Guitars that you never expected to be worth much (that you happily modded over the years)

Van_Hayden

So just seen a MIJ Charvel 750XL fetch $2000 on eBay. I gave under£300 for mine new in 1999, and there were about 3 for sale in Wakefield at that point and they'd all been hanging around since JHS lost Charvel Jackson distribution earlier in the 90s.

Of course I've probably wrecked the resale value on it by replacing the pickups, fitting a tremsetter, fitting an original floyd and gold hardware....

Altgough it wont have lost as much as this - an old college pal who picked up a 62 strat loaded with EMGs and a wilkinson trem for £500 with all the original bits in a bag with it!

monquixote

I've modded the crap out of my "The Strat". Always assumed it was worth beans like most 80's Strats, but it turns out they are very well regarded and I've seen one on Denmark St for £2k!

viz

I replaced the strings on my chinese double-neck and increased the value three-fold.

dindude

I don't think I've ever had a guitar that's increased in value in real terms. Hmmm,, maybe the trick is to own one for more than 3 months.

ICBM

Modded my original '84 Matsumoku Aria RS Standard to beyond the point of salvageable - innumerable different pickups, at least three bridges, locking nut, stripped the finish, slightly reshaped the body, and for the final nail in the coffin, fitted a guitar synth controller... routed into the front.

Bought another one last year which cost me more than double what I ever thought the old one would be worth. This one is staying original, apart from tastefully replacing the pickups - the originals were still crap!

carlos

If you're a Shawn Lane fan then that short scale Charvel is very iconic from his early days!

Van_Hayden

Very true about the Shawn Lane connection - keep forgetting he had one, plus he's more popular now than he ever was in the late 90s!

fretfinder

Not exactly modded, but I had a Gibson R7 Murphy-aged Goldtop a few years ago and was trying out a couple of new pedals one evening. Having finished playing I laid the guitar on the bed, picked up too many pedals and tried to cradle them in my arms. Of course, when I stood up one slipped out and flew unerringly towards the Murphy landing with a loud crack on the lovely dished gold top. It left a huge dent/gash/furrow and I just couldn't bond with the guitar after that 'mod' so it had to go. Amazingly I made a few bob on top of what I paid for it, selling it via ebay to a Dutch geezer who was well happy with it. And before you ask, no I didn't claim the gash was all part of Tom Murphy's authentic ageing process! 

Van_Hayden

@fretfinder I feel for you...

limpymcginty

Not my own mod but I had a really nice Yamaha SG 1500 back in the 90s that some fool had fitted a kahler to...Oh my the sustain went on for micro seconds....it was cheap and there was a reason...

Van_Hayden

Perhaps we should have another thread on 'mods that shouldn't have been'? Or 'the most underwhelming mods ever..' Like when I fitted a JB to an ibanez. That wasn't worth the £69 it cost.

monquixote

Van_Hayden said:

Perhaps we should have another thread on 'mods that shouldn't have been'? Or 'the most underwhelming mods ever..' Like when I fitted a JB to an ibanez. That wasn't worth the £69 it cost.

Everything seems to have JBs fitted to them and they sound quite shit to my ears. 

Van_Hayden

Yeah I did the usual thing of following guitar shop wisdom "you wanna put a JB in that"

Kebabkid

My PRS CU24 is a 1989 and supposedly from the more desirable/sought after era and can go for £2.5k.
I swapped out the pickups for a Lollar Imperial and PRS Dragon and sold the old ones on. I swapped the 5-way rotary for a 3-way, replaced the sweet switch with a push-push tone knob and coil tap. However, somewhere along the line I also gave it a neck break but I'd devalued it long before that, but who cares? The guitar now works for me and IMHO, isn't that what it's all about?

Van_Hayden

Kebabkid;12562" said:

who cares? The guitar now works for me and IMHO, isn't that what it's all about?

Great point - ultimately that's what it should be all about. The problem is if at some point you want to/need to move it on....

Van_Hayden

ICBM;12285" said:

Modded my original '84 Matsumoku Aria RS Standard to beyond the point of salvageable - innumerable different pickups, at least three bridges, locking nut, stripped the finish, slightly reshaped the body, and for the final nail in the coffin, fitted a guitar synth controller... routed into the front.

Bought another one last year which cost me more than double what I ever thought the old one would be worth. This one is staying original, apart from tastefully replacing the pickups - the originals were still crap!

They're nice guitars - I remember fancying the les Paul one with that great neck joint. Can't remember the model. I'm getting back into jap guitars again...might look for one. Picked up the Yamaha SA2000 for a good price the other week, and I also picked up a CSL George Benson which is identical to the Ibanez version apart from proper humbuckers. And about 1/2 the cost! They're both very good and replaced a guild CE100 archtop and a Gibson ES335

impmann

Probably my '72 Telecaster.

I broke the original neck the evening I got it - a low lighting gantry plus a rock n roll 'move' took the headstock off. That was replaced with an Allparts 50s one... and is 10000000000 times better to play. The original was very badly damaged, so I passed it onto a friend for nothing - he eventually found someone to repair it and for a while he had it on his own guitar. That was until he accepted that the profile of it was nasty and I believe its currently at the back of his wardrobe... he asked me if I wanted it back for originality purposes. I told him to destroy it with fire...

The neck pickup had been changed to a DiMarzio humbucker of some description that had the dynamics of a barking dog. So that went in the bin. The bridge pickup (original) was utter turd - icepick in the ear, squeely, harsh and toneless. So that went in the bin. The original control plate had been drilled for an out of phase mini switch - just in case the bright, harsh, nasty bridge pickup wasn't bright enough for you. Plus the posts and switch were knackered. So that went in the bin.

It now has a Seymour Duncan Broadcaster bridge pickup and the matching neck unit and the scratchplate from a 1983 US Tele (the original had been hacked with a blunt screwdriver to accomodate the humbucker... much like the body routing). And I also fitted the control plate from a US '50s Tele.

Its now a much better guitar than it was when I bought it - and probably from when it was new. Its been on many recordings since and everyone who has played it reckons it to be "one of the best Telecasters they've ever played"... But is it worth anything? Probably less than £500, as opposed to the £1500+ a battered 1972 Telecaster might be worth... However, it is totally academic as that guitar will go in the coffin with me.

ICBM

Van_Hayden said:

They're nice guitars - I remember fancying the les Paul one with that great neck joint. Can't remember the model. I'm getting back into jap guitars again...might look for one.

PE series. Values on these are starting to go up a lot though, at least of the higher-range models.

They've reissued them recently - now made in China (I think), and they're actually quite nicely made. The old MIJ ones are still the real thing though.

daveyh

Van_Hayden said:

Yeah I did the usual thing of following guitar shop wisdom "you wanna put a JB in that"

LOL there's a reason why the JB is one of the all time great pickups. They do a job, and one particular job exceptionally well so it's no surprise they don't work for them (I first used JBs in circa '87).

ICBM

daveyh said:

LOL there's a reason why the JB is one of the all time great pickups. They do a job, and one particular job exceptionally well so it's no surprise they don't work for them (I first used JBs in circa '87).

Agreed. They certainly don't work for everyone, or in all guitars, but for what they do in the right guitar they're unbeatable.

A friend of mine had a reissue USA Charvel recently - single bridge humbucker, brass bridge - which came with some sort of Dimarzio (not original) in it. We put back the original JB and it just screamed - I've never played a guitar that generated false harmonics so easily, on any note anywhere on the neck. Absolutely perfect for hair metal.

If you like that kind of thing . I don't really but it still put a big grin on my face!

ThePrettyDamned

Icbm, if ever he feels like selling that...

A friend of mine had a fender strat. Just a standard USA one, but it had a nitro finish. He couldn't sell it for the money he wanted, so he spent a grand total of ten minutes bashing it around, rubbing like crazy and generally being mean to it. He advertised it as a professional relic, and got more than his target.

Guitarists can be idiots. (I'm still regretting selling my beautiful bc rich Gunslinger, just to fund my car...)