What is the best guitar you have ever played?

LastMantra

My The Paul deluxe and my 60s RW strat.

That's why I've not bought another since I got them years ago. 

ditchboy

Grumpyrocker said:

I think might actually be my Schecter PT Hellraiser Hybrid. It feels the most perfect together guitar I've played. It makes my RG1121 Premium and LTD EC1000 feel cheap in comparison despite being in similar price ranges.

It's a guitar that feels really premium and special. With the satin treatment on the neck it feels gorgeous to play. It doesn't have that "encased in a layer of plastic" feel that many guitars in this price range have. 

All the hardware is excellent, beautifully put together.

I wish my Les Paul felt this well made and perfect. 

What colour is that? It’s lovely. 

Grumpyrocker

ditchboy said:

Grumpyrocker said:

I think might actually be my Schecter PT Hellraiser Hybrid. It feels the most perfect together guitar I've played. It makes my RG1121 Premium and LTD EC1000 feel cheap in comparison despite being in similar price ranges.

It's a guitar that feels really premium and special. With the satin treatment on the neck it feels gorgeous to play. It doesn't have that "encased in a layer of plastic" feel that many guitars in this price range have. 

All the hardware is excellent, beautifully put together.

I wish my Les Paul felt this well made and perfect. 

What colour is that? It’s lovely. 

Thanks. Schecter calls it Ultraviolet. It's a flip finish so the colours change depending on the direction you are looking at it and the light source. 

ditchboy

I wouldn’t usually look at something like that but it’s very clean and eye catching. Nice piece. I’ve just had both my strat and tele set up by the same lad and I’m now struggling to work out which I prefer. I’m playing them on alternative evenings. 

Strat
https://imgur.com/a/6BHcqcT
Tele
https://i.imgur.com/51jPHeQ.jpg

CavemanGrogg

Easily my ''first'' electric guitar, not the one my parents bought me, nor the Rich Sambora signature Fender Stratocaster that I swapped for my ESP KH1 for, but the 1976 Gibson Les Paul Custom, that I swapped the Richie Sambora signature Stratocaster for.  Still to this day I've yet to find a guitar, yet alone a Gibson Les Paul, that plays and sounds as nice as my beat and worn to shit 1976 Gibson Les Paul Custom with it's maple neck and fretboard, not even my 78, which is essentially identical.  And it's apparently from the bad era of Gibsons, the so called Norlin era guitars,

Gimlet

My old ‘70s Lowden S22. It was inherited, so already well played-in when I received it. Such a simple aesthetic, made from a rather lovely red(-ish) mahogany set. It was beautiful to look at and just as much sounding, with quite a deep bass, pronounced mid-range, crisp transients and famous clarity. Comfortable low action, too! Bloody miss that thing! No other acoustic I’ve since played — even other Lowdens — quite compares. 

ManWithoutSkin

A 1961 Fender Esquire that apparently was once owned by SRV. The guitar was part of a huge guitar collection in a recoding studio my band recorded our second album in. It played and sounded amazing so we ended up using that guitar all over the album.

The studio bought a burst a year or so after we recorded there, I really wish they had it while we were there!

timmypix

I played a Strandberg for the first time yesterday, and good lord, I think I'm a convert. The neck shape is amazing - it put my hand in such a position that I found myself not pushing down as hard without even thinking, and it was all around the most comfortable guitar I've ever played.

Picked up my Les Paul afterwards and if felt huge and clunky and alien, which was very bizarre as Les Pauls have been my main guitars for 20 years.

Offset

ManWithoutSkin said:

A 1961 Fender Esquire that apparently was once owned by SRV. The guitar was part of a huge guitar collection in a recoding studio my band recorded our second album in. It played and sounded amazing so we ended up using that guitar all over the album.

Errrrrm... where exactly was this studio?

Th4fonz

I haven’t played any proper vintage guitars.  But out of all I’ve owned over the years and stuff I’ve tried in shops I’d say my current 2021 es 335 sixties cherry.  

impmann

The one I'm playing at that moment in time...

nikharrison

These are my go-to guitars for playing function stuff. Stormshadow DBS and DBS-P.

https://imgur.com/8d4kCqX

mo6020

It's very dull, and I'd like to say something more interesting, but I'm yet to play a better guitar than my Masterbuilt '65 Strat.

GavRichList

I find “best” quite tricky to pin down, even in just my own guitars, but all in all it’d have to be my ‘62 Jaguar. Feels like home, and that was immediate. It plays and sounds superb. 

That said, there’s something almost obstinately good about my ‘88 mapleglo ric 330. It’s not my favourite colour always, and it’s not the most comfortable of my 3 Rics to play (though it’s still pretty bloody marvellous) but it has a magic to its sound that is difficult to explain. Bloody glorious thing. 

Beyond my own, I recall @meltedbuzzbox CS Jazzmaster being very very appealing on my first encounter with it. 

TTBZ

timmypix said:

I played a Strandberg for the first time yesterday, and good lord, I think I'm a convert. The neck shape is amazing - it put my hand in such a position that I found myself not pushing down as hard without even thinking, and it was all around the most comfortable guitar I've ever played.

Picked up my Les Paul afterwards and if felt huge and clunky and alien, which was very bizarre as Les Pauls have been my main guitars for 20 years.

Exactly how I felt after playing one too! My SG neck felt absolutely huge. I just don't love how they look, I wish there was something more traditional looking with a similar feeling neck (with headstock still attached) and body. Was thinking an Ibanez S series could be an idea with it's extra thin body, should feel just as "out of the way" as the Strandberg design. 

lustycourtier

A 2016 Custom Shop 61 SG. Bought from a friend who does about 10 gigs a week and when I got in less than a year later it looked like Itd been found on the titanic, but played incredibly. Sold to bolster House deposit in 2019, but still missed.
 

NelsonP

NelsonP said:

For me I would say:
PRS custom and JEM777 - it was 1989 I was looking for a new guitar and ended up in Chandlers in Richmond late one afternoon. I'd been in Denmark street earlier in the day and arrived just as the shop was shutting. They kept it open.and let me get on with it, handing me several guitars way out of my price rang in the process. Both were exceptional guitars.
Jackson Soloist - played on the same day in Denmark St.
Friedman Vintage T - what a guitar. Neck actually quite reminiscent of the Jackson above (no coincidence!)
My mates 2016 SG Standard, with P90s, which is a lovely instrument.

All of them had a really infectious feel to them that brought a ton of energy to how I played them. I still haven't worked out whether that is all in my head and the fact that they were all made of unobtanium.

So what are the best guitars you've played?

Necro bump on this to say that the above guitars have been joined by my custom shop Gibson Les Paul '57 Special re-issue and a very tasty Les Paul Custom that I played at Coda recently. Anyone got £5k they could lend me?

Petepassion

The best guitar I've ever played is the '62 335 I bought about 3-4 years ago.
It always delivers, from sweet blues/jazz to Angus to QOTSA to that Jack White roar.
The look, the sound, the feel, it ticks every box. Plus nearly everyone who's played it has been very impressed...far better players than myself. Comments such as "Well that's just ruined every other 335 for me now".
   Even the old Bigsby is great, I wasn't interested in a 335 with a Bigsby but at the time this was the best of the bunch...and so glad I did. For me it wasn't instant, but the more time I spent with it, the better it became. It's like finding how to connect and get the best from it, then it rewards greatly.

   

Kurtis

My Strat. 

TheMarlin

This one