Your Guitar stories/Past, present, and future.Music

[oopssorryy]

This is a thread to talk about the guitars you had, and the good and bad times you've had with them, along with your guitar plans for the future.

Past
I'll start first, I have been playing for four years and have played a couple shows in public, but no bands. I first started taking lessons with my acoustic Indiana Scout. it's a good guitar but acoustic guitars weren't going to cut it with what my guitar teacher had in mind, so I picked up a Epiphone SG Special, and while she's the cheapest model Epiphone offers I wouldn't trade her for the world.

Present
My SG has gotten the custom treatment, and is still in the process of getting modded. I have set her up personally and she'll bend better than just about anything, that's the key with anything Epiphone and Gibson, you have to set them up or they'll play like crap! And she has new tuning keys, and wiring. My acoustic is getting modded right now, as I'm shaving the nut and bridge to lower the action and make her more player friendly, and less of a slide guitar.

Future
I plan on gutting the SG, and getting two covered Seymour Duncan SH-2 Jazz (Neck) with a SH-1 '59 (Bridge) and custom installing a SSl-1 Vintage Staggered pickup in the center. The humbuckers will be wired so they have coil split capabilities (pull up on the tone knobs) and the center single coil will be given a kill switch. I am also planing a custom install of a 5 way strat style switch and a second tone knob (Epiphones SG Specials only came with two knobs, one for volume and one for tone).

I know I could get a whole new Gibson for the money and work I'm putting into this guitar, but she's my baby and I'd rather make her better than buy a new one, and have to set up a whole new guitar that'll still have issues (to me).

Now it's your turn!

 

[Bigbazz]

Where to start?

I started playing towards the end of the year 2000, and got a guitar for christmas ( i was 14 at the time). My first guitar was a Squier Stratocaster, bought from argos for around £180. It came with a 10watt amplifier, a lead, strap, plectrum and an instructional Fender video (with Guthrie Govan!).

I still have the guitar and play it occasionaly, though now modded. After about a year or so i upgraded the bridge pickup with a Seymour Duncan JB JR.

When i was 16 years old after around 1.5 years playing i strolled into a music shop with my dad with the intent of simply trying out a real Fender strat. It was a 1999 Fender Floyd Rose Strat (mexican), we both fell in love with the guitar and after i had played it for 45 mins the store guy assumed we would buy it. I remember my dad saying to the guy, ahh well if its still here on monday we will buy it... The guy was like "oooh don't you worry sir, we will reserve it for you!"... Kinda a sticky situation, I wanted the guitar, my dad wanted me to have the guitar but I wasnt intending on buying a guitar that day and I dont know where i was meant to be finding £450 in 2 days. I went home and convinced my grandmother to allow me to take the money out of my savings account (that she had saved for me) as the guitar was part of my education and prospective music career.... I didn't even believe the story myself but my grandmother thought it worthy. So I bought it, I believe that was in around august 2002, I also still own that guitar. Once again modded, I have a Seymour Duncan Full Shred in the bridge, a Lil 59 in the neck and a Duckbucker in the middle.

Fast forward and it is 2005, january to be precise. and the 2nd term of my first year at university, my student loan and grant money had gone through so I had a fair chunk of money in the bank. I was also in a band due to be gigging and it was my birthday this month. Back then i was regular on the Intermusic forums (now called Music Radar) the official forums to the Total Guitar, Guitarist and Guitar Techniques magazines. A regular member had posted an advert showing a mint condition 1994 Ibanez Jem7V. Amazingly at the time I was for some reason having a strange lust over this exact guitar, despite my previous and very vocal hatred of Ibanez guitars. It seemed like fate that this fine example would just pop up when I wanted one. Within a week (a day after my birthday infact) I was driving down to the guys house (only around 2 hours away thankfully) to give the guitar a try. There and then I spent the entirety of my whole terms student loan money on a guitar that I didnt really need, that had been based on a short lust, made by a company whose guitars I had always loathed.


Fast forward to 2011, I still own (and love) the 1994 Ibanez Jem, it has played countless shows/gigs all over the UK, and featured on many recordings and is still my main guitar today, though it could use a new bridge!. This was a guitar that would stay in tune (perfectly in tune) for months on end, endured the heat and the cold and a lot of time in the van and its still going strong, guitars really are almost like living creatures and they go on a journey with you. It might have seemed a little ridiculous of me to spend the money on the Jem but I am so glad that I did. That guitar is my most valued or personal possesion, it has been with me on some of the best and hardest times of my life.

I do also own a 1974 Fender P-Bass, which was my dads and a Faith Venus acoustic.


In future?


I hope to own possibly an American Fender Stratocaster, Telecaster or perhaps a Suhr Classic, something like this.

 

[Solid Lifters]

I have a guitar that wants to kill your mama.