenment" when I rediscovered the Tele.

This canvas can accept any hardware, pickup or timber configuration imagineable, and then some!

I find it to be the model T Ford of the electric guitar, vintage through to
full blown modern applications, side valve to injected and blown Hemi V8:friday:

I did start however playing Flamenco and Classical and going to "round"
radiused fretboards was weird as was the narrow nut.
These days I find the uniqueness of each individual guitar and it's possibilities
the basis by which I use a particular instrument to express what I require at the time.

The moral of the story is that one needs more than one type of guitar,
and then some variables of each. Hell, even blueman335 secretly lusts
over a Tele with < 6k pickups:cool2:
 
Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

Never thought I'd want a Fender until I bought a Blacktop Tele.

Never liked maple fretboards until I bought a Blacktop Tele.

Never wanted passive pickups until I bought Seymour Duncan Blackouts, loved the tone so much, ended up with passives in my Blacktop (Sh-4 and Sh-6n).

Always thought 2 hums were the way to go, until I bought an SG with 3 of them.

Never wanted a killswitch, until I tried an Epi SG that had one built into the tone pot. Now, I can't live without it.

And my number one,

Never wanted a Bigsby. Now, I have one on all my guitars.
 
Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

A semi hollow "old man guitar." After getting a Gibson ES-335, I'm hooked. I think it may be my very best guitar.

Alnico 2 humbuckers and PAF's in general. I always thought they were too loose, but they sound fatter than tighter A5 pickups.

I never thought I'd use a guitar that doesn't have Schaller strap locks, but I like using rubber bottle seals on some of them now. They hold just fine, and when sitting down, the strap locks don't rattle.
 
Re: Things you never thought you'd want in a guitar...

Any kind of "Skinny" Switch.
No coil taps,phases,ser/par nothing.

And Vari-Tones & the like

''Bout it...
 
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