Sorry fellas, but when I see a price like that asked
for one guitar, I always think about what ELSE I could
have for all that money.
I actually know how to have a lot of fun on small money, so for me this is
a exciting excersize. AND it irritates me that they call it a Les Paul. It would have
irritated Les himself as well. He said, "Take my name off the thing, it's not my design."
They should listen to him.

I'm sure that
everything in this picture, including modifications, cases, stands, amps, pedals, cables, straps, capos, slides, picks, setup jobs and all I've spent
wouldn't add up to $5000. With the axes and amps in this picture, I can have lots of rowdy fun, and
all my rowdy friends are coming
over tonight. Why would I want to tie up so much money in one guitar? That brown SG on the right can do anything that the high priced
SG can do. I paid $600 for mine, brand new, and with mods and hard case I have about $2000 in it. And it sounds like a million.
But then, I had enough money left over to buy the other SG and the Tele, and to build the Warmoth bass and
get amps and pedals and everything.
You do the math. The Tele and the Silverburst SG each cost me about $600 and needed very little in the way of mods... just setup and a good case.
So you cain't sell me a guitar for ten times that.
I've just been paging through the new Sweetwater catalog... it's very thick! And packed
with exciting pictures of expensive gear, from $8000 Les Pauls to $7500 Taylors and Martins
down to $300 pedals that will be the last pedal you will ever need, and guitar "tone processing" boxes that give you all the tones of the superstars without using an amp.
Wow dudes. *shrugs, rolls eyes
IMHO
the new guitar as an investment is a really bad idea. You drive it off the lot and it's worth half what you paid for it.
It takes a long time to recover its value, in the meantime trends come and go and maybe
the electric guitar is passe...
I like new guitar days, just like anybody does, but I don't like to spend so much. How about this cool Epiphone ES-339 that I
paid $339 for, and modded with an equal amount of money's worth of 'improvements.' I can have lots of fun with this for
a tenth of what the dumb (but lovely) SG custom costs.
I know a guy who could lose that in an afternoon at the races...
or getting scalped at the casino. Here's my obsession... cool guitars.
