ShortScale.org

So when I first picked up the guitar I knew very little about electrics. My Dad neither - he's only ever been an acoustic player. So I got a guitar that appealed aesthetically at the time...hello Les Paul copy.

Then as a result of teh kurtz I got a Jag-Stang. The humbucker was what clinched the deal over a Mustang or Jag at the time.
This stayed as my main guitar for a long time...with a few coming and going in the interim. The only guitars that stayed were Fenders (Mustang, Jag, and ultimately Strat). The comfort of those guitars made me think that I would stick with them (Fenders) forever, and as my love of single coils grew there was no reason to doubt it.
However, recently I've been longing for that fat Les Paul into a Marshall sound. So I changed the pups in my very first guitar and have been playing that loads.

This now makes me question what I want. I've gone away from the "I need to have one of each Fender" mentality I had for a while (though I've still never had a Tele, which will be on my list at some point).
I have got rid of my Mustang, and am now thinking that in general I would like to go for a wider array of guitars, that don't sound or feel similar, but that can suite my mood at the time.

Anyway...this is all a long way and a lot of money away, but I just wondered how everyone's guitar tastes had changed over time.

Cool thread.

When I started out I got the cheapest half-decent guitar available to me, a CIJ early 90s Squier Stratocaster from the local guitar shop. It wasn't like anything I'd seen the people who I was listening to at the time playing (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Metallica, NIN) being more of a Hank Marvin vibe, but whatever. I eventually wrote all over it after seeing Radish live and then refinished it blue with tort because of Weezer. This guitar now belongs to JD.

Then because I got quite into Oasis and more heavy stuff I got a Hondo-II Les Paul copy, which is now the Les Mike and belongs to Shad. The guitar was heavy as shit and had a really great bridge humbucker for the rock tones I wanted at the time, I did all my early gigging with this guitar, village halls and tins of beer. On a similar tip I got an Epiphone Riviera because I wanted to be Noel Gallagher really quite badly, but oddly I never really vibed with it, I don't think I'll ever be a semi-acoustic guy, despite drooling over Elliott Smith's cherry ES-335s.

Then I got TEH KURTZ really bad after discovering the internet and got a Fender Jag-Stang, a DS-2 and a Small Clone all within a year. It was proper wack, I paid far too much for that guitar, always was really frustrated with it, modded it to fuck and eventually sold it on ebay for a massive loss. All throughout I lusted over the "real" Fenders, the Mustang and the Jaguar. I got the nearest best thing at university with my student loan when I bought a Fender Jazzmaster from a pawn shop. I liked it plenty and gigged and recorded with it with my old band. Right when that broke up I started really lusting after the Telecaster Deluxe when the whole Radiohead/Snow Patrol/Franz Ferdinand thing was happening so I bought one. The Jazzmaster got neglected and sold because that's the way I am with instruments.

The Fender '72 Telecaster Deluxe was my guitar through the Likely Lads becoming Sell Crazy. It got gigged to hell and back in a handbasket and features on our first two EPs. NickD now owns this fine instrument of rock power. Somewhere along the line I became aware of the Baja Telecaster and after finding and playing one I knew it had to be mine, I'm fairly sure that realising what varied music had been made with the Telecaster was what drove me to get a more "original" example. So last year I bought the Fender Baja Telecaster which I still gig, record with and play to this day - I think it's a fantastic solid guitar and is a beautiful instrument.

This whole year I've been building pedals I've become increasingly obsessed with Mustangs and Jaguars and always wanted to buy one to correct the crappy impression of Shortscales I had from the Jag-Stang - I always loved the neck but hated the wooly sound. Doogfest I & II basically ruined by self resolve and I bought a Fender '65 Mustang this year which I love. I think it's pretty clear I've always been a big Fender guy, I've played Gibson guitars and never got on with them at all, and anything vaguely modern looking turns me off, I'm not a semi-acoustic person so that further limits things. I think right now I know what I like and it's Fender guitars with single coils.

It's been a fun journey.

i've only been playing guitar for about 5 years, i'd been playing keyboards since i was about 15 and felt like a new challenge. even before i could play a note on a guitar i preferred single coil sounds, and i liked the design of fenders, but not really strats or teles. the same snobby, elitist attitude i had towards keyboards at that time (the reason i have loads of massive vintage keyboards that weigh a ton and don't work properly littering my parents' house- my mum just doesn't understand, the selfish cow!) i simply transferred to guitars.

but! as it turns out, the way i play guitar only really lends itself to single coils, i've found (my first guitar was a humbuckered gretsch, and the results were pretty laughable), so mustangs/duos/musicmasters are the natural choice for me. the only jag/jazzmasters i've ever played were japanese ones and i was distinctly lukewarm about them.

i have tried expanding my horizons (my dano/silvertone 1448 being an example) but always find myself going back to what i know and love best. i try to like other things... but it doesn't last long. i could own 10 mustangs/duos and i'd still be on the lookout for more. a lust that can never be satisfied!

i still want a coronado though...

Yeah I've pretty much always had Fenderish guitars.

Squier Strat
Shine Telecaster
Fender Mustang
Fender Telecaster

Though I do wish to have a Gordon Smith GS2 with P90s.

i'm just a gluttonous, shameless gear whore and want them all

the only thing i changed my mind on was telecasters, i thought they were ugly country guitars until i saw sound garden using them, and i realised you can get some great rock tones out of them.

i think i've done a complete circle since i first started playing when i was 14, after many years of messing around and not sticking to anything. i knew that i would get far going down the route of lessons, so just got a guitar and started trying to playing, still trying after all this time lol.

i can remember begging my mum to let me have this fiesta red squire strat, my art teacher was selling it for 60 quid. It was one of those very early 80's ones that looked just like a old 50's strat.

That was my only guitar for five months, by which time i'd made progress and was starting to string chords together and try and play little melodies. mum and dad brought me a Les Paul special II with fender frontman amp and i also got my first pedal, the B&M tonebender which i got off my art teacher.

by this time i realised that i wasn't a fender person, i liked gibson style guitars more. so after i passed my gcses, i got my first sg, the much missed junoir with the one p90. that was it for 2-3 years, i was a sg player. the strat and les paul were down to bedroom duties, collecting dust.

i came into some money around the time i did my 2nd year of college, and put it towards my first "proper" guitar. i brought a burns brian may, got it on the day of release and regretted it big time. whilst i used to love brian may, i realized i didn't like his guitar that much. it was a constant hassle to tune and set up, i wish i'd got the paisley telecaster that i tried at the same time.

that tele kick started something, i was fed up of my sg's and the burns, so i sold the burns and brought a squire tele and a squire strat. the tele was really good, i used that as my main guitar for a year or so, though i kept playing the strat al lot too.

after my duo sonic and my junior got nicked, i was a bit put off buying more expensive guitars incase they got nicked too. though i could hold off much longer, i tried a fender classic player 60's strat and that's been my main guitar ever since, with my epiphone les paul goldtop as a very good backup and a epiphone les paul custom for heavier stuff.

Edit: holy moses, this is a long, dull post. Go out and do something less boring instead.

Ooh, good thread Mr Lamp. I was inspired to play the guitar by the twin pillars of watching Hendrix at Monterey, and the episode of The Wonder Years where they form a band (and I swear it's a Jazzmaster his dad gives him). So, my first guitar was a red Marlin Sidewinder (terrible strat copy) that I bought off a friend for £60, plus the loan of his Little Giant amp, soon to be replaced by one of those terrible Gorilla amps from my mum's Kays catalogue. The Christmas gift of a Frontline distortion pedal sealed my future financial fate. Had real trouble getting the strat to sound how I wanted (JAMC and Pixies were favourites at the time) so I used to jack the pickups right up so they were almost touching the strings.

Promptly flogged all the above to my little brother (who didn't really want it) in order to buy a Fender Bullet, ProCo Rat, Pearl Fender twin copy and a WEM vertical 4x10 that a local metaller was selling in the paper for £120. I have detailed at length in the past how I sold this stuff for stupidly low money, but just to open an old wound, I sold the amp and the cab to my mate Jon to raise the £115 necessary to buy a Park G10R practice amp from Tandy. Ho-lee fuck.

Throughout all this, I wasn't happy with my singlecoil noises, and never gelled with the Bullet at all. Our frame of reference then (turn of the 90's), guitar-wise, was pretty fucked: no internet, so had to rely on guitar shop knowledge, pics and posters of bands we liked, and The Guitar Handbook; now, ace as this book is, at the time it was still the 70's edition floating around, so "current" thinking was humbuckers are best, guitars must be heavy as fuck, and preferably have a brass nut because sustain is all. I set my cap at a 335 - almost bought a beautiful white Epi Sheraton, but they refused me credit as I was a student. Instead, I traded the Bullet in for an Antoria 330 copy, with bolt on B+B maple neck, no centre block (so it fed back like fuck), and a useless switchomatic, BB King style. I loved it, and wished I still had it.

However, in the neverending search for a guitar that would make me good at the guitar, I traded this in for my Cimar tele custom (customs were rare as hen's teeth in the UK back then), a guitar I still have. Lost interest in playing much for a few years when I realised how much easier it was to mix records.

Then I played a Burns Marquee in 2000, and my guitar-love was re-ignited. Really good guitar, wish I knew then how to set up a trem, I might have kept it. Also discovered eBay around this time, and while sat messing around at work, bought a MIJ tele '69 thinline. It was lovely, and went some way to satisfying the Spiriualized wannabe within me. Still, my buy and sell cravings couldn't be quelled: I swapped the Marquee for a DeArmond 335-style bass, then sold the thinline and the bass together on eBAy.

With this money, I then made my most ill-considered gear purchase EVER. A brand new Epiphone Elitist 335 Dot. Totally fell for the guitar mag hype. Paid £750 a fortnight before Coda started selling them off for £399. Oof. Had always wanted a 335, but was disappointed by the reality of having one. Back to eBAy we go. Then followed, in pretty quick succession, the awful Tele Deluxe, a MIJ 52 tele (amazing!), then bought the Jaguar I'd always wanted! It was lovely, shortscale, ice blue metallic made in America, had to sell it just before Benecol Jr was born. Also secretly wished it was a Jazzmaster. Sorry.

Bought an Eastwood Johnny Ramone Hi Flyer that was so shit I sent it straight back, then a Tokai SG. This was an ace guitar, too; HEEEEUGE neck, which I learned from the tele I like a lot, and had always fancied an SG - they strike me as the guitar that the evil robot in The Black Hole would play:



realised I was never going to be satisfied 'til I bought a JAzzmaster, so sold my SG and bought a strat. A 60's classic player. Was fooled into thinking it had a big neck, which it didn't, and just hated the trem as compared to a Jag. Sold it quick, and bought a Danelectro Longhorn and an Edwards LP Jr (nice big neck again). Now Benecolette was on her way, and I realised if I didn't buy the Jazzmaster now, I'd never have any money ever, so sold everything and bought my Jazzmaster, and lived happily ever after.

So, to precis, lessons learned:
1) I like Jazzmasters.
2) I've made some bad gear decisions.
3) Fuck I've had a lot of guitars.
4) I used to think humbuckers were better.
5) This whole affair would have been cheaper for me to build a time machine, travel back to 1959, and buy a Jazzmaster.

ANOTHER EDIT: I'd like a Samick 335 with a resonator cone (just wasn't keen) and my current Dano baritone to be taken into consideration as well please.

Back in teh 70s I bought an SG from the mom and pop hippie shop because they had a good used one. At the time, nobody seemed to even notice them, except Doors fans. I always felt it was a bit muddy, but had crap amps with few FX. Later I scored a Musicmaster, which I managed to take apart and lose some of the pieces. Skip ahead many years and I wanted a hollow body or at least a whammy bar, so I bought a MIK Squier strat. This held my interest through the 90s. A few years ago I decided to re-build the Musicmaster, and started buying guitars to practice refinishing. Since then I have gone through Gibsons, Mosrites, Hagstrom, Ric, Epiphones, many Fenders, and some copies, mostly vintage.

My tendency is to get rid of all non-Fenders for some kind of sense of order. If I were to keep just a Tele Deluxe, Musicmaster, and Coronado with P90s, I have a lot of the sounds covered. But then there's the problem of which other ones to hang onto. I don't know what it is that makes someone so brand loyal. I do it with Apple, Starbucks, Converse, GAP, Levis, and Ernie Ball. I don't think it has anything to do with quality, per se. I know what I am getting and I like it. But there's always a nagging doubt that you're missing something unless you have the Gibson Les Paul. Since none of those three guitars mentioned has a whammy, I am probably going to have to keep some that do. That red beater Mosrite is pretty tasty with its mystery pickups.

benecol wrote:

OK. The fact benecol made the post meant I knew I would love it as i have a big man-crush on his posting, but it also has this robot in it, which doubles it's potency.

Add that to the fact that when I quoted it the IMG comes from a site including the sub directory "Top20Robots" and you've got a kingsize post.

benecol wrote:The Christmas gift of a Frontline distortion pedal sealed my future financial fate.

jesus, i've got one of those! i was raking around in my drummer's garage and found it in a carrier bag along with some other howlers. i've never tried it out, it looks mince!

Think my order of guitars/basses went something like this...

Sunn-Mustang P-Bass
Squire P-Bass
Aria Pro 2 Bass
Vox Standard 25 (Basically a strat)
Fender 72 Thinline
Washburn Harvester Acoustic
Fender Jaguar
PRS Tremonti
Vox standard 25
Epiphone SG
Ventura 335 & some other Japanese 33shite
Fender 72 Custom
Fender Mustang
Fender Jazzmaster

Prolly a few more I have forgotten about along the way.

I keep remembering of guitars I would like. Damn man.

as long as i have my strat, any other guitars are a bonus lol

stewart wrote:

benecol wrote:The Christmas gift of a Frontline distortion pedal sealed my future financial fate.

jesus, i've got one of those! i was raking around in my drummer's garage and found it in a carrier bag along with some other howlers. i've never tried it out, it looks mince!

If you ever want to flog it/lend it me... I'd love to get hold of one.

benecol wrote:

stewart wrote:

benecol wrote:The Christmas gift of a Frontline distortion pedal sealed my future financial fate.

jesus, i've got one of those! i was raking around in my drummer's garage and found it in a carrier bag along with some other howlers. i've never tried it out, it looks mince!

If you ever want to flog it/lend it me... I'd love to get hold of one.

i'll dig it out one day this week and investigate... unless it's secretly the greatest distortion pedal EVER you can have it for nowt.

i've just found out my mate is selling his 1976 fender hardtail strat. he doesn't know how much it is or worth, what do i do?

Progrockabuse wrote:i've just found out my mate is selling his 1976 fender hardtail strat. he doesn't know how much it is or worth, what do i do?

depends on the condition and how desperate he is for money. dealer price = £1500. real world price, £800+

edit: presuming it's in good nick, obviously.

Depends on the net pocket I guess. Also worth less cash because it is a hard tail.

he brought it new in 1978, been looked after really well. not really been used in the last 8 years. i think i was the last to play it around 3 years ago. it's sunburst.

I was considering a "Your guitar history" thread to match the "your amp history" thread we had recently but I'll post mine in here in a rough form (can't remember all of the details that applies to the taste aspect of this thread.

My first guitar was a classical that my cousin got for £15 and an Offspring CD. He gave it me when I started learning after h hadn't bothered (he became a lazy stoner at around the same time). The fact I could use it to make noise was enough for me but I wanted an electric soon after. I got a Squier Affinity strat from the Argos or Index catalouge because it could be paid off weekly and interest free. Again I wasn't that bothered about it initially. It was able to be plugged in so I was happy with it. The jack socket fell inside the guitar when the nut came loose. I was a complete noob and being from a large non-guitar company they would fix it for free so I got it repaired at a guitar shop and sent them the bill. I remember the shop charged £20. Twenty bastard pounds to unscerw the jack plate and put the socket back throuhg the hole. They of course had to 'take it in' to do this, rather than do it in front of me. (benecol, it was the shop with the twattish Scottish guy and although I never liked that shop, once I realised how much they ripped me (well the catalouge company off, though as far as they knew it was me who was footing the bill) off I've had a strong dislike for them). The same thing happened again and I'd unsuccessfully tried to remove some sticker residue using a scouring pad so I just sent it back for a full refund and used the money to buy...

A Jackson PS2. It was a superstrat type that was going for cheap in the local paper. I basically traded my squier for a guitar worth twice as much and that played twice as well. I was starting to develop a taste in guitars at this point and I realised I didn't like metal guitars. So I traded this one in (think I had to pay £20 or so to get it) for...

A Hondo Les Paul II. The same as the Les Mike up there. It was quite reasonably and I liked it better than anything I'd had previously. I put a JB in the bridge and it sounded a lot better than anything previous too. I took it apart, possibly lost a few bits and broke the bridge humbucker trying to get rid of the gold cover. I eventually gave it away to Nick, but long before that I realised I didn't like Les Pauls very much. I was getting most of my gear opinions from pictures in guitar magazines and hated the look of the tele. They kept going on about how great they are so I tried one out and ended up buying the first tele I played. So the next guitar I was into was a...

Fender standard Tele. I had this for years and sold it for the move to Dublin. I liked it for quite a while but it didn't quite 'fit' right. I tried quite a few other guitars in the next few years. Here's a list of stuf I can remember buying after buying the tele and before moving to Dublin -

Hohner Strat copy
2 Squier Musicmasters
Gibson Sonnex
Ibanez Artist
Ibanez ES175 copy (I bought this to sell but it turned me on to archtops)

I liked various things about those. Throughout I lusted after a jazzmaster but liked the shorter neck of the jaguar. I decided to sell everything and just get something I really liked. I started with an archtop and got a lawsuit era ES175 copy that is pretty much the same as the Ibanez I fell in love with but had to sell. The solidbody plan was quite varied. The options were a parts jazzmaster, a modded CIJ jazzmaster, a Mustang or duo-sonic, a Travis Bean copy (Fender construction, TB shape). I dceided to go with a copy of a modern guitar and got a cheap deal on a Mustang. So I fulfilled both and broke my self-enforced 'one solidbody rule'.

Now I realise that I like some old Fender designs (most of the standard ones for this forum) and some modern style guitars (parker fly types look good to me). I absolutely love old Fender style guitars with modern, minimal aesthetics. The one thing that has remained constant through is I can't stand sunburst.