The best "rubbish" guitar you've owned?

AustrianJohn

To complement @DefaultM s thread on The worst 'good' guitar you've owned?

For me, my best guitar that shouldn't have been any good was my first build, a £68 Harley Benton Tele kit. When it turned out to be quite a reasonable guitar I upgraded the pickups (Iron Gear) for about £50 - and ended up with a very giggable guitar for £120.

Bridgehouse

@mikeyrob73

mikeyrob73

Not sure what your trying to say @Bridgehouse ;

Cols

An 'interestingly modded' Westone Clipper.  The neck is really nice.

Bridgehouse

mikeyrob73 said:

Not sure what your trying to say @Bridgehouse ;

I was teeing you up for a picture of a lemon burst R8

Schnozz

A £60 Sue Ryder P Bass

equalsql

Don't know if it was actually rubbish but my old white Columbus LP custom copy from the late 70s was pretty darn fine. For the money.

proggy

I've got an Aria acoustic that I bought to keep at work, paid about £130  for it about 4 or 5 years ago. I treat it like a peasant treats his donkey but it's been brilliant.

Jack_

inb4 the "Averagest average guitar you've ever bought".

SquireJapan

I've never met a Squier Strat about which I couldn't find something to love. Of any description ... Korean, Taiwanese or otherwise.

I should own one really ...

rossi

The original Squier 51 .It taught me a lot about radius and I realised I didnt like 7.5 at all in my Aerodyne tele but prefered the 51 neck and 9.5 .I also like my Squier Bullet Mustang though it doesnt seem cheap and cheerful, just good .I have just changed the tuners for better MIK cheapos  I already had and solved some minor tuning stability  issues.

Grumpyrocker

Epiphone 435i - a 1980s superstrat. HSS, with locking trem. I didn't know anything about guitars. But I decided I wanted to play electric guitar. Mainly to fit in with some new friends at sixth form. But unlike any other hobby I picked up in my youth - this was one I stuck with.

I didn't know what kind of guitar to buy. I just ordered one out of a neighbour's Littlewoods catalogue. They sent the wrong one - a bass. Then sent the right one. But it was wrong too. Instead of the even cheaper guitar in the catalogue I received the Epiphone 435i that wasn't even listed.

I had no idea what a locking trem was. Managed to break a few strings trying to tune with the locking nuts tightened. But this cheap HSS guitar with its skinny neck was the only electric guitar I had for nearly 20 years. Learned my first notes on it. Played it a lot live at university.  In my late teens and early twenties I must have played for hours every day. I was never any good, but that didn't matter. I loved that guitar.

It was also special because it was a gift from my mother, who would pass away two years after buying it for me. She encouraged me and listened when I learned something new. Telling me I sounded great, even though I knew I didn't. At her funeral a friend of my mother's told me mum used to stand quietly outside my bedroom and listen to me play.  She'd told this friend I was really good.

When I met my first wife and we were getting a flat together I brought the guitar down to London and left it with her until I moved. It was the most precious thing I owned. She understood why I left it with her until I moved down. It was a statement of where my heart lay, of how important she was to me.

Within a year of our marriage my wife was dead, at just 35. After my wife died I didn't think I'd play guitar again.  I don't think I ever wanted to play guitar again.

Until I met my second wife. She encouraged me to play again. We even formed a band for a wedding gig. And I started to practice again. My poor Epiphone 435i, now nearly 20 years old and played to death, wasn't in great shape by now. The frets were worn flat. I'd filled the straplock holes with matches and glue more times than I could remember. And one day while practicing for the gig the whole locking trem disintegrated, the main metal weight sheering off the rest. And of course it would be a weird size and hard to replace.

My wife bought me a new guitar to do the gig. I still have a few pieces of that Epiphone. Not the whole guitar, but some bits. After a very hard life it pretty much fell apart.

It was guitar given to me by my late mother, held and cherished by my first wife who was taken tragically young, and was played again thanks to the love of the woman who picked up the pieces.

It was a shit guitar. It was the very best guitar.

Voxman

Shaftesbury Les Paul copy, bolt-on neck.  Bought it new for £65 from Arcade Music in North Finchley when I was 15.  It looked very pretty in shiny ebony & gold hardware, & came with a 'plush' hard case.  

But the machine-heads were no good, it needed more balls, and I also needed a single coil tone.  So, had a full set-up done, changed the machine-heads for Schallers, put in a DiMarzio p/up in the bridge, and added a coil-tap switch.  Was my gigging guitar for years until the honours were shared with my 69 Strat that I bought when I was 20/21!   Sold it for £175 when I bought my LP Custom but I still get nostalgic about it as we went through a lot together. 

mgaw

Dearmond m65c...bought for £30, pile of shit but new pups etc was my "slide" guitar for a few years, great neck

ICBM

Probably either my 80s Aria RS Standard - which is not that "rubbish" by today's standards, it's a Matsumoku-built Japanese guitar, although it was not considered good when it was new… and the stock pickups were shockingly poor and the bridge block is not great - or my Chinese Gretsch Electromatic Pro-Jet.

In the past a couple of good ones I've had were a 1970s Hondo Everly Brothers copy acoustic - so good I sold my Lowden, because I preferred the Hondo (really - no reflection on the quality of the Lowden, it just didn't suit me), and a Chinese Squier HH Strat which I fitted with Duncan pickups and PRS Switching and used in a wedding band I was briefly in.

sweepy

Ibanez Jem 7WH aka Elvis's Handbag, it was the nice one with the ebony fretboard, but it had two proud frets that needed work and it was also from the year when they had a dodgy batch of posts and knife edges, the damned thing would never stay in tune

Lebarque

Another shout for Squier. My mate inherited an old, Squier strat when someone left it in a shared house he moved into. It's lively and resonant - much better than many more expensive strats I've played. Great freebie!

UnclePsychosis

 Grumpyrocker said:

Epiphone 435i - a 1980s superstrat. HSS, with locking trem. I didn't know anything about guitars. But I decided I wanted to play electric guitar. Mainly to fit in with some new friends at sixth form. But unlike any other hobby I picked up in my youth - this was one I stuck with.

I didn't know what kind of guitar to buy. I just ordered one out of a neighbour's Littlewoods catalogue. They sent the wrong one - a bass. Then sent the right one. But it was wrong too. Instead of the even cheaper guitar in the catalogue I received the Epiphone 435i that wasn't even listed.

I had no idea what a locking trem was. Managed to break a few strings trying to tune with the locking nuts tightened. But this cheap HSS guitar with its skinny neck was the only electric guitar I had for nearly 20 years. Learned my first notes on it. Played it a lot live at university.  In my late teens and early twenties I must have played for hours every day. I was never any good, but that didn't matter. I loved that guitar.

It was also special because it was a gift from my mother, who would pass away two years after buying it for me. She encouraged me and listened when I learned something new. Telling me I sounded great, even though I knew I didn't. At her funeral a friend of my mother's told me mum used to stand quietly outside my bedroom and listen to me play.  She'd told this friend I was really good.

When I met my first wife and we were getting a flat together I brought the guitar down to London and left it with her until I moved. It was the most precious thing I owned. She understood why I left it with her until I moved down. It was a statement of where my heart lay, of how important she was to me.

Within a year of our marriage my wife was dead, at just 35. After my wife died I didn't think I'd play guitar again.  I don't think I ever wanted to play guitar again.

Until I met my second wife. She encouraged me to play again. We even formed a band for a wedding gig. And I started to practice again. My poor Epiphone 435i, now nearly 20 years old and played to death, wasn't in great shape by now. The frets were worn flat. I'd filled the straplock holes with matches and glue more times than I could remember. And one day while practicing for the gig the whole locking trem disintegrating, the main metal weight sheering off the rest. And of course it would be a weird size and hard to replace.

My wife bought me a new guitar to do the gig. I still have a few pieces of that Epiphone. Not the whole guitar, but some bits. After a very hard life it pretty much fell apart.

It was guitar given to me by my late mother, held and cherished by my first wife who was taken tragically young, and was played again thanks to the love of the woman who picked up the pieces.

It was a shit guitar. It was the very best guitar.

Its only February and we've already had post of the year.

Travisthedog

I had a Gold ESP LTD les paul alike that I sold to @jookychap

Its was a preposterously nice playing guitar that had one of the best bridge pick up sounds ever and im not a massive fan of humbuckers - It was about £150 worth of guitar but punched well above its weight

Philly_Q

UnclePsychosis said:

 Grumpyrocker said:

Epiphone 435i - a 1980s superstrat. HSS, with locking trem. I didn't know anything about guitars. But I decided I wanted to play electric guitar. Mainly to fit in with some new friends at sixth form. But unlike any other hobby I picked up in my youth - this was one I stuck with.

I didn't know what kind of guitar to buy. I just ordered one out of a neighbour's Littlewoods catalogue. They sent the wrong one - a bass. Then sent the right one. But it was wrong too. Instead of the even cheaper guitar in the catalogue I received the Epiphone 435i that wasn't even listed.

I had no idea what a locking trem was. Managed to break a few strings trying to tune with the locking nuts tightened. But this cheap HSS guitar with its skinny neck was the only electric guitar I had for nearly 20 years. Learned my first notes on it. Played it a lot live at university.  In my late teens and early twenties I must have played for hours every day. I was never any good, but that didn't matter. I loved that guitar.

It was also special because it was a gift from my mother, who would pass away two years after buying it for me. She encouraged me and listened when I learned something new. Telling me I sounded great, even though I knew I didn't. At her funeral a friend of my mother's told me mum used to stand quietly outside my bedroom and listen to me play.  She'd told this friend I was really good.

When I met my first wife and we were getting a flat together I brought the guitar down to London and left it with her until I moved. It was the most precious thing I owned. She understood why I left it with her until I moved down. It was a statement of where my heart lay, of how important she was to me.

Within a year of our marriage my wife was dead, at just 35. After my wife died I didn't think I'd play guitar again.  I don't think I ever wanted to play guitar again.

Until I met my second wife. She encouraged me to play again. We even formed a band for a wedding gig. And I started to practice again. My poor Epiphone 435i, now nearly 20 years old and played to death, wasn't in great shape by now. The frets were worn flat. I'd filled the straplock holes with matches and glue more times than I could remember. And one day while practicing for the gig the whole locking trem disintegrating, the main metal weight sheering off the rest. And of course it would be a weird size and hard to replace.

My wife bought me a new guitar to do the gig. I still have a few pieces of that Epiphone. Not the whole guitar, but some bits. After a very hard life it pretty much fell apart.

It was guitar given to me by my late mother, held and cherished by my first wife who was taken tragically young, and was played again thanks to the love of the woman who picked up the pieces.

It was a shit guitar. It was the very best guitar.

Its only February and we've already had post of the year.

We need Simon Bates to come and read that post.  "And this was the song they played that night..."

Grumpyrocker

Philly_Q said:

We need Simon Bates to come and read that post.  "And this was the song they played that night..."

A medley of Cradle of Filth ditties should suffice.