Electric Guitarists. Choice History. Worked? Foolishly Traded away? Still Own to this Day?

[Matt Sarad]

'52 Les Paul
'56 ES 295
'57 LP TV Special
'58 LP Jr
'58 3/4 LP Jr.
'62 ES 335
'65 ES 345
'67 ES 335
'70 Tele
All long gone.

 

[tigertail]

The ones that got away:
- Mid 80s ES-175 birdseye maple - I know that wasn't a great era for Gibson, but that guitar was so beautiful.
- Mid 60s Cherry ES-330
- 1969 Blonde Telecaster
- 1962 Jazzmaster refinished in Surf Green
- 1962 Precision Bass - finish was stripped off, just stunningly resonant and gorgeous
- 1988 ESP Maverick - I outgrew metal, but that guitar was a player
- Blackface Bassman - probably 63 or 64
- 1966 Mustang daphne blue with the pearloid pickguard. Stupidly sold it in the mid-90s and always regretted it.
- 1969 Gretsch Country Gentleman with the mutes and the giant padded back cover
- Mid-60s Gretsch Tennessean - still miss the bright chime of those hilo-trons
- Late 90s Custom Shop ES-345 in natural - such a player

I used to have a collection of about 40 to 50 vintage fuzz pedals that I sometimes regret selling. I'm not a huge effects user anymore, but I have a soft spot for fuzz.
Klon Centaur - non-horsey. Yeah, it sounded great. Thankfully, you can pick up a Klon Klone that does the same job for pennies on the dollar

 

[keithb7]

I’ve owned a Prince’s ransom of vintage tube amps. Guitars? Nothing vintage really. I did buy a new hardtail American Strat about 23 years ago. I still have it. I’ve played it a ton. It will be with me for life. Its aging and natural relic wear is coming along nicely. By 2050 is should be about right. I intend to take it there. I hope to will it to my offspring. To someone in my family that wants to still play it.

 

[sloppychops]

Too much stuff to list, but...

Biggest regrets selling:
1967 Gibson Hummingbird, bought for $525, sold for $750 around 1993
1949 (?) ES-125, bought for $250, sold for $625 around 2002

Arghhhh!

What I keep:
A few Telecasters, Strats & Jaguars, an Epiphone Casino Coupe, a Grote, a couple new Harmonys and one old one.

On the fence about:
Heritage H535

Amps
2 Fenders, 1 Supro, and a small Acoustic Bass amp

 

[burntfrijoles]

Over the many years of playing guitars I've owned around 40 or so instruments. Some were impulse buys when I deranged with guitar lust.
I am totally happy with the 7 that remain with me. I don't regret selling any of my former instruments although the following stand out as guitars that were outstanding and that were difficult decisions to let go.
93 Les Paul Standard- a great guitar and one that was equal to or better than the LP I currently own.
AVRI 62 Custom Tele- almost perfect except for the "dark circuit" wiring which could have been easily changed.
AV (Pure Vintage) White Blonde 64 Tele- the finest non-Custom Shop production run guitar I've ever owned.
52 "Thin Skin" Tele from Wildwood- my one and only blackguard purchase.
Gibson J-185 - if I had a regret it would be this one. A beautiful looking and sounding guitar.
Best guitar under $1K - Jimmie Vaughan Strat had the most comfortable neck profile. I gifted it to my nephew.
Honorable Mention- Hamer USA FM (Quilted Maple)

There were many good to "meh" guitars over the year and a few dogs. The PRS Custom 24 "10 Top" was likely the worst purchasing decision ever. The Rik 620-12 had that beautiful jangle but the super thin neck width made it too difficult to play.
Lastly, there were many guitars in the mid to late 90s that were very good and I could have saved a boat load of cash had I appreciated how good they were and been satisfied instead of chasing "the one".

 

[Skydog1010]

The last three.

One regret:
Selling this.

I'm getting older and my primary audience passed away, so no big deal. But I miss playing and hearing my 56 Strat, she was awesome. Was always worried that someone would steal her, and, I put the money to good use. So it all worked out, I guess. Neck on the MIA Ultra Arctic Pearl Strat is a rosewood replica of the 56 neck with a few modern tweaks. I'm ok with the way things panned out kinda sorta, I will always miss my biggest fan, naturally, the guitars are very much secondary to my life circumstances.

 

[Puguglybonehead]

I had a couple of effect pedals that I regret parting with. In 1974, my parents got me a Kent fuzz-wah for christmas/birthday. I found out many years later that these were made by Shin-Ei. They were the same revered unit used by JMC in their heyday. I also had a Monacor Fuzzder (germanium FZ-1A fuzz clone, made by the predecessor to Shin-Ei) that I'd picked up in a pawnshop (new-in-box) for $15 in 1975. Crazy sounding little thing. Too much fun. These now sell for $400+ in online listings. Around 1979 or so, I was now a punk rocker and had become a bit of a Television fan. One thing I admired about that band was how they didn't rely on FX pedals for their sound. So, one day, I marched all my pedals, the Kent fuzz-wah, the Fuzzder, a Univox Micro-phase, (which kinda sucked) and a Big Muff Pi (which I didn't miss at all) down to the pawnshop. I forget what I was intent on trading them in for at the time. Along the way, I run into a friend of mine, who was working with John Otway at the time. Coincidentally, they were headed to the same pawnshop to try to buy as many fuzz pedals as they could. Otway was going to try to see how many he could play through at one time and still remain coherent. They bought my 3 fuzzes on the spot, right out on the street. The pawnshop wasn't really interested in my micro-phase. I don't remember what I did with it.

I don't regret most of the guitars I got rid of. The guitars I started out with in the early 70s were mostly crap. Department store fare had degraded from what it was in the 1960s, it would seem. I will even include a vintage mid-60s Ricki 12-string in this lose-it category. I bought the Ricki in the early 80s while I was in a couple of bands doing paisley sorta retro stuff. Sure, it had the toaster pickups and the Ricki-12 sound, but it was this crazy short-scale that they sometimes made. 21-inches. It was like trying to play a frikkin' mandolin when you're used to a 25.5" scale. Those vintage Kluson tuners are pure crap as well. (speaking sacrilege here, I know) I could not keep it in tune for the life of me. After one month it was bye-bye. It wasn't until the 90s that I started truly regretting the ones that got away.

First was an early 60s Kawai-built Telestar single pickup, double-cut hollowbody that I was using in a retro-punk/noise band in the mid 90s. (no pictures of it unfortunately) The thing had this monster pickup that was bordering on going microphonic, but the material we were doing called for a monster sound. You could get Karl Percoda style feedback and tone from this thing at the drop of a hat and the cheap, cheesy whammy bar tailpiece only helped. The tuners were crap and I was having to retune it so frequently that I started even doing so mid-song sometimes! I gave it away to a kid in Dauphin MB who just loved it.

Next regret was the blue, firebird-ish thing pictured above. (picture circa 1995 or so) It was the first guitar that I'd built, back in 1985. The Twelfth Fret guitar shop used to teach a solidbody guitar construction course. This was my result. Based on a firebird but with the body scaled down 15% and the rest built to 25.5" scale. Big-leaf flame maple body, (from wood I'd begged a local luthier to sell me) rockmaple neck that I carved to nearly Mustang thickness, (thin-ness?) Fender-Japan vintage-style strat pickups neck & bridge and a Fender USA strat pickup in the middle. They were reverse polarity to each other so I could get hum-cancelling in the out-of-phase positions. Gotoh trem and tuners. I kept it as my main guitar until the late 90s. I foolishly sold it to a friend with a bike/guitar/junk shop who soon let it become buried in junk (along with my old 70s Teledyne Titan titanium bike frame) as he let the shop decay into a classic case of hoarding.

Next regret was another build. That's Red. (above) In the early 2000s, after moving across the country a couple of times, I found myself back in T-dot with no guitar, except for a ridiculous 4-string cigar-box thing that I'd built while I was in Ottawa. (no pics of the CBG) I built the guitar above entirely from wood acquired from Rona. (hardware and lumber chain) It was crude, all maple, neck-through-body with an oak fretboard. (oak?) No radius on the fretboard. A single Artec P-90. (Hey, I was really on a budget) With an overcompensating treble-bleed on the volume pot, I was able to get a surprising range of tones from this thing. Again, I carved the neck pretty shallow, but it worked really well. I used this for gigs when my old punk band from the late 70s got back together to do a bunch of shows in the mid-2000s. Once I'd eventually built another guitar, I decided to just put this out on the street, so whoever wanted it could take it. It disappeared before I could have any second thoughts.

My next regret is the amp that I played Red through. I was playing through my old Traynor Mk 3 at first. (that's not the one I miss) I'd had the Traynor for about 10 years, but it was just too powerful to be useful. It also weighed a ton. I found a vintage Supro Supreme 1600, 1x10" combo on ebay and had a bit of work done on it by a local amp tech. The amp had arrived with the speaker having been trashed in shipping. I never did get to hear what the original alnico speaker sounded like. I replaced it with an Eminence Ragin Cajun. Great tone but that speaker was perhaps a little bit too efficient. The Supro sounded amazing. Totally lived up to its rep. Did all the early Zep tones to a tee. Perfect for my old punk band. Thing is, it was so damn loud when you got it to its sweet spot, that it was tinnitus-inducing.

My current guitar is the one in my avatar. Another build that I'm mostly happy with....hmmm...except for those pickups. Gonna swap those out. Need to learn to start keeping a few things though. Current amp is a Supro clone with a downsized power transformer (and voltage levels) so the tone is all there but the volume is more practical. I did keep a spare firebird body blank that I'd built when I built the blue firebird. Finished it in blue again, but I couldn't quite get the same hue. In the process of building it up now.

 

[Silverface]

My only "stupid deal" - and I'm a player/collector with roughly 30 vintage guitars and 30 vintage basses, steel guitars, dobros ukes etc - was a white 1967 EDS-1275 acquired in a trade for a partscaster Tele in around 1979. It was dead mint and we gave it the nickname "the Starship Enterprise".

I used it live in a slightly countrified Allman Brothers-ish band (a ton of blues and blues-rock, plus later period Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers tunes). I also used it on my first studio sessions.

But - it weighed a ton, and sounded like crap!I tried Dimarzios, a couple custoim wound Seymour Duncan pickups, but it was just a dead hunk of wood wino little resonance. I ended up trading it for a new Fostex 260 4-track "portastudio", some vanilla effects and a couple SM58's.

So I got more out of it than I had into it; they weren't selling for huge prices; and I really didn't like it

Of course NOW the 1275's in exc condition are in the mid $20k range - but 1) It cost me about $125 in partscaster value, 2) I got a LOT more use out of the 4-track (which I sold for $100 - plus a SF Champ that needed work, which was a slam-dunk for me)...and I REALLY disliked that Gibson.

But still...

 

[Blazer]

In college, THESE were my two main axes.

I still own both.

As for the one which got away, that was a 1973 Fender Strat in Olympic white.

Without a single doubt, the best sounding strat I ever owned.

I still kick myself for letting that one go.

 

[Blackmore Fan]

As for the one which got away, that was a 1973 Fender Strat in Olympic white.

Without a single doubt, the best sounding strat I ever owned.

I still kick myself for letting that one go.

That was a great looking Strat!

 

[richiek65]

I had a gorgeous Jeff Tweedy SG that I sold for a handsome profit a couple of years ago. Today i checked what they are currently going for, roughly double what I sold mine for so I'm kicking myself right now

 

[Blazer]

That was a great looking Strat!

Not mine in that picture, mine had a filled in block for a Kahler whammy.

 

[Spazzmaster]

In 1975 I bought a 1966 Lake Placid Blue Jaguar with matching headstock for $150, the transition model with neck binding and dots. I hated the pickup switches and the bridge, and sold it a couple years later for $300, thanks to Elvis C. and Tom Verlaine making offsets hip. I was glad to be rid of it at the time, but I wish I had it now.

 

[brenn]

I have probably sold and traded a hundred guitars, maybe more, and dozens of amps. There are loads of them I wish I had back, including my first American electric guitar, a Fender Coronado II, and my first good electric guitar, A Gibson SG Standard. Some that come to mind immediately, that I wish I had back - Metropolitan Tanglewood (I had 2, but I'd rather have the black one back than the green one), 1962 Martin F-55, Mosrite Johnny Ramone, 70-something Gibson Les Paul Pro-Deluxe, aluminum tie-dye Fender Telecaster Standard I built from parts, Gibson Chet Atkins Tennessean (orange), Rickenbacker 330-12 (also the matching 330-6). I used to put my Fender Clapton Blackie on that list, but I got a new one that's even better, so I'm OK with that now.

Amps - Marshall 50 watt master volume JCM 800 2x12 combo, early 70's Fender Twin Reverb, black face Fender Bassman head. Mostly my amps were solid-state and modelling types and I was never happy with them, or with the tube amps either. My favorite amp I have owned, as far as tone, is my Blackstar HT Club 40 I have now.

 

[Monoprice99]

All of mine are keepers. None that got away, no regrets.

 

[Downshift]

I've still got my first three guitars. They are a "Stellar" Les Paul Custom copy, 1984 Squier Tele, and a 1982 '52 Reissue. Probably because I was young, I was having fun playing in bands with my actual friends, and there was no internet to give me GAS...they're the only three I ever fell in love with. Thankfully I've kept them all.

Dozens of others have come and gone with little thought either way. Many of them great guitars, but I just never had any connection with them, and when the next thing came along, they went out the door.

Amps are a similar story, but different timeline. I never fell in love with an amp until I bought a '68RI silverface Princeton. That was maybe ten years ago. Haven't looked at another amp since.

 

[aux8]

I've not bought enough guitar gear to feel I really have to sell anything. Plus, the stuff I've got wouldn't raise much even if I needed it.

I still have the Eko acoustic I bought second hand when I was 17 and the Gordon Smith electric and Fender SS amp I bought new when I was 18... 1987/88.

I 'upgraded' both of them in recent years but would hate to let them go.

The guitars are both currently repurposed. The Eko gets strung in Nashville tuning. The GS is in open G with the low E removed for Keefing. The amp, I'm playing around with running as the wet half of a wet/dry.