Which is the main part you focus when buying a guitar?? (minus the pickups)

[hippieboy]

Which is the most important feature, spec or characteristic that you look for in a new guitar (with the exception of pickups)

To me, is the neck profile, that is definitely a make or break thing.

 

[Imiss85]

Feel/play-ablity which is 95% the neck/fretboard for me is 1A. How it sounds acoustically is 1B. If it sounds good unplugged, I can find the right pickups to make it sound good plugged. But a dead horse is a dead horse if you know what I mean.

 

[hippieboy]

Feel/play-ablity which is 95% the neck/fretboard for me is 1A. How it sounds acoustically is 1B. If it sounds good unplugged, I can find the right pickups to make it sound good plugged. But a dead horse is a dead horse if you know what I mean.

Yeah makes sense to me, I never tried them unplugged though.

 

[Doctor Morbius]

Neck & fretwork.

 

[Imiss85]

Yeah makes sense to me, I never tried them unplugged though.

I never plug one in until I find one I like acoustically. I may be weird, but I've never had buyer remorse that way.

 

[Migmakesmusic]

After years of playing and a few guitars, I can get over most things except string spacing. I just can't play well on narrow nuts

 

[tonedover]

neck profile AND neck finish are the stsrting points for any guitar ill even consider looking at

gibson i want rounded to slim taper, not 50s or vintage
fender... modern c ! no ballbats, thanks
prs pattern reg or pattern thin
thinnest neck ive enjoyed playing is a wolfgang. but the super thin shred necks are not for me

then i like satin nitro finishes, bare wood, waxed wood, etc. basically NEVER will buanother polished neck again, poly or nitro.

 

[GGinMP]

It's all-around. There has to be great sound from the pickups; that's a must. Then it's neck shape, balance, fret and fretboard feel. Looks are also important to me, but the best looking guitar that doesn't have the other stuff isn't cutting it.

 

[williamh]

Do I like the neck and do I like how it looks? I can fix/change pretty much anything else easily

 

[ozraves]

How a guitar feels in the hands. A lot of it is the quality of the neck but also the neck carve. Weight. Balance. The best at this to me is the PRS S2 McCarty 594 Thinline. One of the reasons to own it is the design. It is simple. Elegant. Balanced. Light weight tuners, pattern thin neck, beveled body carve. The S2 594 Thinline is like an evolution of the Gibson Les Paul R0. I put Bare Knuckle Mules in mine.

 

[Studio Owner]

I guess the first and main thing is, what type of guitar I want. You don't buy a Strat if you wanna Les Paul right? If you want a shredder, you buy a Tele. It's not just the pickups, its just everything, including its intended purpose and the kinda music I wanna use it on which lends itself to a certain style of guitar, pickups, feature sets.

Like for example, if I was gonna play straight blues or blues rock, funk, pop, rockabilly, surf, I'd probably pick a Strat. If I were playing country of any kind, maybe a Tele, but a Strat can quack too and can do more, so I'd probably go with a Strat. If I were playing hard rock, punk, metal, then I could get into humbuckers, P90s or more shreddy stuff, but really the Strat can sound just as fat or shreddy, plus adding its biting articulation, so I'd go with a Strat. For jazz or soul, with the tone knob turned bassy, you probably couldn't tell it from my Strat, so in that case, I'd probably choose a Strat.

 

[mrpinter]

I too have a list of things I look for, but limiting it to the one most important criterion, for me would be the neck (including profile, radius, wood used and fretwork). Is that still a list? Well then, I'll consolidate that into saying it is how the neck as a whole works for my hands and playing style.

 

[Frond]

the neck …. how well chords intonate & ease of single note bending.

the rest can be adjusted / modified.

 

[twotone]

Actually three things: neck profile, body shape, and colour.

 

[TDLP]

Three important rules when shopping for guitars:
1. It looks good
2. It looks good
3. It looks good

 

[jamester]

Neck feel above all else for me. If I don't love the neck, I won't love the guitar. I've got two great guitars that I don't really play much simply because of the necks.

After that it's basically a tie between looks and weight/balance, and as others have said, acoustic tone. I don't care at all about pickups or hardware, swapping out parts and modding is part of the fun to me. I like customizing and personalizing instruments to my taste, especially trying different pickups.

 

[noisebloom]

All kinds of things. First things are the type of guitar, neck/fretboard/body woods, and the pickups. If I'm shopping for a guitar, then I'm trying to zero in on a particular sound before anything else.

After that, then I think about things like weight, balance, neck profile, neck finish, bridge/trem construction, etc. Of those, neck profile and finish are crucial.

 

[caspa]

The longer time has gone on, the more I realize that really the only things I care about on a guitar are:

• Fretwork quality
• A well done, low cut nut
• looks

Sound doesn't matter much to me since it's so easy to change, but man, a guitar with a low cut nut is really all I care about.

That's what makes me sort of mad about the Gibsons of the last two decades, really great guitars but some of the worst nut work that's ever been done.

 

[OotMagroot]

For me, it's the overall feel of the guitar. I'm not too terribly concerned with looks as long as it has the features I need.

 

[FiestaRed869]

This is why I only have partcasters. Imagine a guitar with perfect specs for you and you pick it up only to find a baseball bat neck and you like thin necks. Or an amazing playing feeling guitar but a color you don’t like and pickup config you don’t like?