Worst guitar you've owned

Voxman

My very first guitar when I was 14 was a 'Saxon' classical guitar that cost £6 and was a piece of tat with an action so high it nearly put me off playing. My first electric however (a few months later) was a £20 Tele shaped thing with a 'Topgear' badging (I think these were imported by Sears from Japan) that was only marginally better albeit it was my pride & joy at the time - but to be fair I had no understanding of action, string gauges, neck adjustment etc so it probably could have been a lot better, & it actually sounded OK.  Just found a pic.

ICBM

HarrySeven said:

Talking of ‘project’ semi-acoustics, how’s that nice-looking Maya 335-thing coming along?

For sale in the shop. It turned out very nice indeed, but it's still too long for me...

drofluf

Was a mandolin. Harley Benton branded Mandocaster. Action so high that I had to shim the neck to get it playable. When I took the neck off a handful of washers fell out. Took me days to get the neck angle sorted (it was the first electric instrument I’d owned) and then had to put shims in the neck screw holes to get them to hold. 

And weedy pickups too; which was cured by putting  an Almuse one in the neck. 

CarbonCopy

Epsilon said:

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).

One of what? I assume there's supposed to be a photo buy I can't see it! If it's what I think it is, my Dad had one. A Les Paul shaped object in a tobacco sunburst with effects that I think were called Wah Wah, Phaser, Tremolo, and something else weird. All were slight variations of the same sound and nothing like their name would suggest. The pickups were terrible, as was the general playability and it weighed a tonne!

CarbonCopy

Jalapeno said:

My first electric was virtually unplayable, a Jedson

My first electric was a Jedson bass. It was one of these but with a 'bass' neck. Same body, same scale, same pickups, same colour. I could never get it to play in tune as the intonation was dreadful!

CarbonCopy

The worst electric guitar I owned was Gibson '61 SG reissue. It was probably more disappointing than necessarily being a bad guitar.

I got it cheap and it was in a bad way and not looked after at all. I cleaned and set it up and was utterly underwhelmed. It was the darkest and dullest sounding guitar I'd ever had. It played absolutely fine, but even acoustically it sounded dull which just made it uninspiring to play. Very odd. I've never experienced that before or since with a guitar. I quickly sold it on eBay, fully disclosing that it was a dark sounding guitar, but played great. Within a few months, it was back up for sale on eBay again!

Barquentine

69 all-original Gibson SG Standard. I think the body was walnut. Weighed a ton. Sounded awful, really thin. Horrible to play. Harsh words would put it horrendously out of tune. I sold it for twice what I paid for it which is the only time I've made a profit on a guitar. It was worse than my first electric - a 70's Avon Les Paul copy. 

TeleMaster

Probably a 52 Tele AVRI. Felt like it was made of plastic and the neck was so coated in nitro. Yuk. 

exocet

Never had a truly awful guitar although I was spared that experience after being advised by a work colleague of my dad who after hearing that i was hankering after a Black Satellite LP said, "don't get one of those, buy a 2nd hand Telecaster for around £150”. This was around 1980, I tried to follow her advise...saved up all the cash, but Honky Tonk music didn't have any S/H Teles, they did have an SG100 which I bought for £110 and still have. Tonally not top notch but had a fantastic action so no problems learning to play.

A few months later, a mate if mine bought the Satellite LP, what a truly awful guitar it was. I worked on it for him, fitted DiMarzio Super Distortions to it but in reality it was a lost cause.

chris_john

I have bought and sold numerous cheap crappy Asian guitars, but at the very low price I paid they were value for money.
I bought a Gibson ES-399 Studio for a lot more, and it was just completely lifeless. I can't put my finger on it, but it was just not an enjoyable guitar to play at all. Plus, the skinny neck gave me wicked hand cramps. It took ages to get rid of as well. 

Daiganzen

For me it was a red Tokai SG massive neck dive and choked on every bend sold it ASAP 

usedtobe

An earlier post reminded me of the epiphone bolt on neck SG I had. Similar experience.. just a horrible guitar. 

The one I had in mind before the SG reminder was a Vintage brand electric. One of the early models. A sort of Les Paul influenced design, but a unique double cutaway design. Nice looking guitars, I always thought. This was horrible to play. The finish on the neck extended to the edge of the fretboard and was razor sharp, and sliced into your fingers if you tried to move up or down the neck. I was younger and inexperienced and didn’t know how to deal with the issue, other than to sell the thing as quickly as possible.

tone1

Perhaps not the worst, but for the price I’d say my PRS 513....Lifeless and bland with the high E miles too close to the edge of the fingerboard 

prowla

merlin said:

Woolies "Audition" made by Teisco. My first guitar. Swapped it fairly quickly for a Columbus 335 a-like. Also terrible. 

My worst guitar was a Top Twenty, from the same stable.

As proof of my penchant for viewing the past through rose-tinted spectacles, however, I recently bought an Audition!

It's original pickup was faulty, so I put a Strat one in there, pending getting it repaired; actually, it sounds quite good!

chillidoggy

Can I go for three?

1. Woolies Audition. Even Satriani would fail to pass an audition using one of those. Cost me a whopping £7 and would have been more useful on an open fire.

2. Jedson Telecaster. Arguably on a par with the above, felt like something the apprentices had knocked up. The catering apprentices, that is.

3. Gherson SG. I see what they did with the name, there. Sadly, that's where any vestige of resemblance ended.

Laughably, some websites have these utter pieces of shite for sale as rare or vintage, when in reality they're not vintage and only rare because anyone with half a brain would have cremated them years ago.

SteveRobinson

The worst was, I'm sorry to say, a double P-90 Gordon Smith SG which had all the sustain of a banjo.

Greatape

Eighties 2-humbucker Squier. Black headstock, red body. Junk. Closely followed by an early 90's Mex strat.