"Guitarists": Exploiting our demographic has gone too far
 

This madness must be curtailed.

I have infornt of me an full color advertisement for "The Jimi Hendrix Liquid Experience"..........it comes in a bottle. I suspect it is some kind of soda pop. Then again, It could be afro-'merkun hair product. It promises to deliver "Peace. Love Purpose". Who the fark knows.

Gibson have released a Kiefer Southerland Signature Guitar.

Overweight middle aged men are shelling out $25,000 for Van Halen guitars that where built for well under $300 of parts in the day.

And dont get me started on the Digitech Clapton Pedal.......what's next people?:

Curt Cobain Signature Series Bullets?

It's nice to idolize, but where will this all end?

Oh, forgot to mention the Fender Rory Gallagher Strat..........factory beaten to smithereens. INCULDES A FACTORY POLISHING CLOTH!

AHHGGHHGH! MY EYES - THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!

I am in the wrong business.

Further madness. "Kerry King" has a signature Marshall amp. The only other man before him to have such a thing was


*DRUMROLL*


Jimi Hendrix. Who is Kerry King? Some putz that wears cheese graters on his chubby little forearms and says "hail satan" alot - that's who.

You see where this is headed?

You forgot the Fender Andy Summers Telecaster.

When will it stop? As soon as people quit buying it.

I hear the hello kitty strat is on backorder. :D

Fender sells a couple of guitars and basses now with the pre-worn paint scheme... WTF is up with that?

I can understand some of the signature guitars... i.e. the Eric Johnson or Clapton strat, but whatever happened to coming up with your "own" signature sound?

That, I can sort of understand. So long as the premium over an (already hideously overpriced Tele) isn't more than fifty bucks.

'scuse me if I am wrong, but aren't the EJ and EC strats just, well.....STRATS??? Maybe with some slightly different pickups and in a limited color scheme, but plain old Strats made from timber off cuts and poorly coated malformed bits of pressed tin?

Pardon the ranting by the way.

It is alchohol induced and largely based on my seeming inability to aquire musical skills beyond anything with opposable thumbs and an addiction to ebay could learn after a bottle of tequila.

It's okay, I'm sure you'll be able to find all that stuff marked way down at GuitarCenter's once-in-a-lifetime, never-to-be-repeated sale of the week next week.

IMO, the EJ strat is probably the best bang for the buck strat there is if you can find a used from the first 1000 or so of that were made. I've found a couple in the 400-600 serial number range for ~$1100. I cant get over the big frets, but some of them are actually good guitars.

LOL!

Reminds me of the time I was in guitar center and some leathered up pseudo rock star was all up in the face of a salesman who apparently sold him a guitar at "absolute rock bottom price" only to find the same guitar on sale later at a lower price.

Re: Signature strats... I know nothing... although I have seen a $300 strats and $30,000 strats with a very wide variety of hardware/electronics on them and there are hundreds of kinds of wood that can be use for the neck/body all yielding subtle differences in tone.

Only time I buy at Guitar center is if they have a sale on something and I like the printed price (be sure to bring the ad with you). I bought a Yamaha 5 string bass for $450 that I thought was a good (not great) deal... and a Ferington Bass for $275, you can't even find those anymore.

Maybe...

I have the EC Signature Strat. I did not go into Sam Ash looking
to buy it.... I went in to check out the Am Standard Strats. So
I played a few of them, and nothing sounded very good....
so, hey what is that black Strat over there?

Plugged it in and "bam" what a great sound! Pretty versitile axe
with multiple pickup combinations of the Fender Noizeless pickups
and also a treble booster tone thing. It is a great sounding
guitar, so I bought it. Props to EC. :)

Also...the Hello Kitty Strat was on back order that day...

Ive got my order in for the Jimmy Page Les Paul at $12k, and im saving to the limited edition Paul McCartney (wait for it) Epiphone acoustic at $100k.

I wanted a Rory Strat, but when I got on home I found a scratch on it so I took it back. See it there, just near the top.
http://elderly.com/images/fmic/30N/FCRG_body-front.jpg

The one that ticks me of to no end is PRS, completely ruining or eliminating every innovation of the guitar as it was originally conceived for cost reasons, but then saying these "improvements" sound better.

I am just waiting for the PRS to make an 85 standard reissue that brings back all the innovations; it WILL happen.

Pretty sure that Slash was the first person with a Signature Model amp.

The EJ strat is actually probably the best strat out there for the money. It is the one of two non custom shop strat I would buy.

It has the 50s body which is a deeper cut, lighter weight bodies and nitro finish... all of which contribute to increased resonance. The string eyelets at the headstock are also staggered so that the strings are perfectly parallel to the neck with no string tree required. All hardware is vintage.

There is no backplate from the factory so there are no holes for the backplate screws. Not many people keep their blackplate on for serviceability so this is kind of a nice touch.

Kind of the opposite of this strat is the Jeff Beck model which uses all the advancements from the 90s like the roller nut, and the locking tuners with the latest pickups.

Both are great strats

The next limited edition guitar that they are going to introduce is the "AIR GUITAR"

i'd like to see what some industrious seller on e-bay could get for a 'signature air guitar' myself.. ;)

LMAO:D

All this hubbub about the Hello Kitty strat has really piqued my interest. I've got to get on their waiting list tomorrow when the shops open!

Do they sell a blank HK pick guard that I could fit to my current strat? Or would the HK clone make me seem too much of a poseur? I gotta protect my guitarist cred, you know...

Eddie Van Halen had a pretty good signature model amp, the Peavey 5150. Back when he had just started out with Kramer, the Baretta was a pretty sweet axe, though they went downhill. Now Fender is making a perfect copy of his Frankenstrat and selling them for $30k. Who knows if it's true, but EVH swears he can't tell the difference between the real one and the copies. Even the cigarette burn marks are copied and they rounded up batches of 1976 quarters like the one Ed screwed into the body to even up the bridge.

Does EJ play his signature models live? Last I saw him, he was playing some pretty old and expensive looking Strats.

But have any of these signature models actually ever gave something NEW to the consumer? Why would pay $10K for a relic job to LOOK like Rory's or Stevie's strat? It doesn't play or sound any different than any other high end custom shop strat. It's such a joke.

At least when Brian May's Red Special was copied and produced, it was providing us with something genuinely new.

I don't know about EJ but EC definitely doesn't play his signature strats. The closest thing he plays to a signature strat is various mercedes blue Todd Kraus or Mark Kendrick masterbuilt strats that resemble a signature strat.

The last time Clapton was around I was totally unimpressed. He came out and did a bunch of blues standards and Derek trucks was playing circles around him. Clapton also used this cream coloured strat which may had sounded good somewhere (studio?) but it was one of the worst sounds I have ever heard from anybody at any concert.

When you get to Clapton status, you can pretty much go on stage, slam ham, and 99% of the audience will be thrilled; I was disappointed.

Nothing but talent is gonna make someone sound as good as the endorser. Remember, EVH's original Frankenstrat was slapped together with about $250 of spare parts laying around. Now, he'll end up playing the Fender replicas because the original is worth millions and is too risky to take on the road. I can't believe he actually loaned it out to the guy who did the Fender replicas.

I was in the R&R Hall of Fame last Tues. and at the Queen exhibit, I was a little disappointed to see the Guild copy instead of Brian May's original. But I guess he's still playing it and only made one of them. I've played the Guild copy before. Why didn't I sound like Brian May? LOL.

Brian May is one of those guys - he has his own sound.. you hear it on the radio and its instantly recognizable.

I've known some guys that were just amazing who couldn'd afford anything more than Squier Strats, etc.

For a Strat, anything more than a used custom shop isn't going to do anything for you, your playing, or your sound. I had to actually build my own out of parts because Fender didn't make what I want. It cost me about $1700 to do but I can tell you I don't look at Strats or even to the guitar store anymore because its the one for me.

I guess I just don't understand the "i wanna be like..." anything because I have alway sjust wanted to be like me and if there was something I didnt like about me, I tried my best to change it.

How do you afford your rock-n-roll lifestyle?

Did you get into "The Jimi Hendrix Liquid Experience" ?

I am wondering what a ""WHO'' distroyed on stage ax is worth today
or the bits of one

I read they are only to make 300 copies so I'm sure they will go for big bucks.

I made a pretty decent Frankenstrat copy years ago for about $400 in parts and eBay'ed it for $600. $30k is just insane. It's not like playing that guitar is gonna make anyone sound like old VH or give them the brown sound. It's all in the hands, next in the amp and last in the guitar.

To sound like EVH you need the whole package, guitar, amp, effects rack, and a fair amount of skill.

Skill is right. EVH tells a story about when they were touring with Ted Nugent and Ted asked to try out Ed's rig and still couldn't make it sound anything like Ed did. Listen to the intro of Take Your Whiskey Home. Nothing but pure feel, iron-strong hands and super musical talent.

I always like going to concerts where the guitar tech comes out before the show with the star's guitar and warms it up, just playing through their amp rig with the PA off. I've seen EJ's and EVH's techs do it and it's always a thrill to hear that raw sound.

No - Heineken. Still had a fairly liquid experience though. I reckon that catch phrase is going to stick.

A min. of $25k will transform you into the next EVH, courtesy of Fender Custom Shop. ;)

http://img3.musiciansfriend.com/dbas...2/0/483620.jpg

http://img3.musiciansfriend.com/dbas...6/0/504660.jpg

http://img3.musiciansfriend.com/dbas...7/7/504677.jpg

Ah, so it was 1971 instead of 1976. I read an interview with the guy who did these guitars and he had a real hard time finding enough 1971 quarters. He ended up buying some rolls of them on eBay.

nice closeups. the guitar we love. :)

**** i can stick a lot of tape, reflectors, and drill as many quarters as I want into my strat for $25K

Yeah, and the irony is that, if IIRC, it wasnt even made from Fender bits.

The EVH strat, while an amazing bit of repro craftmanship, is just a joke. 25k-30k? The joke is that a market exists for such a thing.

I'm convinced it's the same dude's that are paying $7000 for a push bike and $30k for a Hardley Davidson.

Actually that is funny, can you spot the use of a quarter in my 3.6?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1183007356.jpg