The worst 'good' guitar you've owned?

DefaultM

The guitar that should have been amazing but was a real piece of crap.

For me it was the Ibanez Universe UV777PBK. Jesus it was just dreadful. I don't think I had it in tune once in the whole time I owned it.
The low B would drop by a tone, I'd tune it back up and it would do it again; all the while the tension was raising the bridge in to the air until it was nearly vertical. It would do this repeatedly no matter what I adjusted. I took it to my usual tech who I've used for a decade and it continued to do this even after he'd had a go.

There was also something with the neck where it would attract dirt and it would just stay in the wood so the neck was filthy and sticky. 

It was absolutely fucking shit. I ended up selling it to someone so they could part it out.

Stevepage

Ibanez USA Custom.

Bought it because it was a very rare RG with a cool graphic. Turned up and every piece of metal was rusted. The tone was bland and weak, the trem was knackered and wouldn't hold its tuning.

Changed the bridge for another and it was still crap. Also turned out the neck was a replacement, an appropriate one but still I was told it was original. 

Sold it about month after I got it. Managed to get my money back on it luckily.

starwarsnosebleed

A mexican Fender strat. Got it when i was 17 from my mums catalogue.

just total shite. Everything about it. Shite.

RandallFlagg

PRS Singlecut Trem from around 2004. Bought online on looks alone I expected a guitar that would have some fat warm grunt and it had the thinnest, scratchiest bright, harsh sounding humbucker pickups I have ever heard, it sounded truly awful.

richardhomer

My first Strat - bought new in early '81 with an S9 serial number.

Despite having the magic words 'Fender' and 'Stratocaster' on the headstock, it was a lousy guitar.

Even by 70s standards it was heavy - probably over 11lbs. No body contours to speak of, badly cut nut (spacing was was out), didn't sound particularly good....

Once I'd played a few pre-CBS models, I soon realised it had to go.

fendergibson

A Gibson 335, couple of Les Paul Standards, a Charvel San Dimas, an old Guild D25 and about 6 Fender Strats.

Dominic

Knaggs Keya .......thinnest sounding ,tinny tone and weedy .......made a strat sound like a Baritone Les Paul on steroids
neck was lovely tho' .......perhaps the Seth Lovers were to blame but pup changes didn't make much difference

dindude

About 6 years ago I traded an American Standard Strat for a BC Rich Gunslinger - no idea what I was thinking, I must have been ill, and not only was it not my type of guitar, it was a steaming pile of do dah.

Other one was a Yamaha Pacifica 311, the worst unplugged sound of any electric I've owned. I'm amazed the cheaper Pacificas still have a rep, most are fine but the entry level game has moved on since they changed it back in the early nineties, yet the Pacifica hasn't really changed with it.

TonyR

Back in the early 1990s my father acquired a genuine early '70s Fender Telecaster Custom (the one with the neck humbucker) complete with tweed case. He let me have it for £100. 

It's got to have been the worst guitar I've ever owned - it felt like a plank to play, never stayed in tune and didn't sound too good either.

I swapped it in Scheerers in Leeds for the Charvel ST Custom I've still got. Looking back I now understand why the chap in the shop bit my hand off at the deal but I was happy as I had a guitar that felt comfortable to play, stayed in tune and sounded good too!

In hindsight it wasn't the wisest move on my part, but in my defence at the time that style Telecasters weren't particularly fashionable and at the end of the day I had only paid a hundred quid for it.

dindude

I missed the "good" bit, in which case it is a USA G@L Asat Special bought new a few years ago. It was very heavy, over built, over finished, lumpy neck profile, and sharp fret ends.

DefaultM

RandallFlagg said:

PRS Singlecut Trem from around 2004. Bought online on looks alone I expected a guitar that would have some fat warm grunt and it had the thinnest, scratchiest bright, harsh sounding humbucker pickups I have ever heard, it sounded truly awful.

I've found that with all the PRS that I've had, the sound with the stock pickups has been dreadful.
My PRS CE22 was the darkest muddiest guitar that I've ever heard. I had to put some serious money in to it to get it sounding decent and the only reason I did it was because the feel was so good. Otherwise it would have been straight out the door.

ICBM

Rickenbacker 425V63. The only guitar I ever ordered from new, when I heard they were reissuing them. I'd always wanted one and it just looked *so* cool.

The shop took two - the 425 and the 450, which is the same but with two pickups. I played both and it was obvious that the 450 was by far the better guitar, but… it just wasn't the one I wanted, so I bought the 425 anyway on the assumption that it could be fixed with a set-up.

Wrong. Nothing I could do to it would take away the odd nasal midrange tone it had. I changed the strings, pickup (I ended up putting a Gibson P100 in the Rick casing, still made no difference), and even fitted a Bigsby to it, but nothing helped. In the end I just gave up and sold it - but I still wonder if I ever saw it again, whether I would buy it back and see if after all, I couldn't make it sound good...

Teyeplayer

First 'old/vintage' guitar that  I decided I needed was a 1964 Fender Mustang, just a weedy little thing that I should have guessed was a student model for a reason, lasted less than a year. 

Then there was the Ampeg Dan Armstrong reissue, had seymour Duncan p90s and was the start of my realisation that me and Mr Duncan have drastically different ideas about how a guitar should sound, it was also the first time I felt like the guitar I'd taken home and the one I had played in the shop were two different beasts.

Then there was the *cough* Teye *cough*. Beautiful instrument with a vast array of sounds but there is something about the simplicity of a telecaster that is seems I just can't get beyond, so that wasn't for me either. 

Winny_Pooh

90's American standard strat. Silly thick finish and bland tone. The trussrod also refused to tighten enough and as it was bi flex you could not do the washer trick on it. Put me off US fenders period. I've owned a nice Japan strat, mex teles and settled on a partscaster since.

I refuse to pay CS prices, remove "fender" from the headstock and you get to pay far less for the same quality from lesser known competitors. 

Philly_Q

I've had quite a few mid-range USA Fenders and Gibsons which weren't terrible but were nothing special, kind of dull and uninspiring.  A few PRS like that as well.

The worst in terms of workmanship was a mid-2000s USA Tele which turned out to have all the neck fixing screws completely misaligned.  Whichever drunken Fender bod was responsible had then hugely enlarged the holes in the body to allow the neckplate to just about sit in the right place.  The finish was about 2mm thick as well, it was generally just a bad guitar.  In the end I kept the neck and sold the body as a fixer-upper.

Voxman

I think I've been very, very fortunate over the years and never bought a dog. With one exception I've seen and played every guitar before buying it.  I've either gone round to the seller or they've come round to me.  The exception was an immaculate 1988 USA Fender Telecaster that I saw on EBay and had loads of pics on, and I built a good rapport with the seller to check lots of info. We agreed an off auction price and it's a lovely guitar. The only issues I had related to a little bit of fret buzz on a couple of the higher frets, and one of the pups was starting to go microphonic.  A pro-set up and re-potting of both pups by my guitar tech sorted all that out (£50 well spent), and its now one of my main gigging guitars.  

andy1839

Dominic said:

Knaggs Keya .......thinnest sounding ,tinny tone and weedy .......made a strat sound like a Baritone Les Paul on steroids
neck was lovely tho' .......perhaps the Seth Lovers were to blame but pup changes didn't make much difference

Exactly this. Same model same experience. 

rico

2015 Black Friday LP Junior DC. Buzzed all over the neck even after a set up and really didn't suit my playing style and sausage fingers. Traded against a 2010 LP Junior and much happier. 

kjdowd

Les Paul Gold Top vos 57. Wanted it sooo much that I ignored the fact that it was crap. 

hyperben

I bought an R7 once. It was secondhand and was an old one made in 1996. Its was bloody heavy, had a MASSIVE neck (I know they're meant to be bigger but this one was huge!) and the inlays on the fingerboard weren't straight to the neck - they went off at an angle the higher up the neck you went. It was diabolical! Interestingly is has R8 written in biro in the control cavity but was crossed out and was stamped R7 instead. I sent it back to the shop. Having owned a fair few historic reissues, I've not come across anything like that since. Just goes to show, although rare, you can get a historic reissue that's a dog.

ArchtopDave

A Nathan Sheppard. The guitar's not bad, but it was such a miserable experience constantly chasing him up, and mistakingly putting up with his non-stop stream of excuses (some of which were actually outright lies), plus his claim of delivery in 6 months became 3 years, that I not been able to play it, apart from a few times after it first arrived.