General Music Chat

Anyone else done something really bad to a good guitar? I want to hear just one good story before admitting what I did to a guitar I bought when it was 4 years old in 1972 (I'd like to go back in time and slap myself to death)

I've never done anything bad to a guitar but many years ago our lead guitar player did something terrible to a brand new vintage re-issue Gibson Les Paul cherry sunburst guitar. He brought it to rehearsal and strapped it on for the very first time and played for about three hours. He was in guitar heaven. When we were finished he took it off and was about to put it back in the case and noticed a few hundred scratches on the back of the guitar. He had forgotten to take off his belt which had a huge belt buckle on it and pretty much ruined the wood on the back of the guitar. Never saw anybody so pissd off than him. He was particularly finicky about all his guitar and amps, he normally kept them in perfect condition. What a shame...

I've never done anything to a guitar that was that bad but the guitarist in my current band once put his martin on his stand but bumped into it as he turned around and the guitar and stand toppled over into an amplifier. The neck still has a big chip in it (back side behind the 3rd fret)

I think i've got yer back on this one:
bought an sg-90... sweetest guitar I ever played... loved the damn thing to death... owned it for quite a while before...
now remember this was back in the eighties...
at a gig opening for a relatively well known hair metal band...
tried to be cool and "throw" my guitar around my shoulder...
you know... like they do on tv... only my guitar didn't really go around my shoulder.
it just when flying off behind me (prior to strap locks)... and ended up with a broken neck.

I'm a really lucky guy too cause when I moved to LA back in 93' I was in that "northridge" quake... the 6.8 that lasted nearly two minutes...
I had my hamer steve stevens signature model sitting on a stand in front of a laney half stack... and the half stack fell onto the guitar... shattering the neck(was the only gtr I had at the time). so I went 6months with out a guitar alltogether...
then finally scraped up enough to buy a ibanez lp lawsuit from a pawn shop... which I later pawned off for $100.
did that do the job?

What? No one was hammered enough to smash a guitar on stage?!

Well, lemme put it this way: I DETEST INSTRUMENT SMASHERS. Almost as much as I hate rapists n murdererererers.

I've made several non-collectible from modifications, but I only destroyed one. 1980 Hamer Special. I failed to open the stand fully and it belly-flopped on to the floor, breaking the headstock clean off. I had it repaired but the guitar was never the same.

NA na nana na na I'm not listening. (petting Les Paull) It's ok daddy loves you. Just dont listen to those bad ol men.

Let's see...I once stepped on the whammy bar of my guitar-parts flew everywhere...

One time I caught my foot on a patch chord-that was connected to my buddies BRAND NEW Ibanez-bouncing the guitar off of the concrete floor...left a few scratches...

I told a friend of mine that I wanted to put a new paint job on my guitar, not realizing that when I left the room, he would beginning tearing my guitar to pieces...it was FUBAR...not really my actions, but surely my stupidity...

There's a lot more...I baby my basses, but I'm hell on guitars.

Well, can't say I've done much myself, I've modified a couple of el cheapo guitars, never did any damage except for my first electric. Japanese Jaguar-ish fender copy, single pickup, I took it apart to repaint it, wondered what that screw was in the neck. Grabbed a screwdriver and proceeded to turn it until it snapped...the truss rod, I later found out...

That's my only bad one, I've dropped a couple here and there but with no damage other than a scratch or three. But a couple have been damaged by others...

Austin TX, late 80's, I played on 6th street for a long time, guys always wandered up drunk and wanted to play, I usually managed to nicely tell them no and they would leave it at that One dumbass just wouldn't let up, PROMISED he would only keep it just a minute (yeah right, it usually takes me 15 minutes to get my guitar back and I'm trying to make a living here...), I finally gave in just to shut the guy up. He didn't get the strap completely on the bottom peg, let it go and my Epiphone hit the sidewalk face down. I grabbed quicker than he did and told him not to touch my guitar again. He started apologizing, I just told him to leave...NOW...The guitar buzzed badly the rest of the night, I had to re-glue all the support struts inside on the front, cost me 2 nights with zero income. It still sounded good, but I don't think it was ever quite the same. I've never found another one to match it...

When I bought my current Takamine acoustic/electric at a pawn shop, the lady I asked to get it down so I could play it was sitting on a stool eating lunch. It was hanging above her and instead of standing up, she stretched to reach it off the stool, just as I said NO! she bobbled it against two other guitars, broke a pencil eraser sized chunk out of the finish on front, a ding on the back of the headstock, and another ding on the binding on bottom front. They knocked $35 off the price for that...and another lady tried to claim they didn't do it, but the lady who did admitted it. It still sounds fabulous though

And finally...I have a mid 40's Electromuse lap steel a close friend gave me. Took it to a gig one night, before I started using a keyboard stand, and parked it on a guitar stand. After the gig I was wiping down guitars to put them back in the cases when my niece and the lady friend who gave it to me ran over to me shocked and said the bass player (and band leader) had knocked it off the stand. I ran over and it was lying face down onstage, he didn't even bother to pick it up...next time I plugged it in it wouldn't work, had to replace the original cloth covered cord and the capacitor inside to get it fixed. I really wanted to keep that cloth covered cord for the cool factor...I mean, how many people have a guitar with a 60 year old cloth covered cord in working condition? It's soldered directly onto the volume control, by the way.

And in case you are wondering, I now make sure I NEVER let anyone touch my guitars when I'm not in my living room. Almost got into a fight a few months ago when some jerk picked my guitar up and started banging on it in the music store where I worked for a couple of months. Asked him what he thought he was doing with my guitar in his hands and he smarted off...not a good idea...First thing he did was "Well, I let you play my $2200 Taylor"...it cost more like $1700 I think, and I replied "Didn't YOU hand it to me?" He refused to answer me so I repeated it...he finally said yes...I also knew he played his Taylor way too hard, was a crummy guitar player at best, kept trying to sing really loud and off key, after I told him both didn't sound good, basically a jerk all around. Never tried to finish a song for 2 hours, and kept trying to play country after I told him I hate country and play it only onstage when I have to. He played rock and blues too, or tried to, and never even tried to follow anything I played, then usually started playing something else HE wanted to play while I was already playing, trying to get him to play something together...basically a jerk...

So yeah, I've screwed up one of my guitars, but other people have bashed them around much more than I have, I never let people touch them any more.

I...ummm... drilled into a '79 Les Paul "Kalamazoo" Classic and put a Khaler tremolo system on it because I joined a band back in the 80's that done did a ton of early Halen and out of a ton of guitarists, it was between me and another guy and we were both called back for an audition but I was told by an inside source that the other guy most likely would've landed the gig because of the fact he was able to duplicate EVH's whammy effects... I went out that day and purchased the Khaler and blew the other guy away and got the job! ... ruined a fine piece of artwork though

As to destructiveness, the really bad thing I did when I was in my 20's, and this had nothing to do with music itself sadly, is that my first wife thought rock and roll was a waste of time. I should be playing nice pretty Christian music and nothing else. She was also jealous of it somehow. After an argument about my "so-called" music, I went ballistic... "Fine, I'm tired of this sh*t. You don't want me playing music? Fine. Here, let me show you how over music I am..."

Crash, smash, shatter, smash!!!!

I broke every instrument I had into pieces. Small pieces. Thousands of dollars worth of guitars and keyboards. Smashed into bits.

Damn that was stupid. I don't think I'm over it yet. LOL

Never again though.

Learned my lesson Fisherman Bob, learned it well. Never again brother!


As to maybe silly...

I could not, for the life of me, tune this guitar which had a floating bridge, and when it was finally tuned, it set up so high, it seemed like I could fit my fingers under the damn strings. After debating taking it in to get it "fixed", it suddenly dawned on me what I had done. I had two of the same string on it. Like two d's or two g's or something. And stretching the one string where it shouldn't go, made the bridge an airport control tower all of a sudden. Once I got the right string on there, it all went back right.

I HATE FLOATING BRIDGES!!!

What follows is a TRUE STORY. I couldn't possibly make this up. A bunch of my brother-in-law's very wealthy aunts and uncles were having quite a rollicking party in one of their mansions. Apparently one of them was quite the violinist and went and got it to play it for the drunken party goers. They thought it sounded out of tune so they found a drill and drilled a bunch of holes in the violin. It still sounded out of tune so they got a gallon of black paint and a paint brush and procedded to paint it black. (It is perfectly logical to put holes into and paint an out-of tune instrument.) The next morning those that stayed over night woke up with a wicked hangover. They started to clean up their mess and then to their chagrin found the violin. What made their hangover much worse was what they had done to their priceless STRADAVARIUS violin. Moral of this ABSOLUTELY TRUE STORY IS NEVER DRINK AND PLAY YOUR INSTRUMENT AT THE SAME TIME. Later...

well when I was 18 I bought a 57 SG for $100....and sold it for $200 and thought I got over really well......oh yeah, and I dropped a Hummingbird and broke the neck in half..............gettin close?

hmm, well not sure if this qualifies, but it does hurt slightly when I think about it.

Here's the story:
At a place I used to work, I was standing around with one of the fellows, & we got to talking music, guitars etc.
He says "oh, my moms got a couple guitars around the house.."
I say jokingly, "oh cool lemme buy one will ya?"
He comes in the next day & says "she'll sell one if you wanna come look at it"
I ask what it is, he says "hm I dunno maybe a Gibson or something"
I'm like "ok, cool I'll come check it out."

You guys know what's coming......

I get there...
He directs me to the kitchen table on which is lying a hard case with 'Gibson' on it..
He tells me his mom has "had it under the bed for years"

The case opens....
Inside is a 9 out of a 10 condition 1967 Gibson ES335-TD
It's like frikin mint.
The strings were flat wound, and left with slight tension...perfect.
It played perfectly.
At the time(1993) I really didn't even know what I was looking at, except to know it wa a very nice guitar.
I offered 400.00 & he talked me UP to $500.00
I bought it.

Then , like 6 months later, TRADED it to my brother for an Alvarez Yairi acoustic, cause I was too paranoid to play the Gibson.

Whoda known just a few years later, the thing's worth like 3 grand+

One of those deals I'll likely not come across again.

However, the good news is, my astute brother DOES still have her & I can see it anytime I want.

Hey, it's only wood & metal right?

it started back in 1953
his mom wouldn't buy him that new red harmony
he settled for a sunburst with a crack
but he's still trying to break his mommas back
oh it breaks my heart to see those stars
(do you know the next line?)