when a guitar is not a production guitar any longer...

First off I would like to say 2 things...
1. DiminisedDevil hasn't a CLUE what he is talking about. Just because these companies you refer to bought a few machines and came out of the dark ages does not mean these guitars have no human contact... As a matter of fact, if you ever play more than 4 Gibson LP's you will notice that while the necks are similar, no two necks on the Gibsons are EXACTLY the same. That is because there is an old grey haired guy sitting back there with a spokeshave and a surform HAND profiling each and every neck... The same holds true to PRS... DD, just stay of edromanguitars.com...

2. As far as that fat, redheaded, luckycharms leprechan-looking wannabe sales man named Ed Roman, I wouldn't trust anything he says about anything....for someone who is supposed to be an authority on all things musical, he know jack dick....Also as far as his bulls*it guitar line is concerned, I wouldn't touch it even if the freaking pope himself highly endorsed it...you can't trust that man... he fakes guitars as well as makes them... just remember that the next time you look into one of his so called J-Frog guitars.... It could be a Kramer Fire Sale body with a J-Frog neck on it...Everything he sells is also overpriced...
Here is a simple test for you... find the Kramer pages by any means necessary ( I think he took it down for remodeling but you can still access it from some of his other pages) and find the 2 neck Richie Sambora model guitar... This particular one he has is a Japanese model that was produced in considerable numbers, but yes they are hard to find over here... Call him up and ask him about that guitar, and I will almost bet he will tell you he is looking to get $8000 out of that guitar because is was a limited run of like 6 guitars and there are only 2 for sale in existence of some bulls*it like that. Even better... I bet he will probably tell 10 different stories to 10 different people... Now... This guitar is probably worth in my opinion about 2k-2500 bucks, and I would love to have one, but he will tell you he can build you an EXACT copy of it for 4k.... So... who's to say the 8k one isn't a copy...

Now that I have gotten way off track about the purpose of this thread...

Just to let you know... As a collector myself there are a few things that I look for when I decide to buy a new guitar to add to the collection...

1. Name brand... I stick to the large brand names... Kramer, Gibson, Jackson... I rarely look at the offshoots such as Epiphone...
2. Your particular issue would peak my interest, but only slightly... The only thing us hardcore collectors look for anymore is the fancy one-off's or limited editions... Those usually end up coming from the custom shop...
3. Also, myself I also look for limited editions in production models like for instance, the Adrian Vandenburg model Peavy that came out in the late 80's-early 90's... They had a neckthrough quilt top version that is HIGHLY sought after... They are going for, in mediocre condition, as much as they were brand new if not more... I, right now, have my eye on one for a price of a little over a grand that I am thinking about adding to my collection... but I wouldn't buy one of the regular production Vandy's unless I was looking for a player guitar, then I would only spend at max, $300 for it...
4. Most guitars that I collect are at least 15-30 years old...so your Epi would probably not get my attention until at LEAST 2018...:)

My first 'real' guitar was one of these babies. I'd love to have it, but I don't have a pile of coin, and there are other priorities for the money I have. :( {deep sigh}

Back on the subject of Ed, I was going to show some things earlier but I forgot the sites. Found them.

http://63.151.115.106/board/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=196617&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending
Look through these, pay special attention to the topic "he's unbelievable".


Here's a special site I found today that's very interesting. If you have any respect for Ed you need to have a look at this. Kaboom, biatch.

I would also at this point like to apologise for my prior ignorance about PRS construction. I didn't realize how much they are worked with by hand before, but now I've seen the light. And it's a beautiful thing, hallelujah.

LOL Hammurabi, those sites that you've shown me gave me a secondary info to look at instead of just going to ed roman's site and reading reviews at harmony central. I looked around at the sites- especially the gear page site where they talk about how ed roman sells stuff at ebay. LOL. If I can remember, he condemns ebay in his site and he talks about how selling in ebay is a way for stores to discard of their rejects or something like that. What amazes me is that he sells a lot of guitars at ebay! could it be that no one's buying his guitars any longer, so he's using ebay to discard his guitars?

hrbndrckr

thats very true. being a guitar lover/ fanatic, i always go to the local music store in my area everyday just to try their guitars and stuff- and i've befriended the sales persons there and all of them know me by name. And they're very nice folk- they all let me try all the stuff in the store even though they know I wouldn't buy anything LOL. And I've learned from trying most of the guitars in the store that no two guitars are alike- even if its the same model made by the same one person. It follows the same concept that the greek philosopher Heraclitus said: "You cant step on the same river twice."

As a kid, I was brainwashed by the media of thinking that Gibsons are the best and are always 100% reliable when it comes to quality until I have the chance to play them for quite some time now because I always try them all at the store- and I found out from trying every model that not all of them are quality guitars- some of them can be pretty quite crappy for the price people pay for them. Only a select few sounds very good. It's the same case with Epiphones. I've seen and heard Gibsons that are worse than Epiphones and also have seen and heard Epiphones that are better than Gibsons. That's why when I had the money to buy a guitar, I decided to buy a guitar that is not a Gibson to save me money because Gibsons aren't as good as their reputation anyways. It just so happened that after spending more than five hours in the store trying all their guitars- the epiphone was the most beautiful of all- not just the looks but also the tone. Being a limited edition epiphone I think the materials that they used in this guitar are far better than the normal Epi lps out there. Just look at my electronics.

Usually the toggle switch and pots always comes off with cheap guitars but i'm proud to say that i've never have any problems with any of mine.

Second, I found the stock pickups pretty good and are much nicer and more decent than the other stock pus that epi uses on their normal epi lp guitars. The ES uses Gibson USA pickups- both alnico v's- a 57 in the neck and a hot humbucker on the bridge which are the same once epi used on the 50th anniversary lp- even most of the people that i know of where happy with these pus and decided to keep them.

Third, the wood in mine is actually nice and thick- its thick enough that a dual concentric pot that otherwise would fit in other guitars wouldn't fit in my guitar without having to route the body!

Fourth, I love the design- my guitar is hollow inside with f holes- its just the perfect guitar that I've been looking for.

My only problem with the guitar is that the gold plating tarnished pretty quick so I had to replace the hardware with some Gibson replacement parts, gold plated them (a friend who works at a car shop did it for free), and attached them to my guitar so I wouldn't have to worry about wear for a long time. I wasnt going to change the PUs but in the end, I decided to totally change the PUs with classic 57s and add graphtech's GHOST piezo system just to see if pus do make a big difference in guitar tone and i learned that it does. My guitar now is much more versatile- its like having an lp, an es 335, and an acoustic all in one guitar and I must say I'm very happy with it.

I just asked about the difference between a production line guitar and an out of production line guitar because a friend is selling me a beautiful Gibson les paul florentine made in 99 for almost 2 grand. I'm just wondering if I should buy it. I know from Gibson customer service that it was discontinued in 1998 but just like my epi, its also made after the model was supposedly discontinued and i'm just trying to see if by buying it, i can make more money out of it being an oddball guitar. But I guess this concept only works in high end guitars right?

Before you buy, check out a used guitar price guide to find out if what he is asking for is in the range of what most of those go for.
But here is the real kicker.... are you going to buy it for collecting reasons, or do you want to play it?
If you like the guitar and it sounds good and feels right when you hold it, 2k isn't a bad price to pay for something that feels right.

On the other hand, 2k is some serious scratch for something that is going to sit in a case in storage with no strings on it in hopes that one day it will be worth more money...

Unless you are going to collect hardcore, I wouldn't advise this addiction... Believe me...My wife has threatened divorce many times because I see a guitar in the pawn shop that catches my wallet...I mean, errr eye... yeah, eye...

With the amount of crap I got lying around looking pretty, I could be WELL on my way to retiring early and roaming the country...

Hey hairbndrckr
How about some pictures for all us drooling jealous dudes, tough maybe they belong in another thread !

That gives me an idea !

Even If gibsons are quality made? They still have welfare pickups and don't play so great. Get Fender squire thats where it's at!

No. Squires have the most crappy pickups I've seen. They have all kinds of problems like sometimes they'll randomly clip out the entire signal quieter than where you're banging on the strings, and squires can have some neck issues. Gibson may be overpriced, but it's defitely better than squire.

I wasn't 100% serious on that squire statement. Although most squires in my opinion are better than Mexican made fenders

Dude, there is nothing wrong with Mexican Fenders, the majority play and sound really well ! I have both Mex, texmex and USA strats and teles and if I were asked to take the Pepsi challenge, I'd be stuck !

I will post some pics as soon as I get some time to actually go to "the vault" and line them up for photo time.... man that is going to be a lot of cleaning to do to get em ready...

Originally posted by Dr_simon
Dude, there is nothing wrong with Mexican Fenders, the majority play and sound really well ! I have both Mex, texmex and USA strats and teles and if I were asked to take the Pepsi challenge, I'd be stuck !

I am looking at getting a tele as my next guitar, I went in to my local (60 miles away) fender dealer and played 3 different teles, one was a Mex, and the other two were Americans, I could not see the difference that should be there considering the price difference, I mean there was a difference but not as big of a jump as I thought there would be.

I've heard there is less of a difference between mexican and american teles as there is a difference between mexican and american strats. More discerning market or something like that.

yeah but there is even less of a difference between squire and mex. Squire is better see for your self, they play better

I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with you on that one.

my friend currently has a Squire strat, and he is looking a getting a fender so we looked at MIM and AIM strats, yes there was a bigger difference but still not wroth the price jump i thought, and if you spend a little extra money and time to sheild the MIM there would be even less difference.

as i said my friend has a Squire Strat and after playing these fenders, compaired to even the MIM it sounded and played like a big stinky pile of poop.

The last GOOD Squire strat in my opinion was made in 87... And if I am not mistaken, it was Japanese...

You wouldn't catch me dead with one of those Squier pieces of s*it now.... I mean you get what you pay for and you can't expect much for like $129.00...unless you are buying a Kramer...

Kramers suck real bad at any price!!!! When I put out a virtuoso album with squire we'll see then, EH?

Well since 3/4 of my collection are Kramers both vintage and new... It's pretty obvious you really don't know what the hell you are talking about DiminishedDevil.... They are great players with killer sustain, and as long as you stay away from the new focus models and the vintage striker models, which were both made from plywood, you got a killer instrument.... You see, unlike you, I have actually played the Squier guitar and know first hand they suck ass.... Why don't you tell me the last model Kramer you played... here let me help you with your bullsh*t story... Go to www.musicyo.com and pick a model to say you played one, because if you truly had, you couldn't possibly say they play worse than the Squier...