Worst guitar you've owned

skunkwerx

An Epiphone Les Paul plus top pro from about 2015 ish. 

Looked stunning.

But the frets were soft as shit, and no matter what I did, there was some mega stickyness to the fretboard/frets/strings. 

I cleaned the fretboard, polished the frets, changed strings so many times but slides and bends were just impossible. I think one of my first posts here was to do with it actually. 

Washed my hands like crazy, used different moisturisers, tried all the string lubricants etc.. 

Scraped the fretboard, tried naphtha etc.

After 5 mins of playing that was it, slides and bends were like trying to play wearing rubber gloves. 

I know I suffer from this weirdness moreso than normal after playing a bit on any guitar and some guitars are worse for it than others, so my skin plays a role but this one was just mental. It was blistering my fingers and tearing my callouses up in no time. 

Traded it back in for an Se tremonti. 

It put me off Epi’s though fully. In fact even Gibsons too.. I tried a Dc special tribute and it felt great until I oiled the board. Even though I’m sure I didnt use an excess amount, the board seemed to soak it up and hold it and almost excrete it during playing.. it felt sodden.. the fretboard softer..
I got rid. 

I bought my Gibson lpj earlier this year. 

Though I vowed never to put any cleaning agents or oil on the board, because Gibsons and Epi’s, I dunno if its the fretboard wood but it seems to soak that shit up and gets saturated with it and I hate the perceived feeling..

My other brands, Gretsch, Esp, never seemed to do this. The oil goes on, buffs off the excess and its all good. Weird. 

Scared no oiling ever may eventually cause issues.. but I dunno  

Jalapeno

My first electric was virtually unplayable, a Jedson

kentuckyklira

Worst guitar, Kay Les Paul copy from the late 70s with bolt on neck and pickups that looked like humbuckers but actually only had a single coil inside. It almost made me give up playing.

Worst value for money, a late 80s Ibanez Universe 777. The guys at Ibanez must have hit the sake heavily the evening before they made that guitar.

meltedbuzzbox

worst - definitely a Rickenbacker. I forget what model it was but it was a hateful bag of shite. 

DartmoorHedgehog

I bought a cheap LP custom copy when I was a student in the late 80s.  Bolt-on neck, top was pressed plywood, probably "single-coil humbucker-a-likes".  It was tatty when I bought it, so I'd guess made in the 70s, but I don't know what make it was (it had the Gibson "split diamond" logo on the headstock).  To be fair, it played well enough for me at the time and it only cost me £20, but every guitar I've had since has certainly been better.

thegummy

Squier Strat that I got when I was 12.

Though, saying that, it served me well learning the basics on it and occasional fortnight-long sessions over the following 18 years so can't fault it too much.

Worst guitar I've bought myself as an adult is, without a shadow of a doubt, a Gibson Les Paul Tribute. Had several problems and was ridiculously overpriced for the stripped-down no-frills model it is.

Every other guitar I've bought has been pretty much perfect even if a couple of them weren't suited to my preferences.

PonchoGreg

Come to think of it (and checking my trusted spreadsheet to refresh my memory), I've never had an objectively bad guitar in about 30 purchases. And that includes a Squier Affinity Tele, and plenty of other lower-end guitars.

I did have a Takamine electro-acoustic (entry-level) that was very uninspiring, so that would probably be my pick of "the worst". But again, not bad per se.

thegummy

PonchoGreg said:

Come to think of it (and checking my trusted spreadsheet to refresh my memory), I've never had an objectively bad guitar in about 30 purchases. And that includes a Squier Affinity Tele, and plenty of other lower-end guitars.

I did have a Takamine electro-acoustic (entry-level) that was very uninspiring, so that would probably be my pick of "the worst". But again, not bad per se.

I've been thinking a lot lately about cheap guitars and what we're really getting for buying more expensive ones after all the psychological stuff is out of the picture.

Say there was a bunch of guys who were just about to spend a couple grand on a new guitar and, as an experiment, they were sent 500 quid equivalents (or insert whatever price you want) with the appropriate logos etc. for the brand they're buying.

Would they get the guitars and be horrified that this isn't the kind of quality that they're expecting for their money?

Or would they try them out, find they play great and not even question that it's the expensive guitar they ordered?

It's an interesting thought. I've seen examples like this in other areas where people very much believed the thing they were consuming was great because they were told it's expensive. It's just a question whether or not it applies to guitars.

bbill335

the dearmond m65 i started with. weighed a tonne, sounded bad, couldn't keep tune, snapped strings. i sold it to a mate for £50 and another mate scratched a phallus onto the back.

Epsilon

One of these:



It's a Kay Effector. Single coils under the HB casings, horrifying electronics and in-built effects that sounded absolutely nothing like they were supposed to (although the fuzz had a certain charm).

Gassage

Sassafras said:

Gassage said:

For the price- a Martin EC signature. Stiff, lifeless, dull.

I found the same.
Maybe you have to play them hard for 30 years or so for the wood to loosen up a bit.

Sass, It had a fishman over the hole whoch I removed- I thought that was stiffening it but it made only a tiny bit of difference.

LastMantra

Probably an Ibanez gio. 

JerkMoans

1959 Gibson Les Paul 'burst.  Nasty thing.  All heavy and well-used.  Swapped it for a Marlin Sidewinder and never looked back.

kswilson89

Where to start?? An Encore LP copy I had was pretty craptacular but also an American Standard tele I had was awful, I think mainly because the person who sanded the modern C neck shape must have had a monumental brainfart that day, terrible feel to it.

Logie

A 2007 Gibson Les Paul Standard. Proper clown burst but bought it because it was cheapish. Don't think there was a note on the fretboard that didn't choke when bending and after fruitless pissing about myself I admitted defeat and paid for it to be sorted. It only cost £80 to be fair but the tech said it was shocking. Played lovely after that but couldn't wait to get rid of the clunker. 

ICBM

Jalapeno said:

My first electric was virtually unplayable, a Jedson

I take great satisfaction from turning things like this into decent playable guitars, but I have to admit that you basically have to take them apart and start again as if it's a kit where nothing quite fits right... I've been able to sell them for good prices, but the final value reflects the work that went in, not the intrinsic quality. And there are some that just can't be done economically at all, usually when the fretting is too uneven.

thegummy

Logie said:

A 2007 Gibson Les Paul Standard. Proper clown burst but bought it because it was cheapish. Don't think there was a note on the fretboard that didn't choke when bending and after fruitless pissing about myself I admitted defeat and paid for it to be sorted. It only cost £80 to be fair but the tech said it was shocking. Played lovely after that but couldn't wait to get rid of the clunker. 

What did he do to fix it?

thermionic

My first one, a Satellite like this:

https://i.imgur.com/Xz703wy.jpg

Short scale but high action, missing tremolo spring (probably a good thing come to think of it), and slide switches that were off in the down position so it would often go quiet mid-song. My friend stepped on my cable which snapped off the end of the pickguard (I somehow repaired it with some success). Cost me £25, sold it for £20 to a student who was somewhat disappointed it wasn’t a real “Strat copy” as I’d described it, but liked it anyway. Almost everything that followed has been an improvement.

jeztone2

Washburn Mercury MG40. The neck moved while you were playing and the Floyd was made out of the metal they use for those cheap pub ashtrays. Sent it back, got a credit note and bought another Ibanez RG560.

ICBM

thegummy said:

Logie said:

A 2007 Gibson Les Paul Standard. Proper clown burst but bought it because it was cheapish. Don't think there was a note on the fretboard that didn't choke when bending and after fruitless pissing about myself I admitted defeat and paid for it to be sorted. It only cost £80 to be fair but the tech said it was shocking. Played lovely after that but couldn't wait to get rid of the clunker. 

What did he do to fix it?

Fret dress, probably - I've worked on a Yamaha Revstar like that... unplayable from new, which was a real shock from Yamaha and would come close to qualifying as the worst, had I owned it myself.