Guthrie Govan Discussion

[yabba]

I'm looking for a new guitar and although I'm a fan of GG, my main interest in his signature guitar is its versatility and the wide range of sounds you can get from it (well, he can get from it, I can practise and hope I guess)

i.e It seems to me to be a guitar you can buy and play without necessarily having to play GG style. Something that I don't really think works with, say, that famous Ibanez guitar with a monkey grip on it.

But it's over £3k! Although I think the price is varying a bit because of brexit etc and it might be just under £3k atm.

I don't really want to spend that much. Or at least, if I walk out of a store with a £3k receipt I was hoping to get something like a Helix too and maybe some other goodies. (I play plugged into my PC and listen through a decent pair of headphones so I don't really need an amp or pedals)

If it was between £1k and £1.5k I'd have already bought one. Maybe even at £2k I might go for it.

The other thing is, I think if I had a £3k guitar I'd be too paranoid about scratching it or it getting dinged to play it or to let my son pick it up. I really want to encourage him to play guitar.

Right now I have an old LTD guitar that cost around £300 and is very beat up and the electronics are buzzing.

So, my question to you is, what do you think GG would play if he had to pick a guitar in, say, the £1k to £1.5k price range off the shelf? That would give him as many of the features his sig model has and as much of the versatility - or would he opt for less versatility but something that did a couple of things really well?

It's guess work of course, but I appreciate all opinions. I'd ask him except he's probably very busy and I think he has to promote his sig guitar and that seems fair enough.

What do I like about his guitar? As I said the versatility, then there's the tremel-no, the placement of the lead socket, the whammy bar, locking tuners but not locked nut. The baked stuff is perhaps less of thing for me because I don't tour the world.

Neck-wise I have small thumbs (brachydactyly type-d is the fancy name - megan fox has them, but this is where the similarities between us begin and end) which makes putting my thumb over the top of the fretboard impossible but also wide neck guitars aren't easy for me to play.

I doubt I'll get all of the features because that's why he specced these things when he had the chance, but one or two would be good.

I hope this question is guthrie govan enough for this board - I know it's a barely disguised "Which guitar should I buy?" and the correct answer is "His signature guitar" - except for the cost. I'm looking for the value option I guess.

Thanks.

[alexkhan]

Hello Yabba, welcome to this sleepy forum of ours.

Regarding your question, I believe there are plenty of "superstrat" style guitars with very similar specs at the price points you mention and you should be able to find excellent guitars in that range.

With high-end gear of any type (guitars, amps, headphones, audiophile stuff, cars, golf clubs, etc.), there are points of diminishing returns for the amount of money invested. For instance, a $3000 guitar isn't necessarily "twice as good" as a $1500 guitar.

I recently bought a $1500 Sennheiser HD800S and compared it to an AKG K702 65th Anniversary Edition headphones that was around $600 some years ago. Is the HD800S more than twice as good as the K702? No, not at all, but the HD800S actually exceeded my expectations in the sonic detail and overall soundstage and I feel it's worth every penny. It sounds perhaps 10~15% "better" if I had to put a "number" to it but, overall, it goes beyond that.

It's a matter of refinement of the details with high-end gear. The amount of R&D put into a product also has to be taken into account. In Charvel GG's case, a number of Fender's top engineers, Custom Shop master builders and marketing staff members spent countless hours refining the details before the guitars finally went into production. They are going to want to recoup those costs.

But to get back to your question, if you study the specs of the Charvel GG, you can get virtually identical specs from guitars that cost well below half the price of the Charvel GG. The woods on the Charvel GG, although very nice, aren't exactly exotic. The hardware (mainly the bridge) is custom but similar systems can easily be sourced from the likes of Gotoh or many other vendors. It's the same with the pickups. There are countless other similar sounding pickups to choose from at various price points.

I'd imagine someone like Ibanez would have something very similar - something like their Premium Series. Basswood body with maple top and maple neck/fretboard combo and HSH pickup configuration is very common and you can always experiment with pickups from many winders.

So my recommendation is to do some research on similar spec'd guitars from various manufacturers and narrow down the choices and then go try them at your local music stores. Also, many retailers offer free trial periods so you can always try and return a guitar that you can't find in person. I'm sure you can something that'll work out for you.
_________________
Ed Yoon
Certified Guthrie Fan-atic
BOING Music LLC - Managing Partner
.strandberg* Guitars USA
Ed Yoon Consulting & Management
Guitar Center Inc.

[yabba]

[DLM]

Are you willing to go used? You can get crazy value that way, particularly in the UK.

How much of a deal are your thumbs? For a potentially small-hand-friendly neck profile, I'd suggest trying some MusicMan guitars. Maybe a Luke, or if you want to avoid signature gear, a Silhouette. Not terribly associated with any particular player, and versatile.

Second-hand, basic-spec Suhrs (Classic/Standard) are within your reach in the UK, and these are not unlike the full-fat Timmons. If you can, grab a Rasmus second-hand for the cheapness.

Or a used high-spec Yamaha Pacifica.

On a good guitar, vintage whammy setup can be optimized by learning loads from Scott Henderson's Q&A in his forum.

For new instruments, well, I'd go and play as many Fenders as I could and see if something came close that was within budget.

[Tubedriver]

How budget do you want to go, $199 new?

Ibanez GRX70QA TRB Gio Series Electric Guitar

http://www.ibanez.com/products/u_eg_detail17.php?year=2017&cat_id=1&series_id=9&data_id=292&color=CL01

vintage style trem
16 radius
HSH

Modify it with a strat 5 way superswitch ($30) and pushpull tone pot ($15) to give it all the pickup combinations. Then install locking tuners($60) and a Tremol-no ($45).

There you have it, $349 USD on a budget.