[mathminnick31]

Originally Posted by jthomas1600

Here's an interesting, and I think related, question: Let's say someone put you in a room with 10 guitars on stands and 10 price tags ranging from $500 to $1,500. Let's say all branding and identification was removed from the guitars and the room was lighted just enough so you could play. You're going to play all 10 guitars through the same amp set up and then put price tags on them. How confident are you that you would get the right price tags on the right guitars?

If you can't play a handful of guitars blind and determine which ones might be $500, which ones might be $1,000, and which ones might be $1,500 then it may not make a lot of sense to spend the big money.

I'd like to give it a try.

[martinedwards]

I had a day to waste a while back and went to a local guitar store.

Cheapest acoustic on the rail was a £99 Jay Turser. most expensive was £1600 Yairi. in between, Yamahas, Martins, Ibanez and others.

I'm not a teenager, have short hair and don't look like I dribble so I asked the guy behind the counter and he said to go ahead.

I played about 15 guitars.

I ended up playing the Jay Turser for about an hour.

It was the one that fitted ME best on that particular day.

[Dr. Thrunk]

Originally Posted by martinedwards

I had a day to waste a while back and went to a local guitar store.

Cheapest acoustic on the rail was a £99 Jay Turser. most expensive was £1600 Yairi. in between, Yamahas, Martins, Ibanez and others.

I'm not a teenager, have short hair and don't look like I dribble so I asked the guy behind the counter and he said to go ahead.

I played about 15 guitars.

I ended up playing the Jay Turser for about an hour.

It was the one that fitted ME best on that particular day.

Ha! Nice!

Its crazy how much value you can find in something that, according to the price, is way less worthy of being purchased.

Reminds me of a time I had to play a Danelectro guitar for a gig because my guitar broke mid song. It was a cheap guitar, but it felt really good and played decently.

[platefire]

I seen this ION strat copy smiling at me across the room at a thrift shop. Looked
closer and it was marked $20.That peaked my intrest! It was pretty beat up, a couple
of strings were missing, it had a couple of cracks in the body, whammy was broke off in
the trem block but on the plus side---all the parts were intact. So I laid my $20
bill down and took it home. Hooked it up to an amp and it worked. I had to tighten
everything up on it, everything was loose.

Well I picked around on it around the house and begin to set it up. Got it playing
pretty decent. So after I had it about a year determined that it was worthy of upgrade.
From searching the net I found the body was Maple. So this is what I did"

1-Rewired it with some Telecaster CST pots, .047 Mallory tone cap and wire I had on hand
2-Removed the old ceramic pickups and installed some 2004 Fender USA Hwy 1 Alnico V
Strat pickups I had on hand
3-Couldn't get the broke of whammy bar piece out of the block, so I bought a new Affinity Squier
Whammy system and installed it
4-Drilled some pilot holes through the cracks in the body and installed some long wood screws
through the cracks., tightened them up and pulled the cracks up taught and then filled the pilot
holes with carpenters putty. Sanded off the patched holes and spot painted it where the holes were.
5-Installed to DynaGuide string trees from the Netherlands.
6-Tightened up the neck truss rod to get the neck completely straight and did my stat style set up on it with floating tremolo

The thing now plays and sounds good. Never thought the ION would pan out as good as it
did but turned out to be a nice project guitar and I wouldn't be ashamed to play it anywhere.
Platefire

[mikesr1963]

If you have the discipline to put a little away each payday for a guitar it's all up to you. If you're not taking money away for life's mandatory items you can have anything almost.