The Most You'd Spend on a Guitar?

VimFuego

I've been pretty lucky, my few highish end items have been bought 2nd hand at good prices. I paid, in '06, £600 for my larry OM05, and it was virtually unplayed. They go for about £1100 or so now, so that counts as my most expensive. I bought an old, but in good nick 2nd hand Hanson sax a year ago for £200, new they are £850.

bacchanalian

It is not so much the cost of one guitar but how much in total I would spend on guitars, amps pedals.
I think, maybe £10000 in total. 
If I sold my three electrics I could replace them with maybe one at a maximum of £8000.  Might do this if PRS do another run of the pernambuco necked DGTs
Looking at those figures is making me break out in a sweat but is probably not unrealistic if spread over 5 years.
To give that some context, we recently changed my wife's car and the cost in depreciation was around £4000 per annum

Edit: I should add that this is not how much I have spent but a theoretical maximum that I think I could be comfortable with. 

robgilmo

I cant afford nice things, 300 quid second hand would be my limit, if I had a spare 300 quid, two kids and rent to pay comes above everything.

HAL9000

Probably around the £750 mark which IMO buys a perfectly decent guitar. 

None of my current guitars cost over £500 (alright then - £700 if you include upgrades), and all play well and sound ok to my ears.

sweepy

Probably £8k the 63 Strat if I sold my other guitars

merlin

There's a '63 Strat on SC at the moment.... 

hotpickups

I’ve sunk too much money onto a guitar last year I.e. over 3.5k. However, I’m already thinking of another, not as expensive as that (around 2-2.5k). I can’t really afford or justify it tbh but life is too short and I probably have less life left than what I have already lived. So as long as the mortgage gets paid, we can eat and have a holiday still I can justify to myself owning these remarkable instruments as it gives me immense joy playing them. 

Maybe i should sink any surplus cash into a pension but where would be the fun in that especially if I don’t live long enough to draw any of it. A bit morbid for this morning but it’s the truth 

Sassafras

I would only pay over £250k for a 58 Burst if it was in mint condition, I'm not made of money.

VimFuego

I've always maintained (and I'm aware that this is a complete rationalisation) but money spent on durable items like quality musical instruments is never wasted. They bring pleasure while you own them, and they can always be sold for close(ish) to what you paid if you have to. There are so many things we shell out for in everyday life that we will never get the money back for but musical instruments are not one. 

RaymondLin

Erm, the most was $2200 + taxes which was like £500 on a PRS SC58.

Or I traded a PRS Custom 22 + £1,000 for this Gibson Custom Shop.  So in terms of money spent it is one of these 2.

RandallFlagg

Probably between £7K-£8K

Grumpyrocker

My most expensive guitar is my Les Paul which cost £1700 in 2009, however that was a gift from my wife.

What I'd actually spend now? Had a sort of epiphony about this recently, what a guitar is worth, what are the parts worth, what does it matter where it's from, is a full maple top actually any better than veneer, etc. 

And the upshot of this is that I'd not pay more than £1000 for a new guitar because anything beyond that is bullshittery. And for £1000 it'd have to have some good pickups. 

I recently bought a PRS SE 245 in a sale at Peach. Should have been £750, I got it for £200 less. I don't see a single thing about this guitar that makes it inferior to any other in terms of build quality. However if you moved the factory a few thousands miles east suddenly it'd be a £2000 guitar. 

midlifecrisis

most ive spent is £500 for a used LP studio, i would pay up to £1000 if i found one that i fell in love with but tbh most of the guitars i like have all been 3-400 used. I consider it a fantastic investment for the pleasure i get from them, they all pay for themselves anyway with gigging, and can all be sold for minimal loss if i wanted to. Lets face it, buy a £400 phone and its landfill in 5 years time.

merciful-evans

Solid body : £1,500 max

Hollow body : £2,500 max

Acoustic Spanish (nylon string) : £4,000 max


Plus: I would not pay more than £1,000 for any guitar with a rosewood fretboard. 

Dontgiveupyourdayjob

Most expensive guitar I've ever owned is about £600 and I love it to bits. Barring any major changes to my financial circumstances in the near future, I can't ever see me spending more than £1000 an a guitar.

guitargeek62

I'd be reluctant to spend more than £1k on a new electric these days, I move gear on too quickly generally so I prefer to buy used. Even then, my upper limit is probably £2-2.5k given how little I actually end up playing them! I'd be more comfortable spending higher amounts on acoustics, but I feel you get more for your money (generally) with them than you do for an electric. That said, the Eastman J45 copy I tried recently with the french polish/varnish finish has really turned that on it's head and is now making me question what the point would be of ever spending more than one of those on an acoustic as it had one of the best tones and feel I've heard/tried, including against some actual golden-era J45s!

soma1975

I can't remember who it was on here that agreed to get married saying if his wife got an engagement ring he could have a guitar of equal value... 

Anyway I have copied that and my GF has agreed. Now to save a shitload. I'm thinking custom shop 335 reissue so that much. 

Tenebrous

HAL9000 said:

Probably around the £750 mark which IMO buys a perfectly decent guitar. 

None of my current guitars cost over £500 (alright then - £700 if you include upgrades), and all play well and sound ok to my ears.

It's actually insane what that sort of money gets you nowadays, even when compared to when I started playing in the early 00s. I actually made a thread on it a few months back when I picked up the Bernie Marsden SE: http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/151681/the-quality-of-mid-ranged-guitars-nowadays-is-insane-belated-ngd-thread/p1

In recent years, I've rebought a Yamaha 611, an SE PRS, an Ibanez RG, and a limited run Telecaster. The Tele cost more than double any of the others, and as much as I love it & find it to be the perfect guitar for me, is it better built than any of the others? Not really. Is it better specced than the others? Nope... Hell, it had more fret buzz than all the others when it arrived, which was a very simple fix sure, but it's not like I paid the premium for a more premium experience. The Yamaha/Ibanez/PRS came out of the box perfectly set up and ready to go.

Philly_Q

Over the years I've often thought "I'd never spend more than £X on a guitar", but that £X has gradually got higher and it's never come back down again.

The most I've actually spent was just under £3.5k, which was a big jump from the previous record of £2.7k.

I'm now at a point where I'm much more likely to buy one expensive guitar than spend the same amount of money on five or six cheaper ones which would all be gone again within six months.

Right now, I can't see myself ever spending the 5 or 6 grand it costs for the really high end Fender or Gibson custom shop offerings, or even more than that for a PRS Private Stock or something.  But I can imagine, without too much pain, breaking £4k for a Patrick James Eggle or maybe a custom build.  Which isn't to say I wouldn't buy something much cheaper, like maybe a PRS S2 or Gordon Smith, if it ticked enough boxes and I really liked it.

stickyfiddle

soma1975 said:

I can't remember who it was on here that agreed to get married saying if his wife got an engagement ring he could have a guitar of equal value... 

Anyway I have copied that and my GF has agreed. Now to save a shitload. I'm thinking custom shop 335 reissue so that much. 

Don't know if I mentioned it before but that's basically what I did. Though the engagement ring was more than my most expensive guitar, and the new guitar cost about half what the ring did