Many guitar player wish they could have more guitars in thier collection but can’t afford it. I know when I had just a strat I wished I had a tele and a les paul, among others. But I couldn’t afford to buy all the guitars I wanted to play. So what I did was I started getting decent less expensive versions and modifing them to suit my needs. For example, I went to the local music store and I wanted a tele, I started playing every Fender Squire tele they had until I found the one that played the best, had the best feeling neck and the looks I was after.

\Once I got it home I played it for a few days, adjusting it as I went to siut my needs and making notes about what I wanted to upgrade. I only had about $149 invested in the guitar so far so I had a good inexpensive base to start with. The first thing I did was pull off the strings,replace the pickups with a good set of AlNiCo magnet pickups, polish the frets with some very fine steel wool and then replace the strings with my favorite brand. I then adjusted the neck a little more for the new strings and had a tele that played and sounded better than any fender telecaster I played that was under $1,000. I had less than $300 in a guitar that was blowing away guitars that would have cost mre more than triple what I had invested. The best part was I could play it and not worry about scratching an expensive guitar.

I’ve even had friends play it, and they all were blown away by how well my guitar played and sounded. One of them even sold his American made Tele and used the money to buy a couple squire teles and a strat along with all the parts he needed to upgrade them with great pickups. For what he sold that one guitar for he was able to have 3 great playing guitars where one once stood. Now he was able to have guitars setup in different tunings, or diifferent tone.

I’ve had friends that were guitar snobs that would only play American Made Fender Stratocasters, Telecasters, or Gibson Les Pauls come over. I’ve blindfolded them and had them try and tell me if they were playing one of thier expensive guitars or one of mine. In almost every case they picked mine as the one that tey thought was their more expensive guitar. It shut them right up! I’ve had more than a few ask me to build one for them. I went out, hand picked the best guitar I could find, modified it with good pickups, polished the frets and set it up for them giving them a guitar that played and sounded better than anything they could find at 3x the price. it’s got to the point where I am building a custom guitar for someone almost every week now.

Real guitar players love the fact that for a few hundred dollars they can have guitars that play and sound better than $1,000 guitars - guitars they can play on stage, at band practice and not worry about if they get a scratch or dent. Of course some people want high end guitars that they know will go up in value, investments. But that only makes this concept even better! You can afford more expenisve guitars, keep them on the side so they stay perfect and still have great guitars to play on stage.