If your shelling out a couple of grand plus

BBBlues

It’s high risk.

Go and play 5 guitars of the exact same spec, they’ll all be different.

Grumpyrocker

I've often stared at the Feline custom build form and realised even if I had the money I wouldn't have a clue what to order for many of the options. And what I might think I'd like isn't necessarily what I'd like when it was done.

Sometimes it's easier to choose from a smaller set of options. 

Chalky

The OP is making the common mistake that "the end result is the sum of its parts", which it never is for a good end result.  A great guitar, a a superb cake, and a beautiful piece of music, are all better than the sum of their parts.

proggy

Hattigol said:

Same reasons that if you had a stack of money to spend on a car, you wouldn't ask someone to custom-make one for you?

Eric Clapton did. He paid around £3m to Ferrari to build him a one-off car.

Strat54

richardhomer said:

Sample variation....

I played a guitar made by a high-end US builder that I thought was stunning - except I didn’t like the colour - and the neck was too thin.

I placed a custom order and waited 8 or 9 months before receiving a dead-sounding, overly heavy guitar that I didn’t like, built to my exact specifications....

I share your pain. I ordered one of the very first guitars from Vince Cunetto after he left Fender. It was a BG50 so essentially a relic'd blackguard. Told him what I wanted, four months later I received a 9lb  guitar. Played beautifully, looked stunning but felt like wielding a boat anchor. Tried selling it a year later and it took months to get rid because no one knew who it was...Vinetto who? Luckily the exchange rate was in my favour so it only cost me £1100. Sold it for a grand eventually.

DrBob

proggy said:

Hattigol said:

Same reasons that if you had a stack of money to spend on a car, you wouldn't ask someone to custom-make one for you?

Eric Clapton did. He paid around £3m to Ferrari to build him a one-off car.

I had to look that up, crazy !

Gassage

If you're selling out a couple of grand plus, always set aside 3p for a missing apostrophe.

3p buys you an apostrophe for life.

FelineGuitars

Sadly it seems that only those with an axe to grind come on to talk about custom built stuff they have

We don't see many of ours come up on the second hand market, or if they do it is because they ended up in the hands of serial guitar flippers.

Grumpyrocker

FelineGuitars said:

Sadly it seems that only those with an axe to grind come on to talk about custom built stuff they have

We don't see many of ours come up on the second hand market, or if they do it is because they ended up in the hands of serial guitar flippers.

My issue with custom builders is not the custom builders, it's me being such an indecisive and fickle bugger. Your guitars are gorgeous. I could guarantee I would be the only person who could manage to select a range of options to make a Lion look like a dog's breakfast. 

webrthomson

I've got a few custom builds (3 Mansons, 2 Felines, 2 Kemps, 1 Ryder and a Ken Lawrence on the way) and I think that custom build basically falls into two camps:

First is the player that has a vision of what the guitar should be, possibly because it's a little odd or unique to them – normally this is me

Second is the player that simply wants a better / more bespoke version of something that already exists – normally this is not me, although my Feline Lion 25th and Ryder LP I just let the luthiers get on with it and chose very little, I just wanted their take on the best LP available!

Going custom is not for everyone, you do need to know what you want or have a luthier you trust to give you want you want. I’m sure for some it’s a bad experience but I’ve loved all of the instruments I’ve commissioned and the build quality of the people I’ve worked with has been very impressive.

It’s also worth pointing out that if the first thing you are thinking about is resale value this is definitely not for you; a nice custom shop Gibson / Fender will hold that value for you all day long – I’d suggest that’s a better route if you flip your guitars quickly. Honestly, a custom guitar can take anywhere from 6 months to 3 years so patience is kind of a requirement too

However if you want something quirky I’d suggest going for it!!!

Schnozz

octatonic said:

... and many people don't really know what they want until they see it.

This for me (kind of) - I would buy a custom guitar, but I want to see the spec, grain and colours up front.

Jez6345789

I have strong views on this and this is not aimed at any of the fine luthiers here but from having walked down this road and had a good few friends who have had stuff custom built. As they say your mileage may vary on this.

A good few luthiers I have met are not really guitarists. They understand or are good with wood and their hands.

They build what you ask for and you are not good at even understanding the fundamentals of guitar design you have a tick box of what you like regardless of its effect.

hence over the years I have seen loads of pimped guitars dripping in gold and made from over decorative furniture wood. That play and sound as good as an Art Deco sideboard but don’t look as good.

A lot of luthiers are exceptionally bad business men and sole traders 
so you end up with delays, distraction, kids sick from school so could not work for two weeks in fact the number of dog ate my home work excuses is endless with the worst ones. You are placing your trust in the human condition anything goes wrong in their world your build suffers so it’s I now need another two months to finish yours.

Ridiculous long waiting lists
in any other business a 2 year waiting list is failure to expand to meet demand and create a viable business model. For a lot of luthiers it’s a badge of quality whilst quietly happy they won’t be sitting idol. And don’t ever comment we’ll just might be the time to get an apprentice or assistant to do some of the basic work. You would get a lot more work if your waiting list was 6 months. You will be shown. The door.

A few are strait up crooks who simply take the money as they are skint and you are then fighting to get either guitar or money back.(ask for and speak to people who have had  guitars built get references before handing over the money. 

you end up with a guitar you thought you wanted but two years down the road what arrives is simply not what you hoped for and you are stuck. With a strange child only you could of loved but are now sending to the  sale room for a fraction of what you paid..

oh yeah resale value as Carlos said

i think in the world today forums and the Internet has shone a light on some of these situations and there are now really good luthiers around here who all live or die by the reputation they build on forums like these. 

Everybody round here has had solid praise for Feline Rabswood Daniels and others I cannot remember so go with someone with a solid reputation and good recommendations.

i don’t mean this to be as negative as it sounds but over the years all of these issues are real and ones me and my guitarist friends have had.

My last one was 10 years ago and all I wanted was an ebony board Strat neck with block inlays. I paid up front and was promised a couple of months no problem I can fit that in around the big jobs. 

Took 9 months of phoning nagging being polite and encouraging and then I was plain fucking rude. I walked away can’t waste my life.

a few months later was having a beer with a mate who is a specialist painter and decorator seemingly my guitar builder was moonlighting for most of the time on restoring panels in a stately home he had been doing the redecoration in. At no point was he man enough to give me back my money or explain just a load of dog ate my homework or kids are sick type excuse.

sweepy

It also works the other way with people expecting a luthier to pay himself £5 per hour and not use the best hardware or materials. With decent maple caps hitting £200 plus and the dearth of decent quality lightweight mahogany anyone that builds guitars is between a rock and a hard p,ace 

carlos

The guitar market is very diverse these days. You need to have very quirky requirements for a production guitar not to fit your needs. 
Myself I want a superstrat or just plain strat with a totally flat fretboard, 24 big jumbo frets, Gibson scale and a tremolo bridge that can handle the flatness. And no zero fret which is why the Shawn Lane signature doesn't work for me. Suggestions?
Edit: just had a thought I could refret a normal neck with flat jumbos, the wood curvature underneath not being that big a deal. 

Panama_Jack666

What if what I want says Gibson on the top and it has the exact specs I want?  

ArchtopDave

maltingsaudio said:

On a guitar why not get someone to build exactly what you want?

Putting aside the resale value issue, then why not, or else consider going on a course and making your own guitar ground up from blocks of wood. I have been on one course and made a good Strat from premade parts, but this taught me that I much preferred building guitars, under guidance, from scratch. I've made 3 guitars (Archtop, Les Paul, and Acoustic) with Mark Bailey on his Build Your Own Guitar Courses. They have all turned out well, and there's nothing quite like playing a good guitar that you've made yourself. 

When I get round to taking some photos, I'm going to post a Thread here on a custom guitar that I recently picked up, that Mark has made for me. With the knowledge that I had gained from making the 3 guitars above, I did nearly all of the spec myself prior to paying him a visit, where we spent several hours together going through the detail of the guitar whilst he did a full scale drawing.
None the less, I was taking a bit of a risk, as I've never actually played an example of the guitar on which I primarily based my design, and I've only briefly playing on a modern variant of the original. I did it because I've always been fascinated by the sound of original guitar. I'm really happy with this custom guitar which not only plays beautifully, but has some features which are not available "off the shelf".

Vibetronic

I just can't really be arsed, there's so much nice stuff out there already. I wouldn't really know what to choose - woods/materials etc. I'd have a pretty good idea, but then it'd change; and then there's other stuff, like some days I'd like a picture of my cats airbrushed onto the body, but some days I definitely wouldn't. There's also stuff I wouldn't think of - like the Strandberg I've just got, I wouldn't have thought of some of the ideas in that guitar. 

Garthy

proggy said:

Hattigol said:

Same reasons that if you had a stack of money to spend on a car, you wouldn't ask someone to custom-make one for you?

Eric Clapton did. He paid around £3m to Ferrari to build him a one-off car.

It's a reskin of a 458, it is a long, long way from being a ground up custom car.

TimmyO

maltingsaudio said:

On a guitar why not get someone to build exactly what you want?

Because you don't really know what you really want, you just think you do. 

Bizarrely I recall when this was discussed a few years back on a previous forum iteration - quite a few people who had had custom electrics built had their own version of the tale that goes along  variation of being certain they know what they want out of the forever guitar, find a builder, tweak that with their input, and then either realise over the long term that the reason that lots of other guitars don't do <whatever> is that it's not actually a great idea, or discover that the idea they had in their head for <whatever - eg perfect neck profile, or some super-specific tweak to some feature or other> is very hard to convey to someone who has never built exactly that before and it's not how they envisaged. 

There were other pitfalls too, but almost to a man the end result is not the utopian outcome we convince ourselves it will be. And if that ends up bugging you too much, do I even need to mention how hard it will be to move on should you want to? 

I say this as someone who had "that" guitar built, and who gigged it for a couple of years, but who now doesn't play it and returned to high quality production guitars. 

Oh while I remember I also had a 2nd made - I made MORE mistakes on that one! Barely played it ever. Still have it. 

Danielsguitars

I've been asked to route a tele body and do a nitro paint job then get it set up etc

The guy knew he couldn't walk in and buy what he wants so he's having the work done, he's using an allparts neck and a blank guitar build body, the outcome will be as expected imo, he's used allparts necks before and a swamp ash body, i already know mojo p90's are fantastic and this is a cheaper way than buying a fender custom shop job 

If someone wants a particular style guitar be it les paul or tele etc i already know how it'll turn out because it's a familiar format