Guitar for $2500 and under

[gergface21]

I'm curious what electric guitar you guys would get for $2500 or less

[FFTT]

A well cared for used Gibson or Fender.

In a new guitar Suhr or Grosh probably

[mdme_sadie]

I'm more curious as to what modern electric guitar you would get for over $2500... (or justify spending that much on what is essentially a plank with some strings attached, Les Paul demonstrated this originally, but was forced to add some design by the audience).

Pretty much everything falls under $2500, personally as I already have a Parker I'd be on the lookout to pick up an SG (toss up between the Epiphone at around $200-$300 and the full Gibson at $800 - $1200, my preference would be down to the neck, ironically last time I checked them the Epi had the better more slender neck, but I hear that's changed now, pickups and electrics are cheap and easy to change). I might repick up a Fender Strat too. If you like smaller guitars then maybe a PRS is for you... bear in mind that most expensive electric guitars you're paying for the brand more than the instrument itself. That's OK if you really really like the instrument over anything else.

[biggator6]

I had Grover Jackson make me a custom in 1986 for about $1700... haven't paid over $800 for one since - and that includes a '63 Gretsch, '66 fender mustang, a highly-customed '62-reissue strat, an early bolt-on PRS and a few others..

I do kinda lust for a Warrior guitar occasionally... but frankly, my cheapies work just fine.

So - to answer your question? For $2500, I'd buy 3 or 4 damn nice used guitars. New? Probably one of the Warrior gen-x double-cutaways.
"-)

[FFTT]

I thought you were buying an amp?

[octatonic]

Originally Posted by gergface21

I'm curious what electric guitar you guys would get for $2500 or less

Ehrm.... not a lot of info there.
Do you play blues/country/death metal/jazz/classic rock/numetal or something else?

For $2500 I would buy three used guitars.
Probably a Strat, Tele and a Reverend.

If you wanted to go for a Gibson or Gretsch then you probably will run out of money quite quickly- but you could get a used 335, Gretsch for about $1500-$2000 ish if you look hard enough.
Then spend the remainder on a nice tele.

Or just get a Gibson ES175.

Or you could get ten used Mexican strats/tele's.

Do you prefer bolt-on or set necks?
If you like bolt-on then have a look at Warmoth.
I have a couple of guitars made out of their parts and they sound excellent.

[Kawriver]

Andersonguitars.com....final answer

[Pasta4lnch]

Originally Posted by mdme_sadie

I'm more curious as to what modern electric guitar you would get for over $2500... (or justify spending that much on what is essentially a plank with some strings attached

that's a good point (unless the wood work was masterly done or something- maybe an acoustic)

as for my answer to the OP I'm sick of paying full price for a guitar and modding it or living w/ a few details I don;t like . . . i'd gather parts from Warmoth or some other place and have it built (prefferably by someone who'd teach me how to put it together right so I could do the next one myself!)

[Carlos Boll]

Nash.

[allencollins]

For under 2500 I'd get a nice Gibson custom shop Les Paul from the mid 90's As far as Fenders go I wouldn't pay more than $400. There is very little difference in quality from a $2000 strat and a $400 one. Much of it is marketing hype and Tom foolery..... Yet many suckers get tricked and nver know they did

Originally Posted by mdme_sadie

I'm more curious as to what modern electric guitar you would get for over $2500... (or justify spending that much on what is essentially a plank with some strings attached, Les Paul demonstrated this originally, but was forced to add some design by the audience).

I guess you are not guitar player. In general, Again In general....... you are paying for quality of components and workmanship. Add up the common components of a guitar. The components on a Les Paul alone will run you $350
a strat would be about $100

Have you ever painted a guitar with Nitro? Do you have any concept of how long that takes? Why do you think cheazball companies like Fender and Epiphone use polyester and not Nitro Cellulose? That alone will probably be the difference of $400 in labor costs. The cost of the paint and prep material is probably the difference of $50 to $100.

Did you ever look at the cost of wood? The cheezball material fender uses like asian maples, alders ashes are like $50 a slab they use multiple peices of wood an plywood like laminates. Gibson uses one piece bodies of south american mahaogany and AAA figured bookmatched maple from the US.

Fender uses a cheezy bolt on neck. gibson set necks are glued in. That's addtional labor. Binding? Have you ever routed a body for binding?ever glued binding in? ever scraped the color laquer off or masked off binding with a razor or tape before shooting the clear coat? Do you have any idea how long that takes? I guess not.

What about inlaying the pearl or even celuloid fretboard inlays? Routing the fretboard trapazoids? Ever think how long that takes? No inlay on a fender but tons of it on Gibson. Ever think how long it takes to scrape the laquer of a gibson logo after shooting the peg board black laquer? It takes a while.

Ever think about the time and care it takes to buff by HAND a guitar shot with a vintage thin nitro finish? as opposed to buffing a poly coat with a robot?

Routings? How many rountings on a Strat or a tele? 2? 1 In that middle of the body (where half the tone was by the way). And another rout where the other half of the tone WAS before it was impaled by 4 trusty bolts. (ok three on some late 70's models). How many routs on a Paul... 5? Lot more labor invloved.

Fretboard binding on a les paul ? ever think how long that takes to glue and cut around each fret? All this shit is done
by hand. Fender uses robotics and has 1/20 of the detail and dressings of a les paul. Why do you think 90% of the fender guitars play like crap from the factory. They don't even level the frets. Gibson does. That's another $100 in labor cost for a level and dress and buff with compound.

You can argue till you are blue in the face whether a Gibson sounds better than a Fender but the one thing you can't argue is the difference in labor and quality components. Les Pauls have more expensive and higher quality components. The woods cost more. The level of detail is on a different level that a fender. Binding, inlay, finish work
construction are all 10 times more labor intensive on a Gibson than a fender.

Sure you can argue you like the sound of one versus the other but with design and craftsmanship there is no argument. A Gibson cost $2500 because it is a work of art. Not two laminated pieces of chinese wood held together by bolts and painted with the same material that your trash bags are made out of.

you get what you pay for

[seaneldon]

I'm gonna agree with octatonic and say that an ES335 and a Telecaster will produce 90% of the sounds I'd ever want out of a guitar.

[bluestarbass]

No question 1978 Les paul custom in silverburst.

[eligit]

Originally Posted by allencollins

You must get some real boring, flat and thin sounds...... 90% of the time anyhoo

wait.....i thought you liked gibsons?

335 is a gibson, eh?

not that i am a huge 335 fan but flat and thin are NOT the two adjectives that would first spring to mind....

as far as boring tele sounds......:

YouTube - Roy Buchanan-Roy's Bluz (5) (Blues)

it may be thin.....but it sure ain't boring....at least not to me. i love the harmonics toward the end....

[TheArchitect]

Originally Posted by gergface21

I'm curious what electric guitar you guys would get for $2500 or less

Just about anything. Its rare air indeed for an instrument to street over $2500. I prefer PRS myself alonf with the guitars I built myself.

[Myriad_Rocker]

PRS Custom 22 w/Trem

Oh, and I just happen to have one for sale. See the classified section.

[chetatkinsdiet]

I agree with AC on all his comments on Gibson....don't agree about Teles and 335 being one trick ponys.
I'm a Gibson guy myself and love all my guitars by them.....3 custom shop LPs...one 57 RI and a couple of Juniors...love the P90s. I also love my 335, Firebird, Gretsch Anniversary, custom shop 60 RI Strat, original 69 Tele, MIJ Tele Custom, etc, etc, etc.....

With all that said....If I were looking for a single guitar it would have to be a Les Paul. The 57 RI's are really nice if you like the goldtop. The R8/R9 models are maybe some of the nicest guitars I've ever picked up, but they're stupid money. Used though, I'm sure you can get into one of them for your sub-$2500 budget.

Hey....you really want a nice custom shop LP? I have sort of been trying to sell one of my Juniors. Not to turn this into a "buy my guitar" thread, but it is a TV Yellow 58 Reissue from the custom shop. Typically sells for $2600. Mine's a lot cheaper. Plus if you wear a wig and get on herion, you'll look just like Johnny Thunders playing it.

m

[GTR]

The Gibson Les Paul Standard 60s Neck Electric Guitar - it runs just under $2500.

Otherwise, an American Tele with ash body and Maple neck with get you in another twangy direction for only $1200.

[seaneldon]

A marginally respectable response (while not entirely factual. 335s lack sustain? Maybe if it was sawed in half and didn't have any strings...) from you, "Collins"? There is indeed a first for everything!

Still, I'd like to add that what I'm doing with music is pretty much void of one particular "dimension", and yet 335s and Telecasters can still fill the role for all of them. But hey, that's just my experience and I've actually got the guitars...so take that with a grain of salt

[rectifier]

Originally Posted by GTR

Otherwise, an American Tele with ash body and Maple neck with get you in another twangy direction for only $1200.

Good call - I have one of those with Nitro Cellulose finishing and it's my favourite guitar.

[mdme_sadie]

allencollins - Yes I do play guitar, I've also modded quite a few, and know several luthiers who could custom build me whatever I dreamed of having... all for a shedload less than $2500 (unless I wanted exotic materials such as carbon fibre or aluminium bodies).

Sorry but most of what you mentioned makes little difference to a guitar as an instrument, just to it's looks (which I thought I mentioned). Really it's just about your own personal satisfaction with owning the instrument and workmanship, which is fine if you really value that more than your ability to generate a good sound. I guess you're not a guitar player then.

Lets break it down to the actual things that make a difference in the feel and sound of a guitar, the number one thing is in fact the neck, this is where your hands are and it affects how a guitar feels to play more than any other factor, and the fretboard material type will impact the sound to a small extent, something softer or matte will dampen every so slightly, personally though I just prefer rosewood for how it looks and feels, a longer scale length will affect the brightness of the feel and tone too as the tension is greater. The neck is justifiably an expensive component, any flaw here will ruin the whole guitar, even so you can pick a fine one up for a couple of hundred, a through neck guitar will cost you more, the merits are arguable, potentially greater sustain and more pleasant resonance plus a more shapely feel when playing the higher frets, but if the neck gets damaged it's more work to put right (though usually it can be put right short of the guitar splitting length-ways, which I've only heard of once).

Second the body material, a more dense and harder material will sustain a strings vibration for longer and will have less interaction with the sound itself, resin guitars were a fad for a little while because of this, most people didn't like the feel and weight though. Woods for a body do not cost that much, you can use virtually any material you want to great and varying effect, in an electric guitar most body resonance is reduced to the point where the materials used become largely immaterial except in a hollow body such as a 335, in some hollow bodies though even that makes no difference (e.g. a Rickenbacker). On a solid body it's all looks that you pay for, anything is fine, fiberboard, metals, plastics, old planks, oak can be quite nice if you can handle the weight (make a very small body), I tend to prefer lighter materials though, which are even cheaper as most light woods grow fast.

Most of this tone difference is instantly destroyed as soon as you put the signal into a guitar amp anyway and add any sort of gain apart from one fundamental part which I've left to last - the electronics. Good electronics cost bugger all, from $50 to $200, decent electronics and finish is the main difference between most cheap electric guitars and the really expensive guitars.

The lacquer, sorry does bugger all for an electric guitars sound, it makes a difference on an acoustic but on an electric, you're having a laugh (an expensive one at that, especially a NC is no longer allowed to be used in a few countries). A telecaster sounds as it does because of it's scale length, it's pickups, and it's through body strings, not because of it's lacquer or even it's body material (I've heard custom Alu Teles that sound - "yup it's a tele"). If you cannot pick up a modern sub $400 electric guitar and play a concert with it just fine then you cannot play a $4000 guitar at said concert either. I'm not a good guitarist maybe, but I do know the difference between a good and a bad workman.

To the original poster, any electric guitar over $1200 had better have some pretty unique features on it to make it worth purchasing. The *only* way to find a guitar for yourself is to go to a guitar shop and play as many as you can, then pick the one you like best, a guitar is a very organic thing and like clothes it either fits or it doesn't. If it costs thousands then be prepared to pay it, if it costs only a couple of hundred then don't con yourself into feeling inferior about it or that there's anything wrong with that, instead feel happy that you just saved a shed load of cash. Either way you'll have the right guitar for yourself rather than the right guitar for everyone else.

[biggator6]

My point was not that a 335 or a tele doesn't have a place in music
it is just that they are in a very specific place. They are great gtrs but one dimensional.

Well, Jimmy Page sold a lot of Les Pauls with a telecaster - yeah, that's what he mostly recorded with (hmm, no country twang there)...

Good thing Joe Strummer never went for that country sound either.

The list of things recorded with teles is long and staggering and goes far beyond country and blues..

wait, why did I get into this discussion?

[jamsmith]

Originally Posted by allencollins

You must get some real boring, flat and thin sounds...... 90% of the time anyhoo

Sure, it takes a good amp or a pedal or two to fatten up a tele, but dude, if you can't get a fat sound from a 335, you need some serious guitar lesson!

[jamsmith]

Originally Posted by biggator6

Well, Jimmy Page sold a lot of Les Pauls with a telecaster - yeah, that's what he mostly recorded with (hmm, no country twang there)...

Yes! Thats pretty damn funny too. So many thought he recorded that stuff with an LP! Jeff Beck gets a fat tele sound. Roy Buck. Danny Gatton!
Albert Collins didn't have a "fat" tone, but is was still stinging an killer

===============

$2500? I'd buy 30 used Squire Stratocasters to burn at my Hendrix shows!

[gergface21]

Originally Posted by jamsmith

Yes! Thats pretty damn funny too. So many thought he recorded that stuff with an LP! Jeff Beck gets a fat tele sound. Roy Buck. Danny Gatton!
Albert Collins didn't have a "fat" tone, but is was still stinging an killer

===============

$2500? I'd buy 30 used Squire Stratocasters to burn at my Hendrix shows!

Thanks?

[octatonic]

Originally Posted by jamsmith

Sure, it takes a good amp or a pedal or two to fatten up a tele, but dude, if you can't get a fat sound from a 335, you need some serious guitar lesson!

One man's 'thin' is another man's 'bright'.

I am a tele player through and through.
I love the snap of the 25 1/2 inch scale length.
Gibsons feel sloppy to me.
I also prefer bolt on necks- the sustain works differently and suits my playing style.
I have several set neck guitars (some of them expensive) but I always return to my teles and they never sound 'thin'.

I tend not to use Fender branded instruments, preferring my australian made Kinman Tele's (they are awesome but very hard to find) and I replace the electronics with humbuckers or humbuckers in single coil format.

I just ordered the Harmonic designs Z90 and Super 90 pickups for P90 tones in my tele... looking forward to that.

No denying that more work goes into a Gibson as far as craftsmanship goes (although Gibsons recent offerings smack of cost reduction.

Allen Collins is, despite his arrogant and rude method of delivery, pretty on the money although he takes it to extreme. Dude, you hate Fender... we get it.

That doesn't mean that they cannot be wonderful guitars to play.
What I like about tele's is they are utilitarian and can be f*cked with and customised easily.
I love the lightness- I can gig with a tele all night- but a Les Paul just gives me a backache.
Also an expensive guitar (and especially an expensive semi-solid guitar like a 175) isn't the sort of thing I'd like to throw around at a gig.
I love that I can take my tele's to a gig and not worry about them, throw them around, play slide with a mic stand, spill beer and they do not complain.

Ergonomically, playing a Les Paul is a bit of a nightmare, especially for right hand position- for doing banjo roll/chicken picking. Sure, I can do it... but I'd rather just use a tele.

I guess what I am saying is that no design is 100% perfect.
Gibsons strength can be a weakness as can Fender's (or Tele or Strat style).
I love owning as many as I can (at 30 odd at the moment and I won't stop buying them), pulling them apart, upgrading some, leaving some stock and playing my ass off.
My latest is a 1991 Japanese Jazzmaster that I am upgrading the pickups on and doing some playability mods on.

If you want to talk bad design, then let's talk Jazzmaster.
Christ on a bike, a stock jazzmaster is a bitch to play.
Put a buzz stop and/or mustang bridge on it and it transforms to a gorgeous instrument.... like maaaaaagic.
Plus, they look fkin cool.

I love having access to all types of guitar.
If it has strings then I'll fkin play it.

Allen, I have to ask... Don't you get sick of hating?

You come across as a fundamentalist and seem to need everything in binary- good or bad, yes or no. Good luck with that.

[jamsmith]

Originally Posted by gergface21

Thanks?

No, man really. I would. But that just where I am at. But if I had 2500 and could just get one guitar. I guess I would go Anderson, maybe Fender Custom shop (don't know exactly what I could get there for just 2500). But since I have strats, I have always wanted a nice Paul Reed Smith. I see right now a couple of 10 tops with birds for that price. Real conflict though. I really love those guitar. I unfortunately met the man in person and he was the biggest A-Hole I ever met. No, he is tied with Travis Tritt. (For the record, the nicest guy in the biz is Bo Diddley)

[DeathMonkey]

I just ordered two more Carvin CT4's, built to my specs, for just over $3k. Can't beat that. I already have 3 CTs and a pair of Ultra Vs, and I love em.

Teles have been used by such diverse players as David Gilmour, Alex Lifeson, Danny Gatton, Andy Summers, Johnny Greenwood, Joe Strummer, Steve Morse, Jimmy Page and John5. People play rock, country, punk, Jazz, reggae, blues, soul, funk, and everything in between with them.

"cheezy bolt on necks" with "no inlays", huh? Right, Les Paul through a Marshall with a single 57. Anything else is teh sux0rz.

[FFTT]

You want a great sounding and playing guitar without goig nuts on the purchase
price?

Check out the St Blues Mississippi Bluesmaster with P-90s

Also the PRS Soapbar SE's and if you can find one, the original PRS single cuts.

Some of the early Hamers are also great guitars.

I still like the Suhr's and the Grosh, but you don't have to spend so much.

I like the 80's and early 90's Fenders better than what they have today.

Find a well seasoned older guitar with a perfect neck and it will stay that way forever.

[marchhare]

Les Paul Classic
SG Standard, or SG Special w/p-90's
Used es-335
Les Paul Junior or Special re-issue


As far as Fender stuff goes; I'd just build a cool Tele or Strat
from Warmoth parts before I'd buy an actual Fender.

[King Of Spain]

Originally Posted by Kawriver