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The buying experience is also sometimes over looked but something added that you can't really put a price on. Being involved in the process and learning a little about what makes the guitar and how the sound can be tweaked is brilliant.
Can you imagine how much it would cost to sit down with Paul Reed Smith and design you ideal guitar!
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
As for the OP, I have a pair of Jaden's Modern Ts (Tele-shaped) which were made specifically to my spec, and they're absolutely the best guitars I could've asked for. Unlike every other guitar I've had, I've not once considered selling either of them...and I never will.
As everyone else has said, though, don't buy custom if you're even going to consider selling it; nobody else is going to want to pay for a guitar that only fits your hands.
If he, or she, has some stock, then you can buy something that already exists (you can try it out first to see that it's what you want).
If you are going to order a guitar to be made, then you really need to think of it as starting as a blank sheet of paper, even if you are planning on getting a model that the guitar maker already makes. This should at least make you think about as many details of the guitar as possible, and, if you run over the spec with the maker, then they can ask you about the bits that you haven't thought of.
I've made 3 guitars in the past under the guidance of Mark Bailey, and I'm currently having a guitar made by him. For the latter, I made up a detailed spec of what I wanted, which is basically a Thinline Tele but with some detail from 2 other guitars. I spent 2 hours with him going over the spec, whilst he did a detailed drawing. There were still some details, that he brought up, which I hadn't considered, and since then there is one minor detail which I realised we hadn't discussed.
As others have said, forget about resale value. You want to look to have a guitar that you will want to keep long term.
The lack of quality showed itself in duff pickup springs which I had replaced, and the pickups were likely either used pickups or "seconds", and the quality of the electrics. Someone mentioned about taking it back, but I didn't get to that point until 2 or so years after buying.
The maker should have spent a bit more effort marking out the bridge and tailpiece (think: measure twice cut once), and he should have spent a couple of quid more on a better tailpiece, and then have sorted out his soldering (its not hard). It wouldnt have taken much to have built it properly in the first instance, but making it good as an aftermarket task ruined it for me.
Lovely tone, great versatility and played like butter loved the way it played. Great neck finish, feel and profile to the neck, so no issues there. Body shape was very very comfortable, and in natural finished korina ticked a few boxes. It's just that the tailpiece worked loose just by looking at it.
In essence it was the finishing items that marred the experience.
I appreciate the effort that goes into Feline guitars - they look stunning, but when i bought the above mentioned guitar, i just didnt want anything blingy and looking a million dollars. I just wanted a 'decent', straight down the line guitar, I could cut my teeth on.
With sincere apologies to guitar makers worldwide, I think some of the finishes/finishing touches are overkill for me. I would have appreciated more effort into the unseen build quality. Anyway nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I'm older and wiser about 'boutique' and small scale builders.
Honestly I can't sing their praises loudly enough; Jonathan @FelineGuitars, Matt @KempGuitars and Tim / Adrian at Manson's were all amazing, helpful and all seemed to immediately understand what I was shooting for and could tell me where there were pitfalls in some of my ideas were from their own experience.
So I have a few suggestions:
Know what you want and pick a builder that has some appreciation for that type of guitar - so when I wanted a LP style guitar - I had some ideas about what I did and didn't like and I knew that Feline do some very fine guitars in that style - when the Gibson custom shop didn't float my boat - I knew I could talk through what I wanted with Jonathan and we would get to where I wanted to go! They boys at Feline knocked it out the park with that guitar
You need to know what works for you, from wood choice to hardware, neck profiles, nut width, scale length, radius etc. As mentioned above this does not work well for beginners, too much understanding of what works for you is required, something by definition beginners do not have. I was lucky in this respect my first custom guitar was made by Hugh Manson in 1991 and he designed it for me by reference to stuff I'd played or could play and interpreted what I wanted from that.
Know your own mind but listen to the builder - you know where you want to go but the but the builder has more experience than you! If they tell you something is going to be a bad idea they are almost certainly right!
Be realistic about what it's going to cost - this is a one off item made by hand in an expensive 1st world country - it's not going to be cheap, taxes are high on all the bits and time is the most expensive commodity of all in a build. You might only get to do this a once, make sure you budget for what you actually want and don't compromise on the cost - if needs be save a bit more and get exactly what you want.
Enjoy the experience and relish the guitar that you end up with
I agree that resale value may not be anywhere near as good as the big brands....but I'd like to ask this...
if I were to put this guitar in the classifieds
http://imgur.com/a/qkITO
quartersawn maple neck
it has a creamery humbucker in the neck and a joce dominger 11 pole bridge pick up
all quality hardware
how much would you say was a fair price..?
I'm just interested as to what people's perceptions of value are so no tricks or anything...
This is the part that puts me off. I couldn't spec it. Like going to a top restaurant, I want them to recommend the food and wine based on an indication of what I fancy, not me spec all the ingredients and details of the dishes or wine. What's the point of paying top dollar if all they are doing is following orders?
Which seems like a lot, but what you realise as you play guitars is that different things matter to different people - so you rationalise it to the things you care about. So for me the list looks like this:
- Finger board material - don't like maple, other than that don't really care
- Radius not less that 9 not greater that 16 - other than that don't really care
- Fret size - don't really care - light touch I can play anything
- Fret material - don't care - steel is a bit brighter
- Back wood - maple or Mahogany
- Scale length - don't really care, 24.75, 25 or 25.5 can play them all
- Nut width - really care - I've got fat hands I like a 45mm nut, can't play less that 43mm
- Nut material - don't care
- Headstock tilt - don't care
- String trees - don't care
- Locking tuners - prefer non-locking
- Bolt on / Set neck / Thru neck - don't care
- Tuners make - Gotoh 510's - I'm anal about this
- Front to back depth - anything from 19mm - 22mm a the first fret up to 22-24mm at the 12th
- Carve - generally a C
- Inverted headstock - don't care
So after a quick conversation with your builder of choice, with me anyway, they would know that this is what I care about:- Finger board material - not maple
- Radius
- Fret size
- Fret material
- Back wood - maple or Mahogany
- Scale length
- Nut width - really care - I've got fat hands I like a 45mm nut, can't play less that 43mm
- Nut material
- Headstock tilt
- String trees
- Locking tuners - prefer non-locking
- Bolt on / Set neck / Thru neck
- Tuners make - Gotoh 510's - I'm anal about this
- Front to back depth - anything from 19mm - 22mm a the first fret up to 22-24mm at the 12th
- Carve - generally a C
- Inverted headstock
So from our original list I care about only 7/15 and even then I only really care about 3/15 the rest they can roll with.TBH I'm sure that you could leave the detail up to many of the builders on this board, depends on what you want I guess, some builds I want to manage every details and some I don't. I'm in for one of Felines 25th builds and the only thing I chose was the colour, I've already recently got a Lion Supreme and I spec'ed pretty much everything to the last detail.
Being guitar players we normally have strong opinions about what we like and they generally out
• Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@Goldeneraguitars
It's basically an extremely well-made Brian May black Red Special replica with some tweaks, commissioned by someone in the '90's, IIRC.
Stunning guitar, must have originally cost an arm and a leg. I certainly didn't lose any limbs when I purchased it. Resale value? Minimal - certainly sub-£500. Ridiculous really.
At one point, the same could be said of JayDee 6 strings. Back in the '90's and early '00's, I amassed a collection of John's early non-Hooligan guitars (primarily SGs, Explorers and Vees). All were truly great quality. All were sub-£300. Just wrong.
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Massive 57 les paul style neck profile with a nice slab of rosewood? Check. Perfectly set up 6105 frets. 12 radius? Check. My favourouite overwound antiquities? Check. Lovely played in vibe from the level of distressing.
I've played loads of cs strats over the years. Uniformly great with some that were outstanding.
Not bashing the fender custom shop... i have a page era cs tele that is outstanding.
But if you are going old school style fender id not hesitate to go Bravewood.
I prefer vintage style guitars, but if i was going for a vintage inspired/modern featured guitar, it would be Gray Guitars for me.
I supply pickups to many leading UK luthiers from Carillion guitars to Feline and Blackmachine, and all of these have attention to detail that surpass the best US Custom shop models. I suppose I'm in a fairly privileged position in having had the opportunity to try a lot of UK made customs, and have to say that I think your experience is unusual.
Regarding price, I will say that any luthier in the UK that is selling below the £1500 price bracket is cutting corners somewhere, especially in the current economic climate. Many small makers pop up, get their economic sums wrong, try to pump out loss leaders to get market penetration then fold when they realise they are working for nothing. This happens in my own field of pickup making too ...
My recommendation is to look for companies that have been around a while, ones with premises you can visit and try their instruments, and ones who don't have rose tinted spectacles on as far as pricing.
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
I totally get wanting to feel it in your hand though - sometime you just pick up a guitar and say to yourself "hell yes, this is good" - I did that with a LP junior, not a guitar that I would have every thought to custom order in a million years. Picked it up in a Guitar shop in the US and was amazed!
I guess the guitars at Feline are a middle ground where you could try and select what you like for a build from existing guitars