Do yo play the Guitars you build or just love making them?

[woodfab]

I found that I have three nice Guitars  I've made but, two of them I never  use and now I'm making four more.

 How many of you love making guitars that they never use? Or rarely use?

Is that crazy? 

[tonewood is negligible]

Funny enough, I only play guitars that I've made! I used to have a Fender Mexican Telecaster but I just... never quite clicked with it, so I sold it and used the money to build a Mustang 90 - a bit janky, but I felt so much more comfortable playing that guitar, though that could just be the body contours

[Bizman62]

Now that's a good question!

I play very little, much less than I'd like to. But there's only 24 hours in a day and I need my 10 hour sleep. And threre's work to do. And there's unread books. And unviewed guitar building videos. And I don't want to disturb my wife after work by practicing a lick with a video. And I don't have a band to motivate me to learn new songs. And...

All that said, I guess all my guitars have had their share of playing. Some a bit more, some a bit less. And some of them seem to require some recarving to make them more comfortable to play. My necks tend to be thick, flat and square...

[nakedzen]

I play the guitars I've built. I sell the ones that don't see too much use, usually it's max. 4-5 guitars and one bass until the wife starts giving me looks.

No one knows my preference in necks better, so it's great to use your own builds. It took me something like 15 years to find the first guitar I really gelled with, my (now sold) ESP Horizon. Too bad I never liked the sound I was able to get out of it.

[mistermikev]

I think I have some 20+ guitars... about a third are factory guitars, another third are partscasters, and the rest are my builds.  At any given point there are 1 or 2 that I'm in love with... but that changes pretty freq.  Haven't played my classical nor my acoustics for quite a while... but every now and then I'll get an idea in my head that requires an acoustic or classical and I'll focus on those for a while.  Right now I'm in bass mode... mostly because I'm working on a bass.  Haven't played my 295 in a looong time but someday I'll get inspired by some brian setzer track and focus on that for a while.  Building guitars makes me want to play guitar more... buying gear makes me want to play more... buying wood makes me want to build more... it's a vicious cycle!

[ShatnersBassoon]

Well I play it for a while...and then invariably parts end up getting transplanted in to other builds. It’s a tough life of endless surgery with my guitars

My Tanglewood Java Parlor acoustic has been the only guitar that hasn’t been affected by this. But I can’t imagine cannibalising an acoustic

[MiKro]

I play them to make sure all is well, then sell them. Have yet to keep one for me. Also sold all of my factory guitars. There is one that I sold I wish I had kept though. That was my GOTM win in Nov 2008. I miss that one.

mk

[woodfab]

The 1st. guitar I built when I was 14 has poor intonations due to fret spacings, so I never play it.

It has a 60s Gibson patent Humbucker on it which I'm thinking I should sell due to the high demand.

I could use the money for parts for my new builds. 

[ScottR]

I have never purchased a guitar. I have played all my builds .... but I honestly don't play that much and half of them are still mine and hanging around looking pretty. My wife claims one, but she doesn't play at all and I'm not sure she's ever actually touched it. I learned it was hers when I loaned it out for a week or so.

On the other hand, I'm always going to be building something, so why not something special and cool like a guitar?

SR

[Akula]

I've got a funny angle on this one.

 

I built a handful of guitars in my teenage years, with middling success. I moved to the other side of the world at twenty and left all my tools behind, and continued playing on store-bought or second hand instruments. Ten years later, during the covid lockdowns, I decided to build some real low-budget guitars for myself made from the cheapest materials, usually using necks removed from terrible guitars. As I started working again, I had the money to invest in good tools and nice materials, and built my first guitar necks for a decade. After that, I had built maybe four or five guitars for myself.... yet the itch remained.

Having more than enough guitars to satisfy my soul, but yearning to create more sawdust, well that was a dichotomy. Upon expressing these thoughts to a friend, he asked me to build him a guitar! Well, great idea, I'll build one for ya, mate. I charged him for materials and parts, no labour. After that, I put out some feelers, and I've been building ever since. I take on maybe two or three builds a year, because I have a hectic job which brings in enough money and I have no design to quit and jump into the world of luthier business-building.

Not yet. 

When I'm sixty, and my body is wrecked from flipping road cases, I'll have forty years of experience building instruments, and hopefully enough of a reputation doing it that I can retire to my workshop and build maybe ten or twenty a year, and make good enough coin to be comfortable. That's the plan. Let you know how I go.

 - Jam