never trust a fart

Some news about my current guitar "stable" and what I plan on doing in the future.

I'll first list off what I have and why I've not gone ahead and bought another guitar recently.

What I have: Two 1989 Squier II Stratocasters, Squier Affinity Stratocaster, Squier Classic Vibe '60s Jazzmaster, 1993 Fender American Stratocaster (currently in pieces, nonfunctional).

What I've been wanting to do for my next guitar is get something slightly more upscale. However, there are a few problems I keep encountering.

The purchase of a good guitar is the same as having a good loud fart.

With a fart, all anybody wants to happen is a loud ass rip with no complications. You feel the fart building up, lift a leg and... release! BRAAAPPPPP. Okay, that went well. You feel great!

However, you should never trust a fart. No matter how confident you feel that your toot to the world will be just a toot, there's that risk you will crap your pants. Yes, you want to commit to that fart and let 'er rip. But again, the risk is there.

Purchasing a guitar is the same way. Even when you go to the guitar store, find something you like, check everything twice, all is okay, you commit and make the buy... there's always the risk something will go wrong with it after getting it home. You get it home, set it up the way you like, and... yep, there's the crap-your-pants moment. You found something wrong. Now the guitar has to go back. Bleah.

Over time, you learn to fart cautiously. Oh yes, you will continue to fart. But you will absolutely not throw caution to the wind and rip ass the moment you feel one brewing.

Similarly, over time you learn to buy guitars cautiously. When you encounter enough crap-your-pants moments, you become super-extra-careful when buying any axe regardless of cost.

Some problems with buying an electric guitar these days:

QC is abysmal across the board.

QC means Quality Control, and ever since the start of this decade, it's gotten worse.

I can't even point to one specific guitar brand as the guilty party as this problem exists everywhere.

If you commit to spending over a grand for a guitar, there is absolutely no guarantee you will get something good, even if bought from a shop that does "point inspections".

You would think that spending four large would result in getting something perfect. Wrong. What you get is no better than a $500 guitar.

Not all is bad, however.

One brand that seems to have escaped the QC nightmare (for the most part) is Epiphone guitars. Try out a Firebird, and yeah, it's built well.

Another brand that's been getting better is ESP LTD. That is a brand where even their cheap stuff has some fairly good build quality to them.

As for other brands - especially for any model selling for over the $1K mark - it's been bad for years now and that problem has not been fixed yet.

Bad nuts

This is an issue you'd think only applies to really cheap guitars, but it's spread across a lot of upper end stuff.

No guitar over a grand should have an improperly cut nut and/or sharp ends anywhere. But oh yes, you will encounter bad nuts routinely.

A bad nut ruins how a guitar plays. The next time you're in a guitar store, run your fingers over the sides of the nut. Feel sharpness? Don't even take the guitar off the rack. Just leave it there, because it's bad.

Guitar nuts are dirt cheap, and sure, you can easily replace one. But you absolutely should NOT have to deal with that for an over-$1K guitar or even a $500 guitar for that matter. A sub-$300 guitar? Sure. But for anything over that, you should never have to replace that when buying new.

Skinny ass necks

This is an issue specific to me that I've talked about before.

I genuinely have a difficult time finding an electric guitar with a neck that has decent thickness and shoulder to it.

No, I don't need a neck that is "baseball bat" thick, but at the same time it is ridiculous how many electrics out there have paper-thin necks to them.

It's fortunate that my Squier CV '60s Jazzmaster does in fact have a decent neck on it. If it didn't, it would have been returned a while ago.

I might have to BUILD my next guitar?

There have been many before me who got fed up with mass produced options, said to hell with it and sourced their own parts to build a guitar.

It's like the old saying goes. If you want something done right, do it yourself.

I might go ahead and get one of those cheap DIY electric guitar kits just to learn everything.

Getting one of those doesn't mean I'll be able to build something good, but it will allow me to learn how everything goes together. It's specifically the electronics (soldering and grounding, mostly) that I'd need to learn the most.

And once I actually know how to put a guitar together, then I can put some real money into the most important thing, the neck. There are thicker necks with real shoulder to them from Warmoth and AllParts that would fit the bill nicely.

I'm not saying I will build a guitar, but if all the other options suck, then yes, I'll buy a cheap DIY kit, go for it, and see what happens.

Published 2024 Aug 1