GuitarBizarre

in this thread, I invite everyone to think, seriously, about what their guitar needs to do for them and what their guitars currently don't do.

Heres a beginning we can all reference when we ask for help on things.

Mine:

1 - "Direct" feeling in the instrument.
I want 7 strings, because they sound huge, but I want an immediate physical connection to the string. A flabby string for me is the same as a thin pick, I just can't get on with it, it feels like I'm always waiting for it to let me play the note. In comparison, my acoustic 6 string, tuned to standard, has almost exactly what I want here. An immediate attack with no trace of sluggishness to the sound, that responds immediately WITHOUT losing any bass response and without sounding muddy.

This is a problem lots of 6 strings have too. I don't know why it is, but for some reason I just can't get on with the lower strings on most guitars. Those are the strings I want to have the most immediate attack, the most direct connection (When I want it, but its easier to make a soft sound via playing style than it is a hard one), but they ALWAYS dissapoint and make me think 'Thats flabby'

On a lot of guitars though, I have the opposite problem with the HIGH strings. They're SHRILL and harsh, they don't have that pleasant, rounded 'singing' quality to them that I want. The pick attack comes out too much on fast runs and clicks and clacks horribly, when I want a fluid run with defined attacks, where the sustain rings with a warm roundness to it, it comes out as either sloppy mush with the desired sustain, or a clacky mess with shrill sustain!

2 - SUSTAIN - WHats wrong with me? Am I asking for too much? Maybe its because I don't own a neckthrough, but why do guitars seem to be built to hinder sustain? Gaps between the neck pockets and the neck, bolts that just don't provied enough clamping force, bridges that are put together merely to function and not to feel like a cohesive unit, so much so in fact, that every bridge I've ever played has a fault that ruins it for me. (Continued next point)

On top of this, pickups that move uncomfortably and produce feeback at high volumes, tremolo springs where TO THIS DAY no manufacturer makes a solution to the spring ringing problem that plagues all tremolo bridges. This also contributes muddiness to the tone like you wouldn't believe. A sloppy sounding guitar can be tightened up considerably by rolling pieces of paper into the springs and damping them that way, why does no manufacturer or company make something to fix this PROPERLY? a half assed fix like that isn't something I want to have to do to all my guitars.

Pots that aren't mounted to plates bug me too. I want a guitar made where EVERY possible part is mounted either with woodworking techniques or with machine screws going into inserts on the guitar body. I want a guitar where stripping a screw is never a problem because the screw goes into an insert capable of handling the pressure. Wood screws are not an effective way of fixing things to other things.

The above point also concerns tuners, bolts, everything that isnt wood to wood. Especially bridges! I want every adjustable part of a bridge to be made to fine tolerances, and wherever posible, to have seperate adjustment and locking. Adjust the part, LOCK the part in place.


3 - BRIDGES

Fender bridges - "String tension will hold the saddle down, no problem." - **** YOU, I want my saddle to lock down into place and stay there as tight as possible. I want machine bolts to do that for maximum pressure, making the saddle feel like its merely a part of the baseplate that happens to be adjustable.

Floyd Rose Bridges - Suffering from the above also. Sure the saddle locks, but the whole bridge assembly on any type of floyd FEELS like a conglomeration of parts, rather than a single unit. When I pick up a bridge, I want it to feel like a single piece of metal with movable parts integrated into it, not like this! The main culprit in this case though tends to be inexact threads. Everyone has at least once in their lives I'm sure, picked up something with a screw in it and when tightening it realised the screw thread has no play in it at all and moves smoothly. Bridges just dont get that, we get screws that wobble in the threads and turn with a vague resistance, meaning tolerances just aren't tight enough! Or that if they WERE, the metal is too soft and has WORN!

Another particular problem is tremolo arms. fender type arms don't have enough bend so they bottom out early. Floyd type arms rely on a washer, rather than a proper system, so the arm has a whole crapton of play in it unless you tighten that washer down all the way. I want a solid, well made thread, screwing into SOLID METAL the whole way down, preferably into the tremolo block itself if at all possible so that the arm has a direct connection with the bridge.

Fixed Bridges - General user unfriendlyness and a stubborn refusal to change. I've never played a tonepros bridge, but why did it take so long for someone to lock the parts together like that? LAZINESS! And WHY are the intonation adjustments on TOM bridges in such a bastard place to get to? Argh!


4 - Frets - **** YOU NICKEL SILVER. You tarnish, you wear, you come from the factory with high and low spots then my local luthier fixes you and you STILL fret out on big bends because your radius is ****ed. Stainless steel PLEASE. OH WAIT, **** YOU INDUSTRY, YOU WONT GIVE US THAT BECAUSE ITS TOO EXPENSIVE.

5 - Necks and Neck Pockets OK, screw this for a lark. I do NOT want a shim in my neck pocket. What I WANT is a neck that FITS CORRECTLY. So many people on here post their awesome NGDs and I can see that their guitars have shims, or that the neck has just a tiny bit of play in the pocket from side to side.

Also, I WANT A VOLUTE in my necks. Why? More mass, less headstock vibration to lose energy in the tuners and make the strings ring behind the nut. They're only going to do that if I hit them, in my perfect world.


6 - Shielding This one really gets on my nerves. ALL my guitars buzz when hear electrical equipment. Why? Because they aren't ****ing shielded properly. They have HUMBUCKERS for godsakes. They shouldn't buzz at all, yet buzz they do! (This is also partially to do with unequal windings on the coils. What a RETARDED idea, THANKS dimarzio.) This is even worse on FR equipped guitars, or ZR guitars. The ZR trem has a massive metal plate in the back, which is grounded but not shielded and doesn't act as shielding. Buzz gets into it like a mother****er! And not a trace of copper to be found anywhere in the shielding of any guitar I've ever owned! Conductive paint isn't worth **** either, its useless and theres only ever one coat of it anyway.


I have a whole crapload more pet peeves, but here we go.

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OceanAndSilence

i have a fernandez afr75s, it has a pretty sweet sustain pickup... merged with pedal fx it's class

GuitarBizarre

Thats a sustainer, not true sustain. I don't want that.

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mr dave

GB you ever look into Tom Anderson guitars?

here's their tech page FAQ

from what i understand stainless steel frets are also standard on their guitars.


as for Fernandez i'd love to get one of their guitars with a sustainer pickup but that's just me haha

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GuitarBizarre

Tom andersons look good, but they're not designed for me, and they still fall prey to a lot of the problems above...

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anticipation

add this to the list: pickups that come loose for absolutley no reason, my tuning pegs not being able to withstand 13 mm strings and are so sensitive that they get out of tune when the wind blows slightly or the full moon rises.

mr dave

yeah i didn't think their style would suit you that much, just more in terms of what they're trying to do to address some of the concerns you mention for a product that falls somewhere between mass produced and custom boutique gear.

speaking of, you must have some boutique luthier lined up for the eventual GB custom right? what's that eventuality going to look like?


@anticipation - what kind of guitar do you use? how loose are you talking in regards to the pickups? as for the strings, what are you tuning to? large gauge strings take a while to stretch properly if you tune down to C. locking tuners aren't that expensive of an upgrade either.

no offense either, but you do know the proper way to string a guitar and make the string loop over itself right? i know it sounds basic but i've had to explain it to more than a few of my friends in the past.

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Farfisa

I really don't have many problems with my guitar, 'cept maybe that green **** that gets in the ends of my frets. I can't clean really clean it out for some reason, or maybe I'm not trying hard enough. Oh wait, one more thing, my neck pickup is noticeably louder then my bridge and when I turn it down it bleeds tone and it just pisses me the **** off when I want both pickups to be active.

GuitarBizarre

Its going to be a hell of a lot of expensive, I'll tell you that much. I'm so unsatisfied with bridge hardware that I may end up asking for an entirely custom made solution regarding bridge hardware, and that will cost a LOT of money. The other thing I'm concerned about with the GB custom is that I may well need 2 of them, since fanned frets is a technology designed to fix the string tension problems I mentioned, but it has a problem. It isn't very compatible with fanned frets.

Among many many other things.

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Neapolitan

To avoid getting grim on my fret board I wash my hands before I play and then I wipe down the string and the neck with a dry linen after playing. I read in a guitar mag that you should avoid using water to clean the neck because it swell the wood and pshes up the frets.

To clean frets that oxidizes or that bit of dirt & grim that gets on it, chrome polish. I use Turtle Wax I pour a little dab on a old T shirt, I give it a twist so it absord into the cloth. and then let it dry. I wrap the clothe around my index finger, the carefully touching the fret (not to get the junk on the fretboard) just point and slide along the fret, that shines them up nicely.

To prevent you high frequencies from bleeding off use a shunt (a capacitor and resistor in parallel) on your volume control, between the lead and variable terminal on the volume pot.

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