The best "rubbish" guitar you've owned?

dogload

Has to be the 1980's Kay double-cut through-neck thing I used to have. Like this one:


Fantastic little guitar that was lovely to play and sounded brilliant, although by the time I sold it I had completely re-wired it, giving it a bit of the old BC RIch Bich treatment. One of those guitars I've thought about buying another of, but know it wouldn't be the same.

stimpsonslostson

I'd also like to nominate a Harley Benton. 
I got my Te52 for £60(ish) using their "reviews for vouchers" scheme. I expected it to be a bit rubbish- it was bought for the modding challenge. 
The guitar that arrived was perfectly serviceable and with not very many £s and lots of elbow grease (refinishing, rewiring etc.) it's become my main guitar & has seen off a couple of Fenders in the process. 
I'll never sell it.

BigMonka

For me it's the squier strat I got what I was 11. It was the only electric guitar I had for nearly 20years and was played extensively throughout my teenage years. I don't think I can claim it to be a great guitar, but it's the guitar I grew up playing so it just fits me like a glove.

UnclePsychosis

Philly_Q said:

UnclePsychosis said:

 Grumpyrocker said:

It was a shit guitar. It was the very best guitar.

Its only February and we've already had post of the year.

We need Simon Bates to come and read that post.  "And this was the song they played that night..."

skunkwerx

My Ibanez Gio gr1212ex (or something).

It was £150 about 6 years ago. 
I bought it as a guitar I could use for all manner of downtuning, not really caring about set up, as long as I could play along to some slipknot and korn. 

Drop C, B, A, on .10's!!! Yep.. because the next song would be half step down or drop d.. haha. 

Sounds... well shite with its stock pups.. but, believe it or not the thing is solidly put together, and its hardware has outlasted £500 prs se's and esp ltds. 

Its a bolt on, and the neck socket is tight, whereas a double the price esp I once had was terribly loose. 

However. I have never had it set up properly, and only once tried adjusting the truss myself. It took a few turns before a little noise happened and stuff moved.. 

Its a guitar I always planned to put some better pickups in, have set up in drop C or something and see how it goes. 
Would cost around £300 I reckon to pay someone for a full set up, pups and pup install. 

But with the likes of andertons shifting Thru neck jacksons with emg actives for £400 it seems like a waste of money.. 

I still use it to this day, for any song I wish to learn thats not in standard tuning, or below a half step or drop d. 

Maybe If a set of duncans or similar comes up cheap used I might attempt to replace them myself. Or If I replace the pups in a better guitar, Ill just whack the better guitars stock ones in.. 

But I love it. 

It probably chokes and buzzes all over the shop, but I never paid attention because I expect 10's in drop C to sound and feel like shite! 

Nunogilberto

Peavey Raptor Junior. Single HB hard tail Strat type in red. Made of plywood probably but a cracking guitar for the £45 I picked it up for, from Peavey's EBay fire sale a few years back.

artiebear

A Sunn Strat (indian built )worth  £60 in late 80's. Was given it, initially didn't consider it, then discovered that apart from it being perfectly in tune and playable, the microphonic pickups sounded wonderful in a studio ( live it would have been truly awful ) At the time I was spending a lot of my working life doing sessions, every pay cheque involving that guitar made me smile ( still does )

Alnico

Sometime in the last ten years i owned a candy red squire tele standard.
Straight off the wall, all i did was polish the frets and lower the action slightly, that's it.
I gigged it for 2 years and every time, all it got was wow comments on the sound / tone. Everyone who played it said it felt and played like an American Fender and it did, it was uncanny. I just got one those rare ones that was just amazing, it rang like a bell.

It was traded in on something supposedly better that never was so somewhere out there is a cheap red tele that plays like a dream.

Squier have dropped candy red from the Tele std line now in favour of shit-burst or latrine blonde.

Shame.

gubble

Crafter by cruiser strat copy.

£30 second hand. Got a dirt cheap Chinese loaded pickguard for about £7 from some scarily dodgy website and a £5.99 ebay single coil sized humbucker.

It's a perfectly good guitar, sounds good to my ears and I've gigged it regularly.

Not bad for less than £50

guitarfishbay

My first guitar, a Squier strat. It was pretty decent actually and I think that made it easier for me to get into playing guitar. 

proggy

gubble said:

Crafter by cruiser strat copy.

£30 second hand. Got a dirt cheap Chinese loaded pickguard for about £7 from some scarily dodgy website and a £5.99 ebay single coil sized humbucker.

It's a perfectly good guitar, sounds good to my ears and I've gigged it regularly.

Not bad for less than £50

What a bargain. Nice colour too.

impmann

TBH, althought it isn't see as being "rubbish" these days... my mum bought me a Squier Silver Series Strat new for my 21st birthday for £199. Sadly, that guitar got sold somewhere along the way but I bought an identical replacement about 18months ago for £80 in a bit of a state...

Its had a secondhand set of of Mojo pickups (£85) and a cold rolled trem block from eBay (£30).

When I was looking for a Custom Shop Strat last year, I took it along with me as a 'datum' to see how good these guitars really were. It held its own in terms of sound and playability IN MY OPINION - and I didn't walk out with a CS Strat... even though I had the money and 'wanted' one. I ended up with a PRS 305 as it was 1) great and 2) didn't sound identical to my Squier Strat.

scrumhalf

I still have a black Japanese bolt-on neck no-name Les Paul copy I bought in 1983/4, it has a better neck than anything else I've ever played. It now has a Dimarzio Tele bridge pickup and a Mighty Mite s/c in the neck.

SNAKEBITE

My Squire Bullet from about 2002.

Only cost £90 but was spot on.

I gave it to a charity shop last year when I got divorced, didn't have the room to take it with me.

grungebob

My first guitar, a Hohner Rockwood LX90 Strat copy bought in 1993 made god knows where.
didnt cost more than £120 at the time but played brilliantly and the best intonated guitar i've ever played. I changed the nut and bridge block and saddles, and dropped a Duncan JB humbucker into the bridge slot and I played that guitar to death. 
Its not playable at the moment as I wore  the frets out but im seriously toying with the idea of having someone refret it and sort the electrics out.

Dave_Vader

All my guitars are 'rubbish' yet great, but the winner is always the Sunn Mustang Precision copy bass that I still gig every weekend. My mate got it from an Argos catalogue in 1989 for £80 and I repossessed it from him for £30 beer money owed to me in 1996. I've refinished it and chucked in a Wizard trad pickup, but I didn't need to, it worked just fine stock.
It has made me more money than any other instrument I own.

starwarsnosebleed

My first guitar.

I wanted a red fender strat, but for xmas 1990 i got a 2nd hand CMI les paul special copy.

I remember i kept thinking the headstock looked 'the wrong shape' and 'old fashioned' looking.
      I let it gather dust in the corner of my room for at least 6 months as i thought it was a piece of rubbish, and only started learning to play because my older brother started to learn guitar.

Turns out that guitar sounded bleedy fantastic, felt great,....about 5 years later i thought id part ex it for a shitty old, battered black washburn with a floating bridge.

Wrong decision.

bigjon

My "Axe" catalogue guitar which I bought off a mate in the late 80s, gigged it consistently for 20 years. Pictured on the YouTube track below, which is a solo I recorded with it.

boogieman

A Fresher Straightener I had in the late 80s. Dirt cheap far eastern Strat knockoff in natural finish. Sounded much better than it should have, especially for what it cost. Weighed a ton though so it got moved on.