Things you'd never do on a guitar build...

[line6man]

Gold hardware is awful on almost anything but big archtops that are otherwise regal.  There are a few exceptions, but they're rare.  Marko's guitars with gold are very tasteful, for instance.

Anything with 3 humbuckers is annoyingly pointless.  The switching options are bad, it gets in my way, and it looks bad.  I rarely like 3 pickup guitars at all, but 3 humbuckers is "no effing way" on any of my builds.  I recently sold a 70s LP Custom because I played a total of two shows with it over the 12 years I owned it, and I hated that third pickup.  Yes, it was a custom with an added pickup.

I hate bursts with red in them.  A lot. 

Trems... I don't like them.  I don't like all the notes bending pitch when I'm not using the trem and I'm playing multiple notes.  I own one guitar with a trem that's not blocked.

Strat volume knob placement.  If I'm building a guitar, nothing goes there.  It gets in the way.


Incidentally, I LIKE the W headstock on strat-style guitars, and even prefer it due to the tilt-back.  I've built several like that intentionally.  LP headstocks look awful though.  /shrug

-Mark

+1 on the triple bucker bullshit.

Red makes a classic Fender burst awesome. I rarely like two tones or yellow-brown-black bursts.

I don't mind Strat volume placement. It's great for pinky swells. But then again, I never do them.

I'm normally agreed on gold hardware, but I might try to make gold with black accents work on my Maple/Walnut body. Nothing gaudy or over-the-top, though.

I'm going to add tort shell pickguards to my list. The material is just nasty. Even on most acoustic pickguards.
Also, I'll never do anything with red, green, purple, yellow, etc. pearloids.

 

[Jusatele]

I thought about it some more
and read a lot of the replies
so I think I have an answer that is a bit better
I love teles, it is a telecaster thing, like the old cigarette add we tele players would rather fight than quit. There is just something about a tele, it is raw, crude, and a first off for modern guitars, but there is nothing that has come along to replace it yet.
Soooooooooooo
I will have to add to my other post

Try to build anything I would rather play than a Telecaster

nuff said, lock thread

 

[Tipperman]

I thought about it some more
and read a lot of the replies
so I think I have an answer that is a bit better
I love teles, it is a telecaster thing, like the old cigarette add we tele players would rather fight than quit. There is just something about a tele, it is raw, crude, and a first off for modern guitars, but there is nothing that has come along to replace it yet.
Soooooooooooo
I will have to add to my other post

Try to build anything I would rather play than a Telecaster

nuff said, lock thread

To me the Telecaster is the single cut guitar. It's where it's at. An LP is a toy to me, a Telecaster is a mans single cut.

Also, a Jaguar/Jazzmaster without a tailed bridge looks wrong to me. Sure, it's not a practical tremolo, but I don't use the tremolos often (Even though my Strat has the 6 point I love so dearly) The tailed bridge is awesome for the 3rd bridge sound, as well as aesthetic. Plus, it gives me a good excuse to use a Mastery bridge.

 

[Kadmium]

This is going to seem retarded to almost everyone here, but I wouldn't get a guitar with a wood neck. I love wood - it's very pretty and organic and all, but I just don't think it's a great material for making guitar necks. I don't like its unpredictability, its porousness or its susceptibility to warping under heat/humidity conditions.

I previously said I wouldn't get one of those pointy "metal" looking guitars, but then I discovered how comfortable the Star shaped ones are to play in classical position and fell in love.

 

[line6man]

This is going to seem retarded to almost everyone here, but I wouldn't get a guitar with a wood neck. I love wood - it's very pretty and organic and all, but I just don't think it's a great material for making guitar necks. I don't like its unpredictability, its porousness or its susceptibility to warping under heat/humidity conditions.

I previously said I wouldn't get one of those pointy "metal" looking guitars, but then I discovered how comfortable the Star shaped ones are to play in classical position and fell in love.

A lot of people like the tone of graphite necks. 99% of luthiers still prefer wood, however.

 

[swarfrat]

I despise graphite or graphite reinforced necks. I like my neck to actually vibrate in my hands while I play. All of those I've played consistently suck. You might as well be holding your hand on a picnic table. You couldnt design a better dampening system.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

As was pointed out by another forumite, an aluminum neck is more sensitive to temperature changes than a wooden one.

 

[m4rk0]

Marko's guitars with gold are very tasteful, for instance.

:icon_biggrin:
I hate gold on anything, jewelry, furniture, and everything else I hate it! ! but I really like it on coffee table tops! no idea why..

I am not ruling anything out really..
at one point I would swear to never own a tele.. now I quite like them!
at one point I would not consider a guitar with trem other than a floyd! now I prefer Wilkies!
vintage replicas never appealed to me, but now I would love to build a 50's style strat or tele

I would probably never use a tortoise pickguard or a sparkle finish.
I probably won't ever build an SG due to "first guitar" trauma..

but you never know!

 

[MSP]

GOLD!

 

[Tonar8352]

Wow a lot of you are going to hate my next build, a Shoreline Gold Strat body with a Tele neck, sporting Kluson Tuners and a Tele Bridge.  :sad1:

On the bright side it will not be getting a Fender Label so I might find some redemption from a small contingent.  :laughing7:

 

[Death by Uberschall]

In all seriousness... Things I'd never do on a guitar build...

Let somebody else tell me how to do mine.

That's the beauty of what we do with our builds, make them the way we want them.  ccasion14:

 

[Jusatele]

In all seriousness... Things I'd never do on a guitar build...

Let somebody else tell me how to do mine.

That's the beauty of what we do with our builds, make them the way we want them.  ccasion14:

that is why GOTM always was so hard to vote on. I would see stuff I would not want but the build was so good, or a theme so well represented but there were better works of art.
TO me it was always a issue of how to vote because some of the plain Jane finishes were the trickest builds.

 

[mayfly]

Wow a lot of you are going to hate my next build, a Shoreline Gold Strat body with a Tele neck, sporting Kluson Tuners and a Tele Bridge.  :sad1:

On the bright side it will not be getting a Fender Label so I might find some redemption from a small contingent.  :laughing7:

I'd love that guitar!  Tele pickups?

(p.s. i'd change the tuners  :icon_biggrin

 

[line6man]

GOLD!

I like it! Reminds me of this.

I like my Pagan Gold Charvel.

I wouldn't mind a Shoreline Gold, either. But I hate Goldtop LPs.

 

[fdesalvo]

That Charvel is hot!

 

[Tonar8352]

I'd love that guitar!  Tele pickups?

One TV Jones, this is going to be the La Cabronita Strat with the pine body.

 

[MSP]

I like it! Reminds me of this.

Freaky!  I think you'd need the right kinda stage clothes for that beast.  Lo!

I like my Pagan Gold Charvel.

That's a great colour.  Reminds me of how Warmoth's candy yellow finish looks on their site.  On my screen, anyways.  I haven't seen it in person. 

 

[Cagey]

Freaky!  I think you'd need the right kinda stage clothes for that beast.  Lo!

Yeah. Perhaps something like this...

 

[Torment Leaves Scars]

1. I would never make a "ricer" guitar.  "Ricer" is the term car guys use when we see a car that "poses" as something it isn't; an example would be a BMW 330i with an "M3" badge on it, or a V6 Mustang with "GT" badges on it.  You get the drift.  That means, I wouldn't build a Warmoth Soloist, from body to neck, and then putting a "Jackson" sticker on the headstock.  The same would go for a Tele or a Strat.  Yeah, I'd build'em, but you wouldn't find "Fender" labels on them.

2. I would never build a Tele, Strat, or Soloist.  I like them, but if I'm building a custom guitar, I want something far less common.

3. After having owned American, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, and Chinese made guitars, I will never own anything but an American made one...unless it's an ESP or Ibanez.  In that case, I will only look own the ones made in Japan, their "home" country. 

Call me a snob, but save for the above, I won't even do as much as look at a foreign-made guitar...

 

[Cagey]

1. I would never make a "ricer" guitar.  "Ricer" is the term car guys use when we see a car that "poses" as something it isn't; an example would be a BMW 330i with an "M3" badge on it, or a V6 Mustang with "GT" badges on it.  You get the drift.  That means, I wouldn't build a Warmoth Soloist, from body to neck, and then putting a "Jackson" sticker on the headstock.  The same would go for a Tele or a Strat.  Yeah, I'd build'em, but you wouldn't find "Fender" labels on them.

Umm... I'm not sure that's true. My understanding has always been that "ricer" was a derogatory term meant to disparage the origin of manufacture, namely any Pacific Rim country such as Japan. It usually applies to bikes, but has come to include cars as well, and implies that the builders are dirt-poor morons who live on rice rather than real food, such as cheeseburgers and pizza, and so couldn't build anything worthwhile no matter how hard they tried.

Of course, that isn't true. Much of what destroyed the US car industry wasn't the Japanese, but piss-poor design and build on our part. Anybody (with perhaps the exception of the Russians) could build a better car than an American company, and did for enough years that there's now a large portion of the car-buying public who would no sooner look at paying good money for an American car than they would just light their cigars with it. Even though we're building some good vehicles now, we wouldn't have been if it weren't for the Japanese, and the road back to trustworthiness is still under heavy construction.

Gibson and Fender have the same problem. It's too easy to get a better instrument than what they make, and often for dramatically less money. We'd all like to support our fellow citizens, but we all work hard for our money, too. So, we're not going to spend it foolishly on a principle that even those we're defending don't appear to hold themselves. They've lost the trust, and it's going to take a lot of work over an extended period of time to ever get it back.