Value of the most expensive guitar you own?
- Thread starter zorrow
- Start date
Is this poll about how much we paid or how much we could get? Most of my guitars are Hamers, so the resale might not be so good.
The most expensive guitar I've ever bought was my pedal steel, I foolishly bought it brand new, at $2,800. I should have never bought new. Next most expensive is my Boucher acoustic, which I also bought new, but I really love that guitar, so I don't feel bad for having paid $2,300.
The electrics I've bought have all been around the $800-1000 range.
The electrics I've bought have all been around the $800-1000 range.
My most expensive classical guitar cost me $12K, but those are sort of another world. I don't have any expensive classicals anymore.
These days I have convinced myself that $1500 used will always acquire something really nice, and that seems to work for me. Most electrics I've purchased hang in around $1200. The '68RI Les Paul Custom was $2K, which I think is the most I've paid for an electric.
Today I'm at a $1500 instrument.
These days I have convinced myself that $1500 used will always acquire something really nice, and that seems to work for me. Most electrics I've purchased hang in around $1200. The '68RI Les Paul Custom was $2K, which I think is the most I've paid for an electric.
Today I'm at a $1500 instrument.
This seems like a good rule of thumb for electrics....$1500 will get you a great electric for sure. Acoustics are a whole other ball game. I'm not saying you can't get a nice one for $1500, but when I was shopping for acoustics, the prices knocked me out.
It seems from what Feynman is saying that the classical guitar world is kind of similar. I don't know too much about classical guitars, but I do have a buddy who has one that he spent $3000 on and he considered that a super good deal.
Or "good" archtops,
I've fought off my "good archtop" longings for a long time now. Newports and Monacos have held that at bay, but it's always there, latent perhaps. I remind myself that I don't sound very good on even the stuff I have, and a five-digit-archtop won't be changing that.
Good point for sure. The other thing for electric, of course you need a decent guitar to start with, but lately I've been kind of thinking that the amp is the really crucial link.
(Not that the guitar isn't important of course, but a good amp will make a lot of guitars sound nice, whereas a great guitar through a so-so amp, not as much)
Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame
New member
Amps are the most important link in the chain?
Crap, that's going to set me off on a new GAS tangent.
Anyway, since I've bought used most of the time, they are all worth pretty much what I paid.
Right now, the most valuable guitar I have is the Blueburst that I bought for $1100 or so, and I'd probably get that if I sold it.
Prior to that, I have a Vandy Custom that I bought for $1450 that hit the right person at the right time with the right amount of cash and he jumped at $2000 BIN. So it might have been worth slightly more if I'd had a straight auction, and that would make it the most valuable guitar I'd ever touched, much less owned.
So it is kind of ironic that the only real way to find out what your most valuable guitar is really worth is to no longer have the most valuable guitar.
Now, my two favorite guitars cost me $250 and $495, for a plywood Westone Challenger (despite being plywood, it has great tone and looks/feels like I imagine an 80s USA Charvel does) and a neck-thru Yamaha RGX 1212.
Both have great tone, great action, and the trem stays in tune for months. What more could you want?
And I have another dozen guitars that are only infinitestimally behind those two, including the aforementioned blueburst Centaura and the rest of my Hamers. I just got a 1st Generation Slammer Series Daytona that has strat tones so beautiful that they will make you cry...with a boost switch! But the trem is blocked so I haven't tried the trem yet.
So I'm selling off a bunch of decent guitars...I am ecstatic about my collection lately. There is now not even a single guitar I am not excited to pick up and play, not one I am ever not in the mood to play.
Crap, that's going to set me off on a new GAS tangent.
Anyway, since I've bought used most of the time, they are all worth pretty much what I paid.
Right now, the most valuable guitar I have is the Blueburst that I bought for $1100 or so, and I'd probably get that if I sold it.
Prior to that, I have a Vandy Custom that I bought for $1450 that hit the right person at the right time with the right amount of cash and he jumped at $2000 BIN. So it might have been worth slightly more if I'd had a straight auction, and that would make it the most valuable guitar I'd ever touched, much less owned.
So it is kind of ironic that the only real way to find out what your most valuable guitar is really worth is to no longer have the most valuable guitar.
Now, my two favorite guitars cost me $250 and $495, for a plywood Westone Challenger (despite being plywood, it has great tone and looks/feels like I imagine an 80s USA Charvel does) and a neck-thru Yamaha RGX 1212.
Both have great tone, great action, and the trem stays in tune for months. What more could you want?
And I have another dozen guitars that are only infinitestimally behind those two, including the aforementioned blueburst Centaura and the rest of my Hamers. I just got a 1st Generation Slammer Series Daytona that has strat tones so beautiful that they will make you cry...with a boost switch! But the trem is blocked so I haven't tried the trem yet.
So I'm selling off a bunch of decent guitars...I am ecstatic about my collection lately. There is now not even a single guitar I am not excited to pick up and play, not one I am ever not in the mood to play.
Ha! Funny, I have the opposite opinion. I can get a decent guitar to sound good through most (but not all) amps, but even a great amp can't make a lousy guitar sound good.
I'm not a tone hound who looks for any particular sound, so I can usually find at least one sound that any amp does well. But a bad guitar will sound bad through anything. I should also note that I don't use high gain settings, so I suppose that if you use the amp to layer on thick distortion, it doesn't matter much what the input signal is.
Hmm. A crap guitar that can't be tuned, or buzzes, or has dead spots, or is a tone suck in general won't be helped by a good pickup.
I'd order them 1. guitar, 2. amp, 3. pickup.
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