How much would you pay for your dream guitar?

Teflon

As per thread title, how much would you pay?

I gave up playing some 35+ years back, but a while back I came across a 10 yr old add for a Fender Strat whilst browsing the 'net (as you do). The guitar was a limited edition and no longer made, but it sparked my interest and prompted me to get my old Strat from the attic. I'm now playing again (or attempting to!) and have since bought 2 (!) new guitars and am loving it again. All good.


So imagine my surprise when, this evening, whilst randomly surfing the internet, I discover an add for a pre-owned Strat - the very same model that rekindled my interest all those months ago.  I can't help feeling that it's fate, and the guitar should be mine. Only one problem - the asking price  is £12.5 K.  Life can be so cruel sometimes LOL.

Oh well, I suppose it's good to dream. I dare say if I bought it (fat chance) , I'd be terrified to take it out of the case at that price. Imagine accidently damaging it.  

Cliff

Gassage

The most i paid- £10k for an original finish pre CBS strat and I paid 7k for my dream amp.

p90fool

It depends what type of guitar it is. I built my own perfect Strat and Tele for about £550 each, I need to spend about £1500 to get a Les Paul which makes me happy, and around four times that for a good Byrdland. 

I don't currently have a Byrdland.

PhilW1

I always worry that I fit into the “ all the gear no idea” area, so although l have a decent budget ( up to 2grand) I always fanny about trying to justify it  and end up not buying anything!

TINMAN82

The most I’ve ever spent is £3250 for a Martin Clapton 000-28, which was worth it for me.

I think the most I could possibly imagine justifying would possibly be £5k for a good R9. Mabye for a big birthday or something. Total unnecessary luxury and at that price would be more of a collectors item. 

zepp76

I’ve put a cap on what I’d pay for my dream guitar and that’s £2,000,000. My dream guitar being Peter Greens ‘59 LP. Well you did say dream guitar!

Teflon

Gassage said:

The most i paid- £10k for an original finish pre CBS strat and I paid 7k for my dream amp.

Wow! Out of interest, do you play the Strat and amp very much? I'm guessing they don't get "gigged".  Must give you a real kick knowing you own something very special. 

p90fool said:

It depends what type of guitar it is. I built my own perfect Strat and Tele for about £550 each, I need to spend about £1500 to get a Les Paul which makes me happy, and around four times that for a good Byrdland. 

I don't currently have a Byrdland.

The guitar in question is a Hank Marvin anniversary Strat. More precisely, a Master Built Custom Shop reproduction by Greg Fessler of the original guitar Cliff Richard imported for him back in '59. They (Fender) borrowed the original from Bruce Welch to make the copy and it's number 27 of 54 only ever made. It's truly stunning. It's also £12.5 K 

PhilW1 said:

I always worry that I fit into the “ all the gear no idea” area, so although l have a decent budget ( up to 2grand) I always fanny about trying to justify it  and end up not buying anything!

That's exactly me. I already own an original '78 strat in Olympic white (now a lovely pale yellow) which I bought new and fortunately never sold, and have since bought a couple of Burns guitars which I absolutely love. I can bang out a few Shadows tunes and love playing, but it's really hard to justify the expense when I'm frankly not very good. Luckily, I have a very understanding wife!

Cliff

mgaw

inbound Nacho cost me around the £4k mark...reckon that would be my very self  indulgent max for an electric.

Musicwolf

So much depends upon your disposable income. The most that I’ve spent to date on a single instrument is just over two and a half thousand (three thousand in today’s money), but that’s well short of a month’s take home pay these days.  When I was twenty years old I spent almost two months take home pay on a secondhand Rickenbacker bass (which was my dream guitar at that time).

johnl

The most I've spent is about £2.5k - the most I would spend depends a bit on what it was I suppose. For a modern Les Paul that's about the most I'd want to pay, if Slash decide to sell me his own personal one I'm sure I could go up to £5k and if somehow I found an original burst being sold for £10k then I'd have my card out of my wallet so quickly there'd be a serious danger of it catching fire.

That said after about the £2-£3k mark I don't think you're ever really going to get a fundamentally better guitar - just one that you have more of an emotional attachment to. 

octatonic

For me there is no 'dream' guitar.
My dream is to be surrounded about 20-30 high end guitars with different form factors, capabilities, shape, colour etc.
I have achieved my dream.

£3.5k is about as much as I will pay for a single instrument.
I mostly buy around £2k and used.
I've got 2 custom made guitars that were towards my upper limit and two more coming.

Sassafras

I wouldn't pay more than about £2k for a modern guitar regardless of who built it.
Vintage is a whole different matter.

Universal8

£2500-£3000 would be my limit. Lots of things I like in that price bracket.

Panama_Jack666

Here's me gigging a 61 strat...

https://imgur.com/a/pCjx4cC

Luckily for me, I didn't pay for it! It does over 200 gigs a year (not with me) though and did cost some serious money. It's more than earned it back though! 

AuldReekie

I'm more an acoustic player and own my dream guitar - a NK Forster custom build small body with bearclaw spruce top and Brazillian back and sides and various other upgrades on a standard Forster model.  I'm fairly sure that this model would cost around £10K now and worth every penny

TeleMaster

My favourite guitar isn’t my most expensive and not nearly the most expensive you can buy from Fenders offerings. I’d definitely spend more but I couldn’t spend £12.5k in one go but if you can get lucky and work out a trade with multiple guitars you can trade up fairly successfully. 

tone1

Most I have paid was £1350 for a PRS 513.... Turned out to be as dull as dishwater and I kept falling off the fretboard on the high E string...

Nunogilberto

Wouldn’t go much more than £2k to be honest. 

richardhomer

I think individual circumstances will dictate this. As a 19 year old I paid £595 for a ‘63 Fiesta Red Strat. It took a bank loan, a part-ex - and was ‘ridiculously’ beyond my means at the time. It was much better than any other guitar I’d owned up to that point.

I sold it over 20 years ago and couldn’t afford to buy a replacement at today’s prices. But here’s the thing - good though it was - these things simply aren’t worthy of ‘today’s prices’ as musical instruments. 

I’m firmly of the view that there are plenty of instruments around now that are perfectly decent tools for making music on at sensible money....

Schnozz

£2k.

Sassafras

Ever since my vintage Tele was nicked I've decided to never own any ridiculously expensive gear. 
Hurts when you lose it.
Unless you're a multimillionaire like @Gassage that sort of thing can't be replaced very easily.