I've got a 2001 MIM strat which was my first electric guitar, which I bought when I was 15 or 16 with money I'd saved from a summer job.
It's a decent guitar, and I've upgraded it quite a lot over the years so it's had the tuners upgraded to vintage style ones, and I've replaced the stock pickups with Bareknuckle Irish Tours, at the same time upgrading the pots and pickguard to one that has aged a lovely cream over the last couple of decades.
The problem is that despite my username I'm really not a Strat player. I love how other people sound playing them and hate how I sound playing them. I just miss the bite of a telecaster, and find myself fighting the guitar every time I play it, and as a result it hardly gets played at all.
It seems a shame to have a perfectly good guitar sitting there that someone else could enjoy (and sound good playing) but should I keep it as it's my first "proper" guitar?
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Comments
1 - Losing money
2 - Not worth enough to make it life changing if you sell it.
Unless you are desperate for that £600 or so quid? Because as we all know, you will look for it again in a few years and wonder where it had gone.
I've still got my first "proper" guitar that I bought 40-something years ago. It lives in its case, rarely gets played, but it has all the sentimental value in it so it's been kept through all those years.
My second was a Marlin! It was awful. But I played them both for years.
Then I got a summer job and saved it all and bought a Gibson Explorer back at the time you couldn't give them away. It was (IIRC) £450 back in 1989, and the little music shop let me pay off a bit every week.
That guitar I really miss and I wish I still had it.
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In 1984 I bought a guitar with money from my Grandad's will. Not just sentiment that I still have it (and I'll never sell) it happens to be fab Gibson Les Paul Custom!
The second is a yamaha apx4a which I've sanded the finish off of. My father bought that for me so it's something I'll always have.
I'd say keep the strat, I hugely regret selling my jap squier strat which was my first electric.
The guys above are correct that you don't owe it to anyone else to keep it, but equally I don't think you should feel obliged to keep it either - forums are really bad for enforcing this whole nostalgia thing. See also year of birth guitars.
Not a lot to be sentimental about! : )
Unless you really really need the money keep it, is my advice.
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