looking for a DIY flying v kit, best quality, suggestions appreciated

[fastforded]

I would honestly rather have a late 80s/early 90's made in japan guitar than anything post 1979ish from Gibson or fender. It's all junk to me when I really start looking at the quality of the instrument. Seems like anything American post 1980 is just cheaply made and poorly made...

And to me a perfect example of "crap" could be the fender made Eddie Van Halen guitar "replica" for $25,000

That just makes me want to puke. How can that be the "sticker" price for a guitar? I could make 5 of them better than that and more true to the original for less than 25k

That's just such a rip off...what's so special that it costs 25k? Is it made of gold or platinum or have diamond feet markers?

Such a shame... I could see if it was a 1950 something les paul or perhaps a guitar Eddie used but for a "replica"???

[fastforded]

Thought this whole interview was very telling:

EDDIE VAN HALEN When Leo Fender was doing his thing and you were doing yours, was there ever any competition?

LES PAUL No, not at all.

VAN HALEN Did you ever collaborate or talk about your ideas?

PAUL Absolutely. Leo Fender would come over, and so would his engineers. They saw the Log and some of the other guitars I had built. They saw it all happening. There was never any friction. It was just the opposite.

Heres the story of how Leo really helped me: When I developed my first solid-body guitar in 1941, I took it to Gibson and they dismissed it. They called it that broomstick with the pickups on it. From 1941 to 1951, I couldnt convince Gibson to do a damn thing about putting out a Les Paul guitar. Finally, Leo decided to come out with the Fender solid-body line, and immediately Gibson said, Find the character with the broomstick with the pickups on it!

And so they asked me to design a guitar. I thank Leo for coming out with his Broadcaster, because it woke Gibson up. Gibson was asleep and Fender was not asleep. Thats the way it goes. Fender was the first to market, but I was way, way out front.

VAN HALEN Its kind of like the car businessToyota woke up GM.

PAUL Sure. Sometimes you gotta wake somebody up, and sometimes I need some help from my friends. And I consider Leo Fender a very dear friend. To me, I am a Gibson man, but that doesnt make any difference, because I also know exactly what Fender is all about.

VAN HALEN With my guitars, I guess Im trying to bring together what you and Leo have done. There are things Ive always liked about Gibsons and things Ive always liked about Fenders, but neither one did everything that I wanted, so Ive created a combination of the two. My guitar is essentially a Strat body with Gibson humbucking pickups.

PAUL I cant always get what I want out of a standard Gibson guitar either. There are so many times that Ill go into Gibson battling to win a point and come out with a compromise. The world is a compromise and so this is what you have to do. It can cost millions of dollars to retool and move something a quarter of an inch. I understand that some of my ideas would cost a fortune.

Another thing that comes into the picture is the preoccupation with how something looks. Ive had executives veto an improvement because their wives didnt like the way it looked. Theyre not thinking about the sound.

VAN HALEN Ive had that problem with companies Ive worked with. Ive had difficulty getting something the way I wanted it, because they claimed that other people want it a different way.

PAUL Which may be right and may not be right.

VAN HALEN Yeah, yeah, but if they want my opinion, then Im giving it to them. Ive had to say, I dont want my name on it if it aint the way I want it.

PAUL I had a case where they put out a guitar without my blessings and I tried to make em stop! The funny thing is they didnt stop it, and it turned out to be their number-one seller. [laughs] So you can be wrong. Gibson put out an SG, and it wasnt with my blessings at all. They put the pickup in the wrong place, they made the body too thin, and there were a lot of other things I didnt like.

So I said, Clean it up a little bit, will ya, before you put my name on it. So they took my name off of it and continued to make it, and its their best-sellling solid-body guitar to date. Sure, its a cheap guitar and it doesnt sound as good as the others, but its a different thing. And it turned out I shouldnt have said what I said.

VAN HALEN When you design guitars, do you design them for sound or cosmetics?

PAUL Sound. But dont get me wrong, design is important.

VAN HALEN Its got to look cool, but it better sound good.

PAUL Exactly. Its nice to have both elements. I wanted the Les Paul to look good. Thats why we put that finish on it and made it with a [sculpted] top, so you could have that clean, violin look to the guitar. It makes it look like a Stradivarius, and you associate it that way, too.

VAN HALEN When you pick up a guitar, which guitar do you pick up?

PAUL I like the feel of my 1975 Deluxe the best. Its actually a reject.

VAN HALEN Those are the ones I love. Got any extras around? Im serious.

PAUL Yeah, sure.

VAN HALEN Im serious. If its a reject and you like it, I know Ill like it.

PAUL Well, not necessarily, because everybody has their own feel.

VAN HALEN I can guarantee you

PAUL Everybody has a certain thing in their head of what they want to do and how to do it and their own technique. Everything about them calls for certain requirements.

VAN HALEN Im getting the feeling from you that you go for the same goddamned ****ing thing that I go for. Its not the appearance of the goddamned thing. I dont care if its a flametop or whatever. Its the feeling of it and the way it sounds.

[Prostheta]

Nice excerpt! EVH's Frankenstrat was primarily something like a second-grade Charvel/Boogie Body anyway so the whole 25k bit is completely off the wall (sorry, couldn't fit a "Thriller" reference in there). Whilst the work that goes into replicating the exact antiquing of an instrument is time-consuming and laborious, I don't think that tag quite cuts it. I don't think that run would specifically create much of an increase in either Fender or EVHs bank accounts, so all I can presume is that it is the one-off prestige run market. Can't sell them cheap otherwise it devalues the original? I don't know. Certainly it is not intrinsic value anyway.

I don't entirely understand as to why Gibson have never pulled their fingers out and been top of their game or indeed, how the hell they even managed to get that rep! A great deal of inertia seems to go along with their decision-making with some deeply odd snap decisions that even minor consultation would throw out as immediate clangers ("Holy Explorer"!).

[Prostheta]

Hell, thinking about it....you could probably pick up a Holy Explorer from somebody whose eyes it had burnt out and refinish the top and back with veneer. Not that this would solve the exacerbated neck dive, but hey.

[fastforded]

Yep imagine that 25k for something that's not even original... ( I don't even think Eddie even signed them or let alone played them or even touched them) let alone that they were not even fender strats to begin with. Seems like a total con of the customers..

I guess some people just have 25k to waste. Just seems like such a scam to me...

Like I have a local farmers market down by me and I was there looking around and found someone selling les Paul's. He had about 10 of them and they were all in the range of $4000-$5000. Now this guy is selling them next to the woman selling the fake Gucci bags and the $10 for $200 perfume vendor. Don't think he sold any but my thought was wow are these gibsons even real?

I always liked gibsons and ever since I "lost" my mid 70s? Custom have wanted to get a replacement. (I don't really like the necks and they were always so heavy anyway) so there hasn't been a big rush as I already have more guitars than I can play...

But I still just want to get one and every time I see one I get the itch to buy one...

Just don't know quite enough to say its real or it's a fake.. I saw a show about Chinese fakes and how real they are. It was both scary and amazing to see how these "knock off" factories and people spend their lives learning how to "replicate" products as good as the originals but using sub-standard materials and parts... Always reading them posts about fake Chinese Gibson copies makes me think that these guitars this guy at the market are sellin are probably not originals but replicas.

Buyer beware so I would rather get mine from a guitar center and pay them a little more to have a (hopefully) real one than take a chance. Not like they are any cheaper there at the market

But then I think I would rather just make my own for less than that and save some money and have something I made myself that I probably cared more about... Almost like I would sleep better at night knowing I didn't get ripped off

[Prostheta]

I've read a lot of articles and forum posts around the net dissecting these "Chibsons" with some people taking the basic instrument and "upgrading" it with better parts. Mostly the differences come down to those which have to be done right in the first place - geometry, fretwork, wood selection and the truss rod. It's an interesting way to look at the situation if you disregard the immediate negatives that tend to come with Asian import copies. For the most part they are making some very viable instruments. Personally I feel less aggravated by the copying issue on the basis that the original product should be of the standard you should expect it to be. Like a genuine PRS for example. They're consistent, top-shelf gear that no import even comes close to matching. In comparison, Gibson's heels are being snapped at. Move a little further across the import spectrum to Japan and you can often find a gutiar (think, Tokai) that blows the socks off the instruments they are based upon. Mad world.

Yeah, 25k is completely off the mark when you are looking at the commercial market however the collector's market is a totally different game. When there are only 250 officially-sanctioned copies (more now EVH is running his own line) that figure is not based on the intrinsic worth. Fender would know that there would be 250 sales in that project and as a marketing stunt it also bears relevance. I wonder if they chose knotty blanks for consistency or not?

[fastforded]

Maybe the knotty wood blanks were used because the original was made from a "second" that was sold at a discount and they wanted to be true to the original, or they just wanted to get rid of 25 knotty blanks they had laying around???

And the prs guitars are definitely in a class of their own...

And quite true about the basics of the Chinese gibsons. Big difference between switching bolt on parts for something better vs. trying to fix a poorly fitted truss rod or misaligned neck.. Those would be nightmares and almost not even worth the time...