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

It's a little loose in the pocket, which I'm choosing to view as "authentic 70s Fender".

Shims.

Shims.

Lol. Two shims, I guess.

Bout to pick up this girl on my last day in Tokyo tomorrow
https://i.postimg.cc/GmhL5j6N/IMG-4426.jpg

125000 yen. Pretty girl, plays wonderfully, very excited

ooh! nice!

The Shims, one of my favorite bands. Chutes Too Marrow, right?

Haven't bought a guitar pedal for so long but I'm real tempted by this -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2Y61ZVGqzE

seeing the temu thread just reminded me - lots of decent enough chinese clone pedals out there now, and most are boringly-enough pretty standard fare, but here are a couple of really fun ones i've picked up recently off aliexpress for supercheap, both at the weirder/more interesting end of things while still being pretty useable:

Movall Falling Star modulated delay
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006162312833.html
Superb memory man clone with those lovely lightly-distorted modulated repeats, think of the sounds that the edge was getting in early U2 stuff e.g. 'A Day Without Me'. Really it sounds awesome, no tap tempo or any pattern options but maybe just maybe my favourite delay out of the ones i have atm

Ginean Ringmod Modulator
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005774060602.html
A clone of the legendary DOD Gonkulator from the 90s that Digitech themselves reissued recently for ~$100 more. Really musical for a ring mod, you can easily tune it to the key you're playing in and get some great metallic gong-like sounds. It also has a nice distortion circuit based on the DOD Grunge which you can blend with the ring mod or just use by itself

don't really get how Ali works but you might need to click about a bit to get the best price. i paid about £30 for each? both well worth it imo

https://i.ibb.co/hBF1Mpy/20240122-202810.jpg

not the ugliest things either which is very much a bonus

I needed a bridge and pickup for the project above, saw some apparently decent stuff from China on eBay, figured I'd give them a punt.
https://i.imgur.com/evRD4SL.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/NdpNnKH.jpg
They look absurdly high quality for a total of $37 US delivered. I'll be interested to know how they sound.

yeah looks very solid

I did a fun/cheap little thing, changed the pickguard on my Jazz bass from white to tortoiseshell to class it up a bit. cheapie from Amazon, looks good, but did have to take a metal file and grind it down in a couple spots to fit.

https://i.postimg.cc/pX2xDC48/PXL-20240112-045706209.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/0NLKQFt7/PXL-20240112-210459431.jpg

essential upgrade, first thing I did on my sunburst jazzmaster

xp that okko pedal is really interesting, i totally hear what they were going for and i'm not sure what other pedals are doing something similar.

xpost yeah the white always looks kinda cheap w/sunburst, i don't know why they default to that sometimes, even black would be way better

Tortoise is my fave

My younger daughter turned 18 this week and spurned my offers of vintage Japanese Fenders. Here she is stringing the Squier Contemporary Jaguar HH we ordered for her. It's a pretty wild setup and beautifully made in most respects.
https://i.imgur.com/1GyRYPc.jpg

(she's taking Contemporary Band and Songwriting this year, figures the blue sparkle will attract a good drummer to her band)

maybe it's just this guys playing but this drive pedal sounds amazing to me too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riOKrjz8RnM

Sounds like a calmed-down tricot

haha yes it does

matt it makes me happy that your kid inherited some of your guitar enthusiasm

She plays better than me in some respects, can sing like an angel and is hugely creative. I just see myself as a launch platform for my two gals actually.

Progress: nickel/brass bridge, vintage correct pickup, $37 delivered for both. Fit-up, alignment, redrilling etc. Then dug out some shitty used strings for the sake of it.
https://i.imgur.com/Ct4Orci.jpg
To my shock it lined up, tuned up, intonated, action set in a couple of minutes, it plays like it came this way from the factory. Insane.

Looks like a beauty, good good work there

took a flier on a second-hand shijie stratocaster in daphne blue that guitar forum dorks claim is as good as a suhr for a third of the price

it'll be here early next week, wish me luck lads

noiice!

the shijie arrived today and it is my grim duty to report that this thing plays like butter

nice!

my American Professional II might be my last guitar, still loving it

the "Gilmour mod" where you can use the neck and bridge pickup together was a nice little throw-in curiosity when I bought it but have been doing recording lately and it's probably my most used pickup setting

i’ve always wanted to try that, maybe i should break out the soldering iron and give it a shot

that shijie in full:

https://i.ibb.co/xqb1SSB/IMG-5376.jpg

that looks great

just as a visual thing they definitely figured out the biggest dealbreaker for me on alternate makers' versions of fender model - they did enough to make sure the headstock was different enough not to be sued by fender but still made it look classic and nice and not some goofy design

yeah i’m v sensitive to headstock cognitive dissonance, they did a good job of toeing fender’s LAWYER ALERT line

the neck is maybe the nicest i’ve ever played - perfect fretwork, rolled edges, lovely satin finish and the whole thing vibrates beautifully when you play

sometimes i get enraged just thinking about the Paul Reed Smith headstock

lol i did briefly consider a silver sky se when i was considering a new strat but the headstock / mayer combo was too much

There is a fairly cheap gretsch on sale online ($549 -> $279) but I saw a scratch & dent (with a fairly ugly side gash) at a guitar center marked as higher than the online new price -- has anyone had luck price matching and negotiating down something like this?

Why not get the cheaper unblemished one?
Or, alternatively, go to the Guitar Center and put that question to the sales staff to see what they do.

To be honest, I wasn't that knocked out by it, and pledged not to buy it at all. But then when I got home, I got to thinking... well, if it was $150 instead of $279... I'm not sure how to play that game at a Guitar Center. Some have hinted to try at the end of the month when people have to hit sales targets.

But probably the smarter thing to do is to forget the whole thing, or maybe root in their dumpster next month...

A cheap guitar you don't really want, is a guitar you don't really want.

I'm going the opposite way, trading all this quirky "good deal" stuff I bought for a few high priced good things

cosign, you will end up with something that you don't really want to play which is also hard to sell later

I feel like I'm the only person who dislikes satin necks.

hate em

Usually break out a random orbit buffer and some light compound, glosses them right up.

re: ambiguously desired gretsch, I mean, at $150 it becomes a pretty nice bigsby tremolo with a guitar thrown in as a bonus...

Has anyone gotten guitars just for the parts?

https://i.postimg.cc/02MfqDrT/IMG-0212.jpg

Ordered in Jan sales and just arrived. I’ve never had a guitar with a baked maple neck before but it’s pretty nice.

you're going to absolutely shred w/that

tempted by this: https://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/msg/d/chicago-vox-shadow1960s-vintage/7716510791.html

looks like it's actually a store so maybe i'll go check it out. i do not need or have the money for another guitar but i love the vibe of this one.

for a fairly conventional looking guitar this thing just looks like absolute shit to me

https://www.guitarcenter.com/Epiphone/Dave-Grohl-DG-335-Semi-Hollow-Electric-Guitar-Pelham-Blue-1500000409445.gc

Pretty bland yea

Compare to this, the carcass of a 1968 Yamaha SA-50, the last dumb purchase I made in 2023, arrived today
https://i.imgur.com/4Lbdl2Q.jpeg

Yeah, same, I think the Trini Lopez looks alright though. I think Les Pauls without pickguards look weird also.

Its cool that at least for the premium price you get actual Gibson pickups and decent electronics already there.