Top 5 guitar finishes companies always get right or always get wrong
What makes or breaks wanting a guitar or not for many is the finish. Now bear in mind "finish" does not mean the same as "paint". For example a "natural finish" obviously isn't a paint. It could be clearcoat to bring out the guitar wood's natural color, or maybe a stain to slightly darken a wood's natural color. So when I say "finish", I'm referring to paints, clearcoats, stains, semi-stains, "burst" style and so on.
Finish #1: Sunburst
Guitar makers always get this RIGHT.
There are probably at least 1,000 different sunburst finishes for guitars. Some are dark, some are light, some use traditional wood color + black while others use silver + blue and a whole host of other combinations.
To the best of my memory, I have never seen a badly-done sunburst finish even on the cheapest of electric guitars. Guitar makers seem to always get this right no matter who the guitar maker is. Even on the Squier Bullet Strat, which is a guitar that sells new for under $125, the sunburst color option is for all intents and purposes a perfect finish.
Finish #2: Green
Guitar makers always get this WRONG.
Green is a very, very difficult color to make look good on an electric. And when I say green and mean a real green like a Stratocaster in Candy Green, seen above. A green guitar is seen to most players as a disgustingly ugly thing because very few guitar makers actually get it right. It doesn't matter if the green is solid, flamed, sparkled, bursted or what-have-you, because most players think it's freakin' ugly.
There are very few greens that players consider to look good. Two examples of good-looking greens are Fender's Surf Green and Gretsch's Cadillac Green.
Just about all other greens suck.
3. Gloss Black
Guitar makers always get this RIGHT.
There is absolutely no way to screw up gloss black. Even with the crappiest quality control when building a guitar, gloss black finishes just about always come out looking right for the simple reason that any missed spot will stick out like a sore thumb because it will be very obvious.
While a gloss black guitar may be a bit on the boring side (unless it's something on the fancier side like the Squier Black and Chrome Strat), you can be rest assured that most of the time the paint will be absolutely correct. In fact, usually the only thing people ever find wrong with gloss black finishes are coating scratches - but never the actual paint itself.
Why do I say gloss black in particular? Because flat black, flamed black and other blacks can be messed up pretty badly - but not gloss black.
4. Blue
Guitar makers always get this WRONG.
Well, mostly.
Every guitar player at some point makes the mistake of buying a blue guitar. And yes, I've done it too.
Before I get into that, one kind of blue for an electric that doesn't suck is the pastel-like Fender's Daphne Blue. And the only reason Fender (and Squier) can get away with that color is because Fender electric guitar shapes kind of have those curvy car shapes from the 1950s. Yes, I am saying the shape of Fender guitars is what allows Daphne Blue and the similar Sonic Blue to work.
Is there a blue that works on Gibson guitar shapes? Yes. Pelham Blue is decent. Epiphone also has Pelham Blue guitars as well. Pelham is a mid-hue blue. Not too dark, not too light.
The blue hues that don't work are the darker kind as seen in the photo above. As I said a moment ago, every guitar player at some point makes the mistake of buying a blue electric guitar. The reason for buying the blue axe is always the same in that the player is "trying to be different". Well, different you will be, but the problem is that blue makes a guitar look really cheap no matter how ritzy the electric may be.
Can you name any guitar player off the top of your head that plays a blue guitar? I can't.
Well, there is one good thing about blue. If you ever become a famous guitar player, you can "claim" that color as yours. :)
5. Yellow
Guitar makers always get this RIGHT.
The funny thing about yellow electrics is that they suit all genres of music. Metal guys, country guys, blues guys, jazz guys... pretty much all of them play yellow guitars.
And you know what else? Yellow works on any electric. Fender Strats look awesome in yellow. Gibson Les Pauls, while I don't care for them, look awesome in gold (also a yellow). Yellow simply works on any electric. It doesn't matter if it's a bright yellow, a "burnt" yellow, a "faded" yellow (like the Arctic White on my Squier Bullet Strat) or whatever-yellow-it-is because players really dig that color, and so do I.
As for why so many players love the yellow, I couldn't tell you because I don't know. But I do know this: If you've never owned a yellow guitar before, yes it does take a set of balls to buy one because you're not exactly sure if you'll like it or not. Something in your head says "yeah, do it" while another says, "hmm... I don't know what others will think if they see me with that yellow thing".
This is what I can say about yellow guitars from a personal perspective. Finish color matters on a guitar no matter what anyone says otherwise. When playing a yellow guitar, my brain gets "sent" the message to feel relaxed, so I feel more relaxed when playing a guitar with a yellow or yellow-ish finish. With a sunburst finish I get a similar message "sent" to me by the color, but the yellow is always the clear winner as far as what makes me feel the most comfortable when playing.
Yeah, I know, that's weird, but true.
But it's not so weird when you consider the vast majority of acoustic guitars are natural-finish, which of course is a shade of yellow. :)
Whether a natural or painted, every guitar player should own at least one yellow-finish electric. Who knows? That yellow guitar might be your absolute favorite once you get one.
Rich Recommends: Epiphone Wilshire PRO
People know me as a Fender guy (a Squier guy more specifically), so why am I recommending a Gibson brand Epiphone Wilshire PRO?
Because it's the best thing Epiphone is making right now at the best possible price.
A quick rundown of the Wilshire PRO
I'm going to call this guitar what it is: It's a Gibson SG in a Strat-like body with extra added features.
As for what this guitar sounds like it, it sounds like an SG - but also can sound like a Fender Telecaster and I'll cover that in a moment.
As for what the guitar feels like, the body feels like a Strat and the neck feels like Gibson. And yes, the neck has the same glued-in neck joint, just like a Les Paul does. While I personally prefer the bolt-on, some like the glued-in design, and if that's what you prefer, the Wilshire's got it. Concerning the body, there's a nice large scarf cut in the back (similar to a Strat's "contour cut"), and trust me, that's a good thing.
As for how the guitar is controlled, it has four knobs just like an SG or a Les Paul would. They're in "non-standard" positions, but seriously, who cares? You'll get used to it quickly and easily. Also note the pickup selector is at the bottom, which is proper for a Strat-like shape.
Now here comes the reason why you should buy one of these (other than the amazing price): It has coil-tapping. Yes, you can coil-tap both pickups with the push/pull knobs to easily get Telecaster-like single-coil sounds out of this thing. You can get this feature on very-expensive Les Pauls or SGs, but on the Wilshire it can be had for so cheap it's ridiculous.
The Wilshire PRO is what I consider the "Strat guy's SG", or a "Gibson player's Strat". This guitar has everything where it counts. No, it does not have a vibrato system, but then again neither do stock Les Paul or SG models.
Wilshire PRO is a great guitar, and why these things are hardly selling is a complete mystery to me, because they truly do have it all. Strat body feel, Les Paul neck feel and SG + Telecaster tone. What more could you want?
It should be selling for $750+, but it's nowhere near that. Get one.
Play a girl's guitar and get YouTube-famous instantly?
This is something I wrote on social media, but it's worth a mention here because it makes a good point:
I have seen metal players with enough balls to tear up a Hello Kitty Squier. But I have *never* seen any metal player with the balls to tear it up on a Daisy Rock Debutante. If you want to become YouTube instant-metal-famous, do a drop-B riff on a Daisy Rock Debutante "Peppermint" or "Butterfly" and oh yes, you'll get noticed. Remember, there's no such thing as bad publicity. If you want to get famous on YouTube fast, play a "girl's guitar". Always works. :)
In all seriousness, the YouTube audience does like stupid videos. If you as a guitar player take the most "girly" guitar you can find, like a Squier Hello Kitty or like instrument that's decidedly "girly" and post YouTube videos of you playing it, you're basically guaranteeing yourself views just based on how "unmanly" the guitar you're playing is.
The crazy part is that yes, this does work. If you want fast exposure for yourself on YouTube as a guitar player, get a "girl's guitar" and play some metal on it. It will get you some views. Probably a lot of them.
Was the music of Eric Clapton any good in the 1980s?
1980s era Eric Clapton music gets kind of a bad reputation because many say that the 80s was when he released his worst music.
Well, I disagree with that. Clapton did in fact release some good stuff during the 1980s decade, it sold well for the most part and the fact of the matter is that the hit songs he had back then weren't "bad" at all.
Yeah, I will admit that you do hear a lot of synthesizer stuff from 80s Clapton, but bear in mind everyone was doing that at the time. Synths were huge in the 80s, having replaced the rock organs of the 70s. That was "the sound" back then, and at the time it was new and fresh, so you heard it a lot.
Clapton was very busy in the 1980s and the guy's music was everywhere. It was even in the movie Back to the Future from 1985 with the song Heaven is One Step Away; you can hear this on the Back to the Future Soundtrack CD.
In the 1980s, Clapton released five albums (I told you the guy was busy!), Another Ticket, Money and Cigarettes, Behind the Sun, August and Journeyman. The worst of the 5 was Money and Cigarettes, as it didn't even go silver, never mind gold. The best of the 5 is Journeyman.
I'm not saying all of Clapton's stuff during the 80s was great, but there were several great songs he released during that time. Songs like Forever Man, It's in the Way That You Use It, Pretending, and so on. That's all good stuff.
The failure of the Fender Blacktop series (and what Fender could have done to prevent it)
On the Guitar Center web site today...
...the Fender Blacktop Series has now officially fallen to Mexican-made Stratocaster prices.
Blacktop was an attempt by Fender to come out with some new and interesting guitars. Unfortunately, people just aren't buying them.
What Fender did that was wrong with the Blacktop series was introduce the guitar at a price that was too high. Had they priced it like the Fender Marauder (which is still lower than a Blacktop even with the GC discount), the guitar would have sold a lot better.
Guitar buyers by nature hate change and pretty much don't like anything that strays away from the traditional Stratocaster or Telecaster design, however they can be swayed to try something new if the price is right, and unfortunately Fender keeps fumbling this up time and time again.
For example, if the Fender Cyclone makes a reappearance (it was last made in the early 2000s), the street price of that guitar should be the same as the Mexican Stratocaster. If it were American made, then yeah I could see it having a street price of $799. But if Mexican or Asian-made, it should be $399.
And as far as color choices go, Fender should go back to what they did before and use car finishes, such as Ford's "School Bus Yellow" on the 2013 Mustang. If Fender wants ideas for different paints players would like, well, just look to what the car makers are using. Fender did this before and should do it again, because it works.
When a player sees a new Cyclone on the rack at the same price as the Mexican Strat sitting next to it, yeah he'd pick up the Cyclone just based on the price tag alone. And he'd probably love it and buy it shortly thereafter. And his friends would see it and they'd want one too, and get one.
Hopefully for 2013 Fender will wise up and start treating the prices of new models differently, because if they don't, all they'll ever be selling are Strats and Teles.