The worst 'good' guitar you've owned?

KrisGee

EBMM L3. Tiny frets, high e slipping of the fretboard, boost constantly activated when using whammy bar. Thought I liked it till the first gig.

guitars4you

Maybe not the worse by a long way - but hugely disappointed

late 70's and early 80's and I listened to the 335 gang - Ritenour and Carlton + others - so always wanted a 335 - take into account that until around 1982 you could not buy a 335 Dot - By chance I had the chance to acquire an original 335 Dot from 1959 - Can't recall the exact price, but under 2K - still a decent sum back then - But no mortgage to pay etc as still living at home - So bugger it and I now own a 335 - I kept it for 4/5 years but never ever got on with it - kept taking it out to try as I believed it was meant to me the holy grail - But never ever bonded with it - so yes I sold it - Can't recall the price but above purchase price

Worse guitar I've played - few contenders but a Gibson Victory and a Gibson Sonex 180 jump out

Schnozz

A Fender AVRI '57 Stratocaster in Surf Green - An experience I'd like to forget.

DiscoStu

Les Paul.
I lusted after an old Firebrand model for years, finally got one and tried to convince myself I enjoyed playing it but I just didn't.
Couldn't get a decent clean sound from it, it was really muddy with gain, and the guitar as a whole just didn't fit me.
I've tried other LPs since but they don't feel right either.

Bought a Tele. Sorted.

Philly_Q

guitars4you said:

Worse guitar I've played - few contenders but a Gibson Victory and a Gibson Sonex 180 jump out

Interesting!  I've never tried a Victory and of course they flopped massively.  But I've always thought that, ignoring the take-it-or-leave-it looks, it seemed like a basically sound design which might be a forgotten gem.  Obviously not!

historyisjunk

It is possible that this guitar was fine & I just didn't get on with it, as the person I eventually sold it too loved it, which I'm happy about.
Late 60's ,early 70's Jazzmaster, never seen one like it even in photos. It had a maple fretboard & I'm pretty sure no skunk stripe, (big black headstock logo & CBS head shape).
It had been totally mangled. A previous owner had fitted a DeMarzio between the original pickups, two mini toggle switches & two extra pots, with non-fender type knobs, don't recall what any of them did. The same or another owner had also apparently used it to knock down an old out building, or something, as it was bashed to hell. Given all this I paid over the odds for it in the early 80's.

I spent a lot on a special order WD scratchplate. Put it all back together as far as I could tell it was meant to be. Dead sounding load of crap. Got a pickup rewound to brighten it up, same. Special ordered Seymour Duncan pickup (not readily available at the time). Don't recall it sounding much better. I think it was probably pretty heavy, though at the time I didn't mind & it wasn't something most people seemed to care about, maybe that was the problem. I also wonder if I didn't keep the right pots, but at the time I always played with tone & vol fully open. I also don't think the guy who bought it changed anything, though I lost a shit load on it I'm glad it went somewhere it was liked.

If it's of interest I also had a 66 Jaguar- way before they were popular so not that expensive. LPB, block inlays, painted headstock. Again it was nothing special, though it looked nice, apart from the big cracks in the paint. Interestingly the paint was very thick & I'd be reasonably confident it wasn't refinished because of the head being the same colour & it was a fairly low value guitar then. I did actually make some money when I sold it, but not that much. Wish I had it now just so I could sell it.

Somewhat better, but underwhelming was a 74 Strat. Bought for a very reasonable price from Carlsboro in Nottingham. It just never sounded that great in my hands, though I kept it for a long time. What I would say, in fairness, it was very nice to play & in someways really well made. In contrast to @richardhomer 's monster it had the nicest contouring I've seen on a Strat, the arm & tummy contours sort of flowed together. The neck joint was tight & the neck was really slim; I don't like the CBS head but this one was almost OK because it was so slim. I don't really remember how heavy it was. On the down side the body was made of several pieces, with no attempt to match them & one of the scratchplate screws went into thin air.

In spite of this lot I still really like Fenders & have confidence I'll find a good JM or Jag at sometime. The trem system is the best I've ever come across.

Headphones

Fender Strat Plus.

It should have been excellent, at least on paper; wonderful reviews and some serious players seen with them.  I reckon they played something else with disguises.  The Lace Sensors never detected the top E strings (and barely saw the low).  It never stayed in tune - the strings even rubbed the neck above the nut!  Some poor starry eyed chap (as I was when I bought it) relieved me of it - though most of the physical faults had been fixed by me then.

Oddly one of the best I've had came from the other end of the spectrum, a Squier Strat, sunburst with black plastics (late 80s).  Played wonderfully and sounded excellent.  If only I'd not sold it for the "better" plus.

I now have a wonderful PRS CE (the new ones).  Wonderful woodwork, finish, pups, bridge and frets.  If only some of the minor issues weren't there it could be flawless; a nut with razor sharp edges (since dressed by me), black knobs on an amber guitar (seriously!), a volume pot with a very loose shaft (it clacks as I move) and a tuner that appears to be full of sand.  Nearly excellent then.

close2u

Fender VG Strat. The US model. Not mk1. Not the newer MIM. It should have done everything for me. It did nothing for me. The most expensive guitar I ever bought. The heaviest resale loss I ever made. (Rider note to that last statement ... I don't buy new normally so heavy losses come as unwelcome surprises).

Bellycaster

I didn't own it, but I once played a Rickenbacker for a very short time in a shop. Absolutely hated everything about how it felt, doesn't mean it was crap, but I could never own one, they just feel wrong to me, in every way.

SquireJapan

DefaultM said:

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.

Such a shame. I have a PBK that I love to bits. Sometimes a lemon is just a lemon and can't be fixed

Rave

Every Gibson and US Fender I've owned have been disappointing for one reason or another.

Things might've been different had I not grown up playing perfectly built Japanese guitars.

Majorscale

Duesenberg Starplayer TV... looked great, sounded great, but felt cheap and was uncomfortable to play.

Teetonetal

Schecter Tempest Custom for me.
Look great. Just not that well put together. Lots of the above mentioned problems with tuning, frets and electrics. Guess it really needs some TLC from a good guitar tech.

guitars4you

Philly_Q said:

guitars4you said:

Worse guitar I've played - few contenders but a Gibson Victory and a Gibson Sonex 180 jump out

Interesting!  I've never tried a Victory and of course they flopped massively.  But I've always thought that, ignoring the take-it-or-leave-it looks, it seemed like a basically sound design which might be a forgotten gem.  Obviously not!

maybe they are not all bad, or indeed good, but just a poor period of Gibson build quality and attention to detail on many models - In fairness I've not sold one for a while , so my comment is based on older memories, but I've not played one and thought 'wait a minute this has potential' 

jeztone2

Washburn MG40. The neck used to move. In a sweaty band rehearsal it lost tuning before I'd even had chance to touch the whammy bar.

I had a Les Paul Trad Pro II that looked great. But never sounded convincing. It was quite weedy & bland.  I'm not sure the body was Mahogany on that one. So off to EBay it went. 

Lewy

Two spring to mind....

Gibson Lucille - a lifeless, harsh sounding turd
Fender AVRI 52 Tele - finish so think it looked more like a sucked boiled sweet than a guitar. I've mistrusted Fender's rhetoric about 'nitro' finishes ever since (on non-CS guitars). Yeah, nitro over 3 mm of plastic....

james

For me, a Les Paul Classic. I always wanted an lp, but that guitar did nothing to make me want to keep it. 

Also, an old Mexican strat. Not a patch on the modern ones. 

impmann

Gibson 325 - the fuck-ugly 335 with Mini humbuckers from the early 70s that the beardy bloke from Kings of Leon makes noises with.

Just awful - bad tone and felt horrible to play, the shop saw me coming. I thought it was just me - so I lent it to a friend and he gave it back in short order declaring it "fucking shit" and "the worst sounding guitar" he'd ever heard.

I can't remember where I offloaded that (we are going back to around 1994) - but I tried another one recently in case it was just a bad example. Nope - the second one was hideous too.

CloudNine

Had a Huber Orca that was ultimately rather disappointing in the tone department. Played another that wasn't much different either. Very nice to play, but at the price would expect more. Most PRS are quite similar to my ears. I think both Huber and PRS may be a little more focused on the look of the wood, than its tonal characteristics...

Sounds like Knaggs could be included in that as well, given comments in this thread that they sound shite also. I think Knaggs have been very clever though. They have made their guitars so abominably ugly, that it distracts you from the shit tone.

Both Huber and Knaggs formerly worked at PRS, so maybe something in this...

crunchman

Possible a Gibson CS reissue.  It's not that it was a bad guitar but it was a disappointment tonally given the cost.  I've played Traditionals that were a lot better sounding.  On the other hand the R8 I have now is brilliant.

I've played a lot of bad ones - I just haven't bought them as I almost always try before buying.

The worst expensive guitar I've played has to be a Mark Knopfler signature Strat.  I was in a shop trying out an amp and I used this lovely looking Knopfler sig which was very underwhelming.  Then they asked me if I could move into a demo room because I was making too much noise and I switched to a Mexican Strat instead.  It completely blew the Knopfler away.  It might have been the Texas Specials Muds on the Knopfler.  They are horrible pickups.