There are a lot of guitars I'd like to have. In fact, I would be more than happy with any guitar on my short list. More than one of them would be even better. Hell, I'll just take one of each.
Excuse me for a moment while I collect myself. OK, that's better.
Where was I? Oh yeah, guitars. Bottom line is, I want a lot of guitars for one reason or another. If I had unlimited disposable income, I wouldn't have to worry about a list and I'd get any guitar I wanted. But life isn't that way, and I'm glad it's not. Buying a guitar is fun and exciting, but after the initial high wears off, you end up with a lot of guitars that you don't really play. It ends up being nothing more than runaway consumerism. What a guitarist really needs is a handful of guitars that suit specific purposes and, combined, gives that player the ability to play pretty much anything they want.
I have most of that. I think one more guitar will round out my collection nicely (and officially give me a handful) and will probably make a great 40th birthday present, as that's when I'm most likely to get one. So the real question is not what do I want, but what do I need? What gaps are there in my current gear that a new guitar will need to fill? What gaps do I want filled?
With these questions in mind, I created the following list of four things I don't have in my guitar rig. I'll also point out which guitars fill those holes and maybe even add some new ones to the list.
1. I don't have a guitar with 24 frets - Both of my Strats (the real one and the copy) have 21, the Les Paul and the Tele have 22, but none have 24. I may never use 24 frets, but it's nice to know that they're there if I need them, especially now that I'm a fan of John Petrucci. If I ever want to learn his songs, I need 24 frets.
2. I don't have a Les Paul style guitar with dual humbuckers - I do own one Les Paul, but it's a Special, and it has two P100s. Technically they are humbuckers in that they are designed to buck the hum, but they aren't your typical ballsy humbuckers. They were designed to give the single coil sound of a P90 with none of the 60 cycle hum. They don't, but they don't sound like humbuckers, either. They're somewhere in between, and close doesn't count.
3. I don't have a guitar with a reliable tremolo - I've said many times that I hate tremolos, and for good reason. I don't own a guitar with a good one. The standard Fender tremolo on my Strat is a nightmare. I've tried setting it up many times with nothing but failure. The Wilkinson tremolo on my Hondo is slightly better, but it too gets knocked out of tune easily, although that could be traced to the crappiness of the guitar. Alex Lifeson is my favorite guitarist and he discovered the tremolo some time around 1979 and never looked back, so if I want to learn more Rush songs (and I do), it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a guitar with a reliable tremolo that will stay in tune. My Charvel had a great one. I sometimes wish I still had it.
4. I don't have a guitar with a fast, shreddable neck - This is a loaded one, as any of the shredders on my short list will fit this bill, but the fact is none of my guitars can be considered a shredder. The Fenders have the standard 9.5" radius and C profile and the LP has a flatter 12" radius but has a chunky neck that is not conducive to shredding. For the record, I have no idea what the Hondo is, but it can't be called a shredder, either. A flat radius fretboard with a thin neck would be a nice thing to have.
Now that I've found the gaps, let's see how the short list guitars plug the holes. Any of the shredders on my list fill two holes, number one and number four. If I get one with some kind of locking tremolo, though, it would fill three holes, which is pretty damn good. The Sterling JP50 also fills those three holes. It may not have a locking tremolo, but from what I've read, it stays in tune quite well. I still don't know if I want a guitar with a tremolo, but it definitely looks like I need one.
The Les Paul-style guitars on the list only fill one hole, number 2. It's an important hole, though, because that's where this all started. I was reminiscing about the old LP guitars I've had and decided to get another one next, so this hole will probably hold more weight than the others. The Ibanez ART100 also fills number four. I really want to play one of those. Soon.
There's another guitar that fills at least three holes, possibly four depending on how the neck plays. Unfortunately, I can't play it before I buy it. Agile makes a version of its AL2000 LP copy that has 24 frets and a Floyd Rose. From the pictures, it looks like it may be a shredder (it has a nice deep cutaway), but I won't know until I play one, and I don't know if I want to buy a guitar I haven't played. Still, for the price, it's hard to argue with it, and there's the fact that Alex Lifeson played a Gibson that looked almost exactly the same when I saw Rush at Red Rocks.
So now that I know my needs, I have to adjust the short list accordingly. First off, the "any Agile LP copy" entry has been replaced with the more specific Agile AL-2000 with Floyd Rose. I'm also taking off the rest of the Tune-O-Matic shredders because I don't see any of them beating out the Omen 6 anyway. I'm also getting rid of the ESP LTD EC-100. I haven't played it, but on specs alone it can't compare with the Ibanez ART100, which is only $20 more. I'm adding in the Chapman Guitars ML1, along with a few other tremolo-equipped shredders.
Here is the revised list:
Guitars I've played:
Epiphone Les Paul Studio ($349)
Schecter Omen 6 ($299)
Guitars I haven't played:
Dean Cadillac Select ($479)
Sterling SILO20 ($399)
Sterling JP50 ($499)
Ibanez ART100 ($299)
(NEW) Dean Vendetta 1000 ($275) - I heard Vendettas were only so-so, but this one's got a Floyd.
(NEW) Ibanez GRGA32T ($299) - Yeah, it's a Gio, but it's also the most affordable Ibanez you can buy with a locking tremolo.
(NEW) Ibanez RG5EX1 ($400) - This is one bad ass looking guitar. Hopefully it plays better than the last RG I played.
(NEW) Ibanez RG350DX ($400) - Not quite as bad ass as the RG5, but it has that 80s metal look that still looks so cool.
(NEW) Schecter Damien FR ($450) - This blows the budget a little, but I had to include a tremolo-equipped Schecter to the list since I was so impressed with the Omen 6.
Guitars I can't play:
Chapman Guitars ML2 ($525)
(NEW) Chapman Guitars ML1 ($490)
(NEW) Agile AL-2000 with Floyd Rose ($279)
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