I was thinking about some kind of new acoustic just last year, when a friend arrived with a beautiful Yamaha that had been gathering dust in his sons' home. (Don't know what model, but it was a jumbo.) I was thrilled! I took it all apart and cleaned it up, checked it out and put new strings on it.

The problem was/is, it's a dog! This beautiful Yamaha is pretty much unplayable other than very basic strumming. I found out later it was a "Costco" guitar. Now it hangs on my wall and looks terriffic - just doesn't get played.

Don't know what went wrong with this one. I have an old Yamaki 12 string that was hand picked out of a shipment of about 20 about 40 years ago and it still plays and sounds really nice so it's not just a price thing.

Gridlok

Odd, Yamaha usually known what they're doing. Take it to a tech for an a appraisal

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Fender Highway & Classic 60s Strats, Fender Toronado, Telecaster, Gretsch Projet, Charvel 3, PRS SE Soapbar II & Custom 24, Burns Batwing and many others!

I agree. I tried lots of Yamahas over the years and they have all been nice to play with a big jumbo Gibson-ish sound. I'm no tech, but I've played for over 40 years and I pretty much know what to look for. To me, this guitar just suffers from the perfect storm of: awkward feeling neck, so-so fretwork and probably not the best of their woods, (this guitar was produced for a very price concious market.) Too bad. I felt like I had won the lottery when I was given it. Oh well, it looks great on my wall!!

I just can't see where it's worth my while to fix the thing.

Gridlok

Mine is a heartbreaking story! When I was 16 my parents bought me a beautiful 1980 Gibson LP Custom. It was wine red absolutely beautiful! Then when I plugged it in it was a heartbreaker. Sounded dull and had fret buzz like you wouldn't believe. We took it back to the store and low and behold, neck was twisted, frets were terrible in short it was a total dog. I eventually traded it in for a Fender and that was it...Fender for life.
ABS

I'm really surprised how this post has taken off.

Well I do have a “worst guitar ever” story. Actually it was my cousin's guitar. He and I are the same age and both wanted to learn how to play the guitar way back in '83 or '84.

He started first by getting a Westone electric guitar and some lessons. I on the other hand bought a Peavey T-26 (Strat copy) in NY and no lessons.

So here we are a few years later in ’87 with our guitars in hand. Every time we would play together my cousin would say, "Your guitar is out of tune." It sounded fine by me, but it did sound different than his.

We had our uncle (a professional musician and guitar collector) took a look at my beloved T-26 and the Westone. To our surprise it was my cousin's guitar that kept going out of tune. It turned out that his guitar was built without a truss rod too.

The T-26 was great, but I feel bad for my cousin. On a really good note several months ago I lent my cousin my '96 Dalphne Blue Strat. He really loved it. The night before my wedding last month I gave it to him. He was the DJ at my wedding and did an amazing job.

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1975 Sunburst Stratocaster rosewood finger board
1979 Stratocaster with roseowood finder board
2001 Candy Green Clapton Stratocaster
2007 Andy Summers Inspired Telecaster
2007 '51 P-Bass
2012 Taylor 110
2015 Mystic Ice Blue Deluxe Stratocaster Plus

I used to think that a bad guitar was rare but I bought 3 Gibson Les Paul's in succession and had to return each one.

1. GC Special Silverburst LP Studio - split coils that hummed like a chain saw before they split, and washed a tonal split. No sustain, no quality, returned to GC after 17 hours.

2. LP Standard, neck like butter but the set up from hell, 4 different techs couldn't put humpty together, the angle of the neck joint was out by 2+ degrees x - axis 1.2 degrees in the y - axis. Return after three weeks of misery

3. LP Custom arrived from MF with a split in the neck at the head ..... never got to play that one. I had a hell of a job getting the couriers insurance to pay out.

I have had three strats so far ..... loved each of them equally.

Current collection Epiphone Masterbilt Acoustic - sweet voice and projection, (my third) EJ Strat, a Line 6 Variax (I love the tele and 12 string tones) ESP MH-1000 FR (heavy dude!) and the guitar I still play the most a Michael Kelly Patriot .... flexible jack of all trades with great sustain and an unbelievable finish - 3+ years of daily playing (2-6 hours every day and it is still un-maked.

Keep it loud!

Paris thats the first bad report I've heard of Westone in twenty five years.
Played a good few of them from around that time. Every one of them was a dream. At least they were dreams for a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks.

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No no and no

I didn't own my two nightmare players, but ironically they were both owned by the same guy.
The first was a Peavey T-?...(I don't know the model number). The setup was terrible, the neck pickup was dead, the intonation sucked, and it weighed almost as much as I did at the time.

Many years later, he and I got reacquainted and he ended up in my band. He had just bought a beautiful '57 reissue Strat brand new. It played great, sounded good and that black finish with the maple neck just rocked...
Then he decided that it needed new pickups. His brother bought him a set of Texas Specials as a wedding anniversary present (I have always thought Texas Specials sounded good), but after installation the guitar buzzed like a stoner at a hemp festival in Amsterdam. He blamed it on "those @&$! Single coils!" (he preferred humbuckers and had a slightly noisy rig) but I plugged it into my rig that had little or no hum with my single coils, and it was still noisy as all get out. I suggested he might have soldered something incorrectly or accidentally messed something up during installation, but he insisted it was the pickups' fault and refused to check it out any further. This great looking, brand new guitar that played wonderfully ended up living in it's case for three years because of his arrogant refusal to get it checked out.
I don't know what happened to the guitar in the end, because we had to fire him due to progressively bad drunkenness onstage.

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

I'm with BigTufGuy! My mother is one of these QVC-aholics. I went to visit her a couple of years ago and she presented me with a shipping box that had one of those Esteban acoustic guitars in it. Beautiful looking - Black, single cutaway but OMG it sucks! Does not stay in tune and the action was way too high. I tried to tweak the truss rod and heard a loud popping noise. Haven't touched it since.

I love those Woolworth's/Kay/Whatever guitars for slide playing---snarly, gritty and nasty (...and I mean all of that in the best way possible!).

I have seriously considering buying one and putting the pickups into a cheap Telecaster or Strat for slide playing...although, the vibe of the funky body possibly makes it worth buying one, restoring/getting the best setup possible, and playing it stock.

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

I totally agree with the complaints about Gibson quality. I got a studio deluxe with the coil splitters and the neck pickup is lifeless, the wiring job is terrible. When I split the neck pickup, I lose any output. Guess which coil they wired to the pot. Anyway, worst guitar i owned was a Jackson Dinky model from the mid '90s. I used to bleed from the fret ends every time i picked it up. played like hell, no sustain, but it looked cool.

The worst guitar I ever played, was a piece of junk First Act that a friend owned. It cost him $50 new. All of the hardware on it was plastic 'nuff said.

Take a few strings off, and voila ~ The first all new Seasick Steve signature guitar

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Fender Highway & Classic 60s Strats, Fender Toronado, Telecaster, Gretsch Projet, Charvel 3, PRS SE Soapbar II & Custom 24, Burns Batwing and many others!

Yeah take both E's and the D off. Tune the A down to G and the B down to G too. There you have it, Seasick tuning

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No no and no

pretty much any guitar ive played made in indonesia has significant issues, countless squiers and my old 2007 LTD. the neck had a dip in it, bubble in the veneer, and a sloppy neck.

my chinese guilt guitars (LTD and CV squier) are pretty good though. also my 99 ltd m100 is very good. my 72 les paul is less than impressive, however common from that time period.

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10 LTD M-350NT (duncan custom4/jazz2)
99 LTD m-100 (duncan distortion/gibson 496R)
71 les paul deluxe gold top(mojo)
peavey vypyr 100, 85 red-knob, bad monkey, peavey iphone amp kit