#1 · Nov 14, 2008 23:13 UTC
So a while back I bought a Schecter C7 Blackjack 7 string. $400. Well, it was OK, but the novelty of playing Hashpipe and Seperate Ways in drop A wore off pretty quickly. I had a hankering to get my hands on a Floyd Rose equiped guitar. I ended up trading for the Dean Dime CFH guitar. OK, a show or two holding my guitar near 90 degrees vertical and I was over that too. So I tried 3 times to sell on eBay, no success, even when priced at a loss.
So a guy calls me up and offers an Ibanez RG 370DX as trade. Any of you who have played one of these is already either saying "Spaiv tell me you didn't" or just snickering at my foolishness. It is mint, I mean beautiful typical RG looking guitar. I played it and the nostalgia of my Ibanez endorsed shredder days came flooding back. With my amp at living room volume, the Power Sound pickups (perhaps the worst in the history of guitar) did not sound so bad. I figured hell, the Edge III doesn't feel as cheap as i expected, worse case scenario I drop some EMG or Dimarzios in there and viola! It'll be 1989 all over again!!
Then, today, in preparation for tonites gig, I tune it up, crank my amp, and the sound was brittle, terrible, toneless crap. I didn't expect the thing to sound like my C1 or my Agile or even my Carvin for that matter, but surely not this bad? The cheap alloy of the Edge III combined with the worst sounding pups I have ever heard make the instrument unuseable.
Granted, the thing plays well, really well. I mean it does feel like an RG770 or RG550, the two guitars I have played the most in my life, but to replace the bridge wih a real Edge or even a Gotoh Floyd will require routing. Pickups are obviously going to be at least a couple hundred bucks for a full set (HSH). So now I cheap $400 crap guitar that I need to dump between $300-500 into to make a viable tool for work. Fuck!! After that I could have just bought a Hellraiser or an old REAL RG guitar.
So now i have the thing on Craigslist, got no takers at $250 so I have dropped the cunt of a guitar down to $200. Surely some kid somewhere will see it and drool over it, I hope. I'd raher take the $200 loss and call it a lesson learned in hasty decision making than invest another dime in this piece of crap.
The fact that I am going to be fired from my job on Monday makes this all the more irritating. Right now my only income is from the band's gigs.
I wish I would have just kept the 7 string, at least it was a quality instrument. In my greed seeing that the Dime guitar could not be found for under $500 on eBay, I saw some profit potential and jumped. Too bad I did not watch the auctions long enough to observe that although people are pricing used CFH guitars at $500-600, nobody is buying them. I just didn't want to be stuck with it so I jumped on the Ibanez, all the while in the back of my mind knowing I was trading down, but blinded by the Wizard II neck that my fingers were so nimbly dancing upon.
On the bright side, in my eBay and Craigslist dealings, I am still thousands of dollars in the profit zone, having often doubled my money buying and selling instruments and gear, so in the big picture, no it's no big deal, but this week it feels like it is.
So a guy calls me up and offers an Ibanez RG 370DX as trade. Any of you who have played one of these is already either saying "Spaiv tell me you didn't" or just snickering at my foolishness. It is mint, I mean beautiful typical RG looking guitar. I played it and the nostalgia of my Ibanez endorsed shredder days came flooding back. With my amp at living room volume, the Power Sound pickups (perhaps the worst in the history of guitar) did not sound so bad. I figured hell, the Edge III doesn't feel as cheap as i expected, worse case scenario I drop some EMG or Dimarzios in there and viola! It'll be 1989 all over again!!
Then, today, in preparation for tonites gig, I tune it up, crank my amp, and the sound was brittle, terrible, toneless crap. I didn't expect the thing to sound like my C1 or my Agile or even my Carvin for that matter, but surely not this bad? The cheap alloy of the Edge III combined with the worst sounding pups I have ever heard make the instrument unuseable.
Granted, the thing plays well, really well. I mean it does feel like an RG770 or RG550, the two guitars I have played the most in my life, but to replace the bridge wih a real Edge or even a Gotoh Floyd will require routing. Pickups are obviously going to be at least a couple hundred bucks for a full set (HSH). So now I cheap $400 crap guitar that I need to dump between $300-500 into to make a viable tool for work. Fuck!! After that I could have just bought a Hellraiser or an old REAL RG guitar.
So now i have the thing on Craigslist, got no takers at $250 so I have dropped the cunt of a guitar down to $200. Surely some kid somewhere will see it and drool over it, I hope. I'd raher take the $200 loss and call it a lesson learned in hasty decision making than invest another dime in this piece of crap.
The fact that I am going to be fired from my job on Monday makes this all the more irritating. Right now my only income is from the band's gigs.
I wish I would have just kept the 7 string, at least it was a quality instrument. In my greed seeing that the Dime guitar could not be found for under $500 on eBay, I saw some profit potential and jumped. Too bad I did not watch the auctions long enough to observe that although people are pricing used CFH guitars at $500-600, nobody is buying them. I just didn't want to be stuck with it so I jumped on the Ibanez, all the while in the back of my mind knowing I was trading down, but blinded by the Wizard II neck that my fingers were so nimbly dancing upon.
On the bright side, in my eBay and Craigslist dealings, I am still thousands of dollars in the profit zone, having often doubled my money buying and selling instruments and gear, so in the big picture, no it's no big deal, but this week it feels like it is.