Guitars... what you've got / what you want

I recall seeing an extremely satisfying video a while back of Gibson destroying hundreds of its stupid robot guitars

https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/gibson_destroys_hundreds_of_firebird_x_guitars_issues_statement_on_why_it_had_to_be_done.html

Generally agree that a $300ish guitar right now is light-years better than anything available to me as a kid. Yr Squiers and Mexifenders are pretty consistently dependable. Most bedroom players don't need anything else. Heck, even most gigging musicians would be able to get through a show without embarrassment on a reasonably well-set-up Epi or whatever.

Not sure about how to address Philip's overall economic point - that is, why do they keep making these perfectly adequate guitars if there isn't a continually expanding market. Maybe there is? Or maybe there are a just a whole lot of neon-colored Ibanezes sitting in suburban attics. When the insectoid aliens finally invade and take over, perhaps they will assume we worshipped a six-stringed god called Floyd Rose.

Surprisingly there are only 35 Squier listings on my Craigslist - not surprisingly they're all priced way too high when you can go get one from Guitar Center with a 10% off coupon pretty easily. So they'll sit in closets and attics forever until they end up at Goodwill or a garage sale and go to someone like the hoarder upthread who had a hundred beginners guitars in his garage.

13 years ago the Bass VI was unobtainable and I decided to try to make one by hacking a shortscale Jazz Bass neck and looking for a body. Then I decided it should be a "what if" Fender had made a Mustang VI. Then I abandoned the project (several times). After collecting bits in occasional bursts I've now finished hacking the neck and attached it to a Squier Mustang Bass body so it kinda exists now! Lots more work with pickups, pickguard etc and lacquering the neck. But darned if it doesn't play beautifully even in this rough state.
https://i.imgur.com/GT7Kh9w.jpg

that's really cool

Not quite yet! but thank you and I'm working on it. Insanely light due to the poplar body.

but that is really cool! i guess it lacks the killswitch that the vi has, but stick an eq pedal at the start of your chain and you're golden

loving all your cool projects mkkkk

well thanks you guys! and NickB it will have a killswitch of sorts, by analogy of the VI/Jaguar relationship I plan to give it the same threeway phase-off-otherphase pickup switches a regular Mustang has. Gotta get a wider control plate and figure out the pickguard properly tho.
https://i.imgur.com/nZesscR.jpg

oh fuck that's gonna rule! :)))

oh sorry actually i meant strangle switch not killswitch, so that you can knock out the bass frequencies

complete jelly brains here this evening

ooh maybe I should do on-off-strangle for the pickup switches!

altho strangle is a Jag thing, plus I actually bought a cheap used VI in the interim …

strangle on a bass vi is a very interesting idea

lol @ the price but damn what a pretty guitar

https://www.jtkmstudio.com/product-page/1963-64-fender-jaguar-surf-green

strangle on a bass vi is a very interesting idea

i didn’t realize that! i thought they just had the individual on/offs.

it's definitely their secret weapon and the thing that makes them such a killer guitar imo

this dude fascinates me, he's been slowly selling off this huge collection of guitars which might be the least appealing guitar collection ever assembled

https://minneapolis.craigslist.org/search/sss?userpostingid=7553585742

wow yeah gross lol

It's like the wall at a weird little music shop that mostly gets by on high school band and orchestra rentals and can't get distribution from Fender or Gibson.

haha totally know the type of store you're talking about

otm

JAY TURSER VS GREG BENNETT FITE

totally forgot about samicks lol

wow ugh, cheap or expensive it’s laser guided bad taste.
Samick: if you’re going to name a signature series after someone, “Greg Bennett” is not a good choice.

The Fender Bass VI is this year's best-selling bass guitar thanks to the Beatles

Online gear retailer Reverb has published its annual list of best-selling bass guitars, with 2022 being dubbed as the year Fender captured the nation's tone. Of course, the old Jazz-versus-Precision debate is timeless. They're both amazing basses, so what could possibly be more popular?

In a surprising turn of events, the Fender Bass VI has ended up the most sought-after bass of the year, taking the top spot over its Jazz and P-Bass rivals.

The sales upset is being attributed to the success of Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back documentary series, which spurred interest in the band’s Fender Bass VI – during the documented Let It Be sessions, the model was picked up by either John Lennon or George Harrison whenever Paul McCartney was needed for piano duties.

...

While these six-string basses had sold moderately well before, Squier's Classic Vibe Bass VI – the only Bass VI currently in production – benefitted from all the extra attention and displaced the Fender Player Precision Bass, which is down to second place in Reverb's list this year.

Justin Norvell, Fender's Product EVP, hinted at renewed interest in the hybrid instrument in an interview with Guitar World at the beginning of 2022.

“The phone started ringing off the hook for the Bass VI, because it was popping in and out of certain scenes,” he said.

“People were like, ‘You know, I haven’t thought about this in years, but do you have any of those in?’ And luckily we did, through Squier. People who record are always looking for new tools, and the Bass VI can be like this whole new universe of sound.”

https://i.imgur.com/Umfk1xy.jpg

Fortunately I bought the sunburst VI above in 2013 when nobody had much interest in them. They come and go in waves. That one is the Fender Japan reissue from 2012, but I got it used. Very tempted to sell it before the market goes off the boil, but …

There’s a fixed up/new three prong cord/etc. Selmer Treble n Bass on Reverb, wish I could live out my Syd Barrett fantasies.

I am generally pro-Ric, but... something about that purple bass looks... toylike? Clunky? Massive hardware and chonky knobs.

Trying to imagine playing it for real, and failing. Me, I want to interact with strings, because that is how music happens. That bass gives you everything but.

I am generally pro-Ric, but... something about that purple bass looks... toylike? Clunky? Massive hardware and chonky knobs.

Trying to imagine playing it for real, and failing. Me, I want to interact with strings, because that is how music happens. That bass gives you everything but.

De gustibus, calstars; rock the fuck on.

De gusta what?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_gustibus_non_est_disputandum?wprov=sfla1

Want a Kustom K-200 just for the sweet fretboard inlay choice

https://www.retrofret.com/images/9059_Guitar/xLarge/9059_01.jpg

get it refinished in that Ric's candy apple purple maybe

lol, respect to the brave soul who decided traditional inlay patterns just weren't cutting it

Fretboard inlays are such a waste of effort imo.

I play guitar tolerably often (I think) and my eyes are pretty much never on the fretboard of a guitar I am engaged in playing. Usually I am looking forward, and in any case I would have to awkwardly angle the guitar in order to look at fretboard markings.

From time to time I might look at the side of the neck. There are usually some dots there. But I would have to be in pretty bad shape to need them. Lost or drunk or completely disintegrating, musically speaking.

If I were to become so lost as to not know whether I was playing at the fifth or seventh fret, my ears would tell me way sooner than my eyeballs could.

I look at them all the time

Yeah, I’m an inveterate neck-looker.

The first time I played a show (as a 45 year old) I had no idea how much I looked at the side dots until I couldn't see them on stage. Front ones not so much apparently.

John Entwistle's basses starting in 1989 or so were outfitted with LED side dots. I thought that was pretty cool.

Are people tilting their instruments toward their face? Or tilting their faces into their laps?

I play a bunch of different instruments, and I perform regularly. I literally cannot understand simultaneously singing into a microphone, looking at an audience, and seeing the fretboard of an instrument I am holding. Sitting, maybe, standing, no.

In general I play sitting in front of a small amp, and my cats aren’t big on eye contact, so the fretboard markers are easily seen

https://i.imgur.com/2ywglEV.png

I play a bunch of different instruments and play regularly and just look at the fretboard a lot I think a lot people do. Sometime I move my head or my eyes and look and other things.

https://i.imgur.com/s4FBKOX.png

I play like this generally…on the back of the neck I put little nibs on the 3, 5, 7 etc so I can tell where I’m fretting

I’m a newbie guitarist and I sort of wandered into this thread and my overarching reaction to this most recent conversation is a strong despairing feeling that I’ll never be a real guitarist combined with an overwhelming desire to kick Ye Mad Puffin in the nuts so hard that my own explode

Even if you don't look at them, inlays are a decorative touch. A plain fretboard on an electric guitar would look lame 99% of the time and no one plays guitar to look lame. Except for people who buy headless guitars, I guess.