Martin D45 Anniversary at a guitar show. Silly money. Bright sound. Impresssive, but a bit clangy. Would probably break in, but wouldn't have bought it even if I had the money. I preferred my old Brazilian Rosewood D35, which is well played in, a bit battered and almost part of me after all the years I've had it.
The Most Expensive Guitar You've Ever Played
- Thread starter Wizard of Wailing
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slashin_velvet
Junior Member
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Thinking about it, rather surprisingly, the most expensive stringed ive played is a bass. A Warwick Neck Thru 6 string thumb bass. They retail here for about 6 grand, but you dont see them in stores very often.
jackthehack
Epic Member
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I guess the 1954 Strat I once owned, although back in the day it wasn't worth anything like it would be now...
What is really, thoroughly odd about much of the vintage cachet is just how young those guitars were when they were getting famous. Eric Clapton famously played a 1962 SG-Les Paul and a 1964 ES335 in Cream, when they were 6 and 4 years old, respectively. He played a 6-year-old Les Paul with John Mayall... Duane Allman, Jimmy Page, Mike Bloomfield, Peter Green were all playing 1959 Les Pauls at a time when they were only 10 - 15 years old. So all this retro-revisionary writing about the decades it takes for the resins in the wood to crystallize - gobble, gobble, gobble.
Oooh! Let's break out the black handkerchiefs for a honest blindfold test - NOT. A few years back one of Duane Allman's old Les Pauls was circulating about for a bit. Very Famous-Type Guitar Dudes (VFTGD's) got to play it for a few songs apiece at the Grand Ol Opry, I think it made it to the Beacon theater for the ABB's spring stand of 2013? And any number of the VFGTPs so honored were waxing poetic over it, plotzing their Pampers, flooding their loom-Fruiters etc. - "And there it was - the legendary Fillmore tone".... except, thar it warn't, this was the one that Duane snuck the good pickups out of and dumped on some stooge. Fortunately, now that we have discovered that ALL old guitars sound fantastic, it's all good! Some of it's just more gooderer than the other some of it. :icon_thumright:
One might, actually, be able to make a cogent argument that guitars (Gibsons in particular) ONLY sound good for the first twenty years or so, then... ye olde resins over-crystallize and the guitars turn to suck, as evidenced by the fact that NOBODY USES THEM ANYMORE. Hip coolguy guitarists ALWAYS have some new siggy thing working. Of course, one might also wish that one's head remained attached to one's neck, so that argument may fall somewhat short of a win-win scenario.... Personally, while in the realm of WAG's, I feel the resin thing may be a teensy bit overestimated - as we all know, 70% of a guitar's tone comes from the neck, 80% from the amp, 72.625% from the pickups, and the rest is in the fingers. To fathom a guess, even if you put a guitar in a flight case the pickups are susceptable to getting castrated by external magnetic forces, and where do guitars (usually) hang out when they're not being played? RIGHT NEXT TO BIG-ASS SPEAKER MAGNETS. Fo' years, baby.
Oooh! Let's break out the black handkerchiefs for a honest blindfold test - NOT. A few years back one of Duane Allman's old Les Pauls was circulating about for a bit. Very Famous-Type Guitar Dudes (VFTGD's) got to play it for a few songs apiece at the Grand Ol Opry, I think it made it to the Beacon theater for the ABB's spring stand of 2013? And any number of the VFGTPs so honored were waxing poetic over it, plotzing their Pampers, flooding their loom-Fruiters etc. - "And there it was - the legendary Fillmore tone".... except, thar it warn't, this was the one that Duane snuck the good pickups out of and dumped on some stooge. Fortunately, now that we have discovered that ALL old guitars sound fantastic, it's all good! Some of it's just more gooderer than the other some of it. :icon_thumright:
One might, actually, be able to make a cogent argument that guitars (Gibsons in particular) ONLY sound good for the first twenty years or so, then... ye olde resins over-crystallize and the guitars turn to suck, as evidenced by the fact that NOBODY USES THEM ANYMORE. Hip coolguy guitarists ALWAYS have some new siggy thing working. Of course, one might also wish that one's head remained attached to one's neck, so that argument may fall somewhat short of a win-win scenario.... Personally, while in the realm of WAG's, I feel the resin thing may be a teensy bit overestimated - as we all know, 70% of a guitar's tone comes from the neck, 80% from the amp, 72.625% from the pickups, and the rest is in the fingers. To fathom a guess, even if you put a guitar in a flight case the pickups are susceptable to getting castrated by external magnetic forces, and where do guitars (usually) hang out when they're not being played? RIGHT NEXT TO BIG-ASS SPEAKER MAGNETS. Fo' years, baby.
QuasarQuail
Junior Member
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- 36
Played a $7k 60s Gibson SG Special at Emerald City Guitars in Seattle. Just walked right up and yanked it off the wall like I owned it. Truthfully, I didn't like it as much as my newish SG Classic, but as a disciple of Live at Leeds, it was f'n awesome.
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