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

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.

does anyone have thoughts about the starcaster (specifically the squier classic vibe starcaster)? i love semihollowbodies and offset guitars but can't decide if i like how the starcaster looks or not

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

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 6 March 2024 21:08 (six days ago) link

Definitely a good example of ugly being in the details. Like for a while I thought I wanted an Eastman T-55v, but I just can't get past the look of it.

https://rvb-img.reverb.com/image/upload/s--pWVpdYB_--/a_0/f_auto,t_supersize/v1710195637/axwf6ligkcivtbasyan9.jpg

Why is an ES-335 beautiful and that thing ugly? It's subtle but very palpable.

And it's not the worst looking guitar ever, but there's just something about the body and headstock shape and proportions and the flame top that are just *off*

It looks like something a swing band slinger from Big Bad Voodoo Daddy? in the early 90s would have had custom made.

https://images.ctfassets.net/m8onsx4mm13s/3fhoZP0aDoNdNPYVrSvhqy/c84d1a1eae21c63e32e0fd5a2066a487/__static.gibson.com_product-images_USA_USAVLJ627_Vintage_Burst_ES3500VBNH1_front.jpg

For comparison - body proportions are better, obviously the finish is nicer and simpler, and the headstock just looks much more classic and elegant, doesn't have that cartoonish "squeezed" shape. I also don't like the shape of the inlays on the eastman, whereas this just has dot inlays that basically stay out of the way

i like the look of the eastman other than the gaudy fret inlays. pretty classic
the grohl guitar looks cheap, the diamond cutouts are very 90s for sure and that metallic blue looks chintzy

i think a lot of times we've internalized the classic designs so completely that most small deviations look kind of bad, esp. where many of those involve messing with proportions that were really well done already.

finish quality is another issue as you go downmarket, like i bet pelham blue can look really great when executed well but flat and ugly when not.

I mean, the 335 was one of those classic designs that was meant to be self-consciously classic from the start, right? Electric, but traditional enough to slip into jazz or whatever, not like all those modernist / jet-age / mass-manufacturing gestures on Fenders. They strike me as particularly vulnerable to that thing where fancy tweaks end up looking profoundly out of place. The top on that Eastman is like ... a 335 dressing up as a PRS for Halloween

(Answering the thread question: Marr Jaguar, Tele Custom, Standard Tele, Squire Paranormal Cyclone, Peavey T-15, Epiphone Les Paul. Would love to reduce that to just the Jaguar, the Tele Custom, and a Gretsch.)

Just learned that the Les Paul predates the 335. Would have thought the reverse!

hell yeah, gonna try and sell some stuff and get one of these raphael saadiq teles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XygXGO9bzBY

The solid-body is a lot easier to do first! I think 335 / "Electric Spanish" was second-order problem-solving: You have traditional players with big hollow jazz boxes; adding pickups creates feedback issues; but they're not inclined to switch to weird newfangled solid-bodies. So you do a thin mostly-hollow guitar with a feedback-preventing center block, which is practically just hiding solid-body elements inside the more traditional instrument they want. Some portion of that market must have been, like, "people who admitted the Les Paul was convenient and sounded great but felt stupid playing one."

(I shouldn't say Electric Spanish there, that series had big archtops before the LP —- it's just the thinline / center-block solution that comes in soon after)

oh man that Raphael Saadiq Telecaster is amazing, I like how Fender let him do a non-trad pickguard

gorgeous

though it's funny with vintage spec stuff, my friend who's a pro guitar tech and runs a guitar repair shop here went off on a rant about the "classic" three saddle tele bridge he hates it for intonating properly and thinks it should be retired for good

Barrel bridges and the Gibson wrap around bridges like you might see on a Junior are more limited in fine intonation, but they do have a bit of their own sound. Strum a bunch of electrics unplugged and guitars with those bridges usually are among the louder ones.

Now Firebird banjo tuners and those jazzmaster threaded saddles are objects of the devil.

xpost, interesting I'll listen for that next time he's at a store. obv my friend has a perspective of a touring tech/repair guyso he's constantly fixing/doing setups etc and I'm sure it's more of a pain in the ass

i just got my first electric guitar-- a casino bought from a friend in superb condition. it really is delightful, getting it and playing it has been my favorite event of the year.

i am still terrible and learn-y basic at guitar, but it is friendly, very light. i'm just playing it with a mustang micro and wheeeeeee! so similar to that 335 in appearance, but full hollow. i guess they are howling feedback machines, but i'm a long way from that worry i think.

mine has a trapeze-- is that because of the hollow body maybe?

congrats! Casinos are so cool

nice hunt3r!

ty!

i am pretty guitar ignorant but saw pics of some wildkats and i was like, "huh, that is the hottest possible guitar thing i've seen," and friend said "similar in look to gretsch g5655t, if you like that." maybe if i ever learn to play i can "what i want" it.

mine has a trapeze-- is that because of the hollow body maybe?