Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

[Narcist]

I've been wanting to buy a new guitar and have been looking at the Hagstrom Super Swede Tremar as well as a few others. Still saving up, but I kind of got myself thinking. Yesterday, I saw ESP selling some funky telecaster (TE-202) for $350.

Kind of got myself thinking about getting that and modding it within an inch of its life. Just wanted some thoughts on what exactly is a better option, slightly higher-end guitar, or lower-end guitar with modifications (think added bigsby, new pickups, the works)?

In case you guys want to suggest, I mainly play bluesy, rock, some metal on occasion.

 

[Securb]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

Mexican Fenders seem to be the weapon of choice for a lot of modders around here. They play great, are easy to find and dont break the bank. I have seen them done up in every configuration for every style of music you can imagine. I have 4 and none are the same. There are also very easy to find a variety of parts for to dial in the guitar to your particular wants and needs.

 

[pushedcrayon1]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

+1 to Mexican made fenders. Easy to swap and change out, you can buy them cheap, and fitting parts are very easy to find. Strats can cover a lot of musical ground too!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G925A using Tapatalk

 

[ledzef]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

Mexican made Charvels. For under 1k great bag for the buck.

 

[Johnny the Kid]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

Anything with pickups mounted to the pickguard. Fender Strats tend to be the best for these purposes because Fender pickguards are easy to find and custom ones are pretty easy to acquire as well. Warmoth will make one with pretty much any configuration that you can think of.

 

[treyhaislip]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

Anything with pickups mounted to the pickguard. Fender Strats tend to be the best for these purposes because Fender pickguards are easy to find and custom ones are pretty easy to acquire as well. Warmoth will make one with pretty much any configuration that you can think of.

+1 to this! Pretty much can pull off any pickup combo you want with a pickguard...if its not a swimming pool route then you might have to remove some wood but its covered by the pickguard.

I do like the idea of the Fender MIM Strats as alot are already decent players that won't break the bank and with a touch of TLC they can really rock.

 

[Shooter.556]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

I am picking up a Mexican Strat this afternoon for my winter project.. It will be a fine playing blues rock beast when I am finished with it.

 

[blueman335]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

Epis!

 

[treyhaislip]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

Epis!

I actually loved my Epiphone S and T 310s, those could both be modded very nicely. Ofcourse, Les Pauls can be modded too but IMO its easier with a pickguard

 

[Shooter.556]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

Epis!

EPIs are awesome mod guitars.. You can get them as good as any Studio or Traditional with a little work and not a lot of money..

 

[blueman335]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

EPIs are awesome mod guitars.. You can get them as good as any Studio or Traditional with a little work and not a lot of money..

I've got some Epis and modded them all. They're a good foundation, and there's great deals on used ones.

 

[Johnny the Kid]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

I am picking up a Mexican Strat this afternoon for my winter project.. It will be a fine playing blues rock beast when I am finished with it.

Check out some Squiers, too. Those guitars, especially in the $300 range, have gotten extremely good recently. Not like the Squiers of days past.

 

[DrNewcenstein]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

Depending on the degree of modding you intend to do, and how frequently you intend to mad it and change things like pickups and such, a Floyded guitar will save you a ton of time, as you can simply pop the springs off the back and take the bridge out at full tension.

However, if you're looking at things like a Bigsby and such, that's a moot point.


Any guitar of any price range will serve as a pickup wh0re, but the overall quality of the guitar will determine the end-result. You may find a junker that sounds great with a given pickup, because that pickup corrects whatever tonal issue the guitar has, but moving that same pickup to the higher-end version of that particular model may yield different results, as the better one doesn't have the tonal issues the pickup compensates for in the junker.

As well, dumping $300 worth of pickups and CTS pots into a $200 guitar will result in a $200 guitar with $300 worth of pickups and controls, and will not result in a $500 guitar.
This is often described as lipstick on a pig.

 

[Shooter.556]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

Check out some Squiers, too. Those guitars, especially in the $300 range, have gotten extremely good recently. Not like the Squiers of days past.

The guy I bought the MIM from had just finished a Squier and is sweet!

 

[Brandenburg]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

As well, dumping $300 worth of pickups and CTS pots into a $200 guitar will result in a $200 guitar with $300 worth of pickups and controls, and will not result in a $500 guitar.
This is often described as lipstick on a pig.

I did this to one of my guitars but im not planning on selling it.. It was just an experiment that panned out.. sometiimes you do something just because you can. my squire plays/sounds as good as 700 dollar guitar.. wish the body wood was better but the neck is solid.. looks nice too

 

[DrNewcenstein]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

I've done it to several, also just to do it. However, I have seen people throw a ton of money into a cheap guitar and only end up with a guitar made of low-quality woods and with poor craftsmanship that has good quality components added to it. Bad wood is bad wood. Bad fretwork is bad fretwork. Duncans and CTS and an OFR cannot compensate for defective base material.

 

[blueman335]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

I've done it to several, also just to do it. However, I have seen people throw a ton of money into a cheap guitar and only end up with a guitar made of low-quality woods and with poor craftsmanship that has good quality components added to it. Bad wood is bad wood. Bad fretwork is bad fretwork. Duncans and CTS and an OFR cannot compensate for defective base material.

That's certainly not the average import these days. It's gotten very competitive since the economy tanked. Lumber prices are partially based on cosmetics, so you can't assume every nice-looking piece of wood will sound equally as good, or that less attractive-looking wood will automatically sound inferior.

Basic rule is very simple: keep the parts you take off, so you can put them back on if you sell the guitar, then you don't lose money on upgrades. I imagine that a good amount of Duncan PU's wind up in imports, as they're the ones that benefit the most from them.

 

[loversmoon]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?


Def wanna grab ya a Mexican fender. Well made , cheap, and can be modded heavily. Parts
Are
Super easy to find and they play and sound great.

 

[Securb]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

That's certainly not the average import these days.

I must agree with Blueman. The quality of the imports gets better and better every year. When you compare the entry level guitars of 30-40 years ago to the inexpensive guitars of today there is no contest. Advances in manufacturing processes and tools have allowed overseas companies to turn out excellent instruments.

 

[GuitarStv]

Re: Thoughts on good guitars for modding?

Mexican made Charvels. For under 1k great bag for the buck.

A slight word of caution that applies to the US and Japanese Charvel Pro Mods (I'm guessing also to the Mexican ones) . . . they aren't quite as simple to mod as you might hope. The bridge cavity isn't big enough to mount a slanted single coil pickup (need to route), and the heel cutout is non-standard (square and wide). You can't just grab a cheap strat pickguard and pop it on.