The guitar that should have been amazing but was a real piece of crap.
For me it was the Ibanez Universe UV777PBK. Jesus it was just dreadful. I don't think I had it in tune once in the whole time I owned it.
The low B would drop by a tone, I'd tune it back up and it would do it again; all the while the tension was raising the bridge in to the air until it was nearly vertical. It would do this repeatedly no matter what I adjusted. I took it to my usual tech who I've used for a decade and it continued to do this even after he'd had a go.
There was also something with the neck where it would attract dirt and it would just stay in the wood so the neck was filthy and sticky.
It was absolutely fucking shit. I ended up selling it to someone so they could part it out.
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Bought it because it was a very rare RG with a cool graphic. Turned up and every piece of metal was rusted. The tone was bland and weak, the trem was knackered and wouldn't hold its tuning.
Changed the bridge for another and it was still crap. Also turned out the neck was a replacement, an appropriate one but still I was told it was original.
Sold it about month after I got it. Managed to get my money back on it luckily.
just total shite. Everything about it. Shite.
Despite having the magic words 'Fender' and 'Stratocaster' on the headstock, it was a lousy guitar.
Even by 70s standards it was heavy - probably over 11lbs. No body contours to speak of, badly cut nut (spacing was was out), didn't sound particularly good....
Once I'd played a few pre-CBS models, I soon realised it had to go.
neck was lovely tho' .......perhaps the Seth Lovers were to blame but pup changes didn't make much difference
Other one was a Yamaha Pacifica 311, the worst unplugged sound of any electric I've owned. I'm amazed the cheaper Pacificas still have a rep, most are fine but the entry level game has moved on since they changed it back in the early nineties, yet the Pacifica hasn't really changed with it.
It's got to have been the worst guitar I've ever owned - it felt like a plank to play, never stayed in tune and didn't sound too good either.
I swapped it in Scheerers in Leeds for the Charvel ST Custom I've still got. Looking back I now understand why the chap in the shop bit my hand off at the deal but I was happy as I had a guitar that felt comfortable to play, stayed in tune and sounded good too!
In hindsight it wasn't the wisest move on my part, but in my defence at the time that style Telecasters weren't particularly fashionable and at the end of the day I had only paid a hundred quid for it.
My PRS CE22 was the darkest muddiest guitar that I've ever heard. I had to put some serious money in to it to get it sounding decent and the only reason I did it was because the feel was so good. Otherwise it would have been straight out the door.
The shop took two - the 425 and the 450, which is the same but with two pickups. I played both and it was obvious that the 450 was by far the better guitar, but… it just wasn't the one I wanted, so I bought the 425 anyway on the assumption that it could be fixed with a set-up.
Wrong. Nothing I could do to it would take away the odd nasal midrange tone it had. I changed the strings, pickup (I ended up putting a Gibson P100 in the Rick casing, still made no difference), and even fitted a Bigsby to it, but nothing helped. In the end I just gave up and sold it - but I still wonder if I ever saw it again, whether I would buy it back and see if after all, I couldn't make it sound good...
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Then there was the Ampeg Dan Armstrong reissue, had seymour Duncan p90s and was the start of my realisation that me and Mr Duncan have drastically different ideas about how a guitar should sound, it was also the first time I felt like the guitar I'd taken home and the one I had played in the shop were two different beasts.
Then there was the *cough* Teye *cough*. Beautiful instrument with a vast array of sounds but there is something about the simplicity of a telecaster that is seems I just can't get beyond, so that wasn't for me either.
I refuse to pay CS prices, remove "fender" from the headstock and you get to pay far less for the same quality from lesser known competitors.
The worst in terms of workmanship was a mid-2000s USA Tele which turned out to have all the neck fixing screws completely misaligned. Whichever drunken Fender bod was responsible had then hugely enlarged the holes in the body to allow the neckplate to just about sit in the right place. The finish was about 2mm thick as well, it was generally just a bad guitar. In the end I kept the neck and sold the body as a fixer-upper.
Exactly this. Same model same experience.