NZGuitars.com

I'm past that gas (for now, at least), I'm now trying to hunt down a 2000-2003 American Deluxe Stratocaster in the rare Teal Green Transparent finish.

Ideally, it would be a hardtail, but that narrows the choice of strats quite significantly.

One good thing about being very fussy about what I want is that they are very hard to find, so I part with less money

If you're not fussy about the headstock label, I may be able to help you with that one

Interesting debate - heard soemthing simil;ar years ago when the Yamaha SG 2000 FIRST came out (late 70's??? - the memory is going at long last -thank god - the 80's were that bloody aweful) Everybody said 'umm very, very nice BUT you can get a Gibson for that money'.

Also it's not quite so impossible for the LP makers of the 50's to be making guitars at heritage - assuming they were in their 20's back in the 50's. Remember a lot of American workers go till they drop and the Luthiers are especially like that (look at D'Angelico, D'Aquisto, Gallagher etc).

What I see as the crucial point is do these heritage guitars have the 'oomph' factor that makes them equal or more desirable than Gibsons - certainly in construction but I've not heard them played or played one which are the ultimate tests.

Nobody who made guitars in the 50's is at the old Gibson factory. They left probaly 20 years ago when it was shut down.

When the factory was closed down like many Americian factories were they all move on. a small team of 5 staff managed to buy the plant and jigs and continued to make guitars there. But they only make them to order not just for the sake of making them. At present their output is about 10 guitars a month and it is more of a retirment/lifestyle for some old boys.

The Heritage guitars are good guitars. Some people get wrapped up in the same people who made the Classic LP's of the 50's are still there. and its the old gibby factor. Thats fine if you are a collector looking for models by certain builders. But the reality is that they sit on shop floors for a long time to be sold and you only have to look at them on ebay to see that the second hand market is full of them with no bids and cheap buy now prices.

so if you plan on keeping it for a long time then go for it. I think it would be a great addition to any collection.

ash wrote:If you're not fussy about the headstock label, I may be able to help you with that one

I've been thinking about asking you that.

Could you give me a rough estimate of the price for a strat-style guitar with hardtail bridge, transparent finish, ash body (not you body please ), maple neck and fretboard, and 3 Seymour Duncan single coil pickups?

With the exchange rate so good, it is very tempting to settle for a tremolo Strat, however.

Check your PMs, BB.

Thanks for that - still thinking about it at this stage, but that is a very reasonable price for a handmade guitar, particularly on the New Zealand market.

Just out of interest, do you make the necks yourself? That must be one of the trickiest parts of making a guitar.

It depends on the choices, but I almost always make all the woodwork myself. Strats and teles allow the use of good aftermarket necks/bodies assuming fairly standard options are chosen. They still need some conditioning and fine tuning though.

Yeah, I was just wondering how you'd accomodate possible feature requests such as inlays or binding.

Things like that need to be specified before starting and all those choices contribute to the viability of scratch built v aftermarket.

Binding, for example automatically makes scratch built the only choice. I can do pretty much any binding or inlays if the extra cost is no issue.

Greg's tele neck for another example is quarter-sawn maple with a CBS strat headstock, so I'm making it from scratch.