Throughout the twenty-seven years I've played guitar I've had to let a few of them slip away for a variety of reasons. I owned a B.C. Rich Warlock that I just didn't completely connect with and sold to a friend. I also owned an Ibanez GIO GAX70 that I actually liked quite a bit, but I sold to another friend looking to get into playing guitar. I owned a Jasmine S-34C, which was my very first acoustic, but I didn't connect with it, so I returned it. A bit of a TMI overshare on that guitar is that within the first week of owning it I was trying so hard to connect with it that I actually took it to the bathroom with me to play while I did a numero dos. Nothing foul happened, it just sat on my lap as I strummed and did my business. I want to publicly apologize to whomever got that guitar after me. I'm sure the retailer sold it as a used item.
But above all there is one guitar that I still think about to this day. In about 2008 or 09 I was looking to get into seven string guitars. A big box retail chain had a good deal on an LTD SC207 and I snatched it up from their online sales page, as I had done with many other guitar related items previous and never had an issue. When the guitar arrived I was elated. It was comfortable, the neck felt amazing and the guitar sounded really good for an entry level seven string guitar. The problem reared its ugly head when I settled down and started focusing deeper than my initial excitement. It was the dreaded fret buzz. Oh sure, the truss rod could be adjusted, the string height could be adjusted, a lot of things could be adjusted, but what couldn't be adjusted was the now noticeable twist in the neck.
I took the guitar to the local big box chain store from where I purchased it, and their guitar tech told me it was beyond repair. The best they could do was refund me my money, so I reluctantly accepted and left the store without looking at any other seven string guitars they had in stock. I was so excited to finally have a seven string guitar, and it met all my expectations with flying fucking carpets, but that neck just could not be unfuckulated. I was heartbroken. Again, this was an entry level guitar that completely blew me away, so I doubt even if I had looked that any of those guitars would have healed my heartache in that moment.
I've played low-end and mid-range LTD guitars, and even a few high-end ESPs, so the brand has my respect from top to bottom. For a while I lusted after a red LTD H 207, but the SC207 really had me wanting another one of those. More recently I've thought about buying one of the highly unfortunately named MH-17s. I'm just a bedroom rockstar so all I need is something to make noise with, and I think something like the MH-17 would do me just fine, but I know I will always want another SC207.
The saddest end to the story is, just like my returned Jasmine S-34C, that SC207 was put back up on their used sales website for double what I purchased it for days after I returned it. Did they lie and fix the neck? Did they not give a shit and just put it back up for sale? Who knows, but I can say Guitar Center is a shitty company, and that's probably why they knowingly sold me a guitar with a twisted neck, and some other poor sap who unknowingly bought it online after me.
No comments:
Post a Comment