FrugalGuitarist.com - Rex-Krueger

Partscaster Express Volume 2: Sweet Deals on Used Machines

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:32:00 -0500

You know those stories you hear? The ones the gray-beards tell about buying a ’52 Strat for $50 in some pawn shop in Texas back in ’85 when no one knew any better? Those days are over. Guitars have become such a fetish object that even people who don’t play an instrument know that old guitars are worth a bundle. Heck, there’s even a vintage guitar investment fund. The secret’s out on old guitars and you’re very unlikely to ever get super-lucky on a vintage piece of kit. Of course, there are the imports, and while many of them are very good, most players (including me) feel that name-brand, American (or at least North American) guitars still have a considerable edge in terms of quality and reliability.

Here’s where the mighty partscaster rises to fill the void. Only here can you find a high-quality, American-made guitar with solid parts for truly low dough. Check out this tele, which was my first partscaster.

This blackguard had an ash body, maple/rosewood neck, Seymour Duncan pickups, a bone nut, and CTS pots. I would put this guitar up against any Mexican Fender and it cost me a modest $300. Now, you can get a Mexican Fender for the same price, but try getting that same guitar with Duncans, quality electronics, and a bone nut. The guitar also played and sounded great.

Unimpressed? Let’s look at Exhibit B.

This one has a flame-maple-topped ash body, Birdseye maple neck, Duncan bridge pickup, Fender Custom Shop neck pickup, Grover tuners, and excellent pots and switches. Price for this one? Just $300 again.

And again, this guitar was a fine player; light and resonant with a good blend of sounds. You can get a flamey guitar for a good price these days, but this one had top-quality components that you could never hope to get in a name-brand guitar for the price. If I have your attention now, let’s figure out how to buy one of these on the cheap.

Turns out that guitars are like food, you really want to buy local. Most of us head straight to Ebay for our used-gear needs, but this can be a bad move. Partscasters on ebay tend to be listed by cork-sniffers who hand-select every screw. These enthusiasts price their franken-strats at or above new guitar prices. It’s tough to blame them, since some of these guitars sell for the asking price. Consider this telecaster, which was recently listed for $997.

Aside from the questionable relic job, the auction doesn’t even say where the neck and body came from. Who’s shelling out $900+ for a parts-guitar on Ebay? I don’t know, but it ain’t me and it shouldn’t be you.

So where do we turn? Craigslist. Here’s the secret of my favorite local listing site: it’s populated by people who are too lazy for Ebay. I buy my guitars from Craigslist sellers who just want to get back some of their money without having to box and ship an instrument. These are the people you want to buy from, but it’s rarely easy or quick. Since I’ve been at this for a while, let me offer a few suggestions for getting the most out of your used partscasters.

Have patience. If you want to get into parts-guitars for cheap, you need to be in it for the long haul. If you want to just go out and buy one right now, ebay is waiting. But if you’re willing to see this buying and selling and fixing of instruments as just another part of your life as a musician, then you can expect big things. Eventually.

You need to look at Craigslist every day. It’s not as time-consuming as you might think. I live in a town of over 125,000 people, but the musical instrument listings are short enough to check in a few seconds. If there are other good-size towns or cities near you, look at their listings, too. Just have a quick look every day, and try to keep an open mind about what’s out there.

Have flexible expectations. If you want something super-specific, used parts-casters might not be your game. But if you can be a little flexible with your needs, there are all kinds of good things out there. For instance, after I bought the blackguard I discussed above, I knew I wanted another tele as a backup. It didn’t take long for this one to show up on Craigslist.

This guitar was in rough shape when I got it. It was filthy and unstrung. There were metal shavings stuck to the bridge pickup and the frets were toast. An even bigger issue for me was that it had a really thick, vintage-style neck. I had been used to slim, modern necks and I was really wary of trying to handle this baseball-bat. But hell, it was a tele, and I was able to talk the owner down to $100. As I was checking it out, I noticed some light Birdseye figuring on the neck. Not many cheap builders bother with Birdseye maple, so I thought it was worth a chance. Once I got the thing home and disassembled it, I found that the neck and body were both Warmoth, the gold-standard for after-market parts. The bridge pickup was a Duncan and the hardware was top-notch. This guitar was worth more than $100 just for the neck and body. Once I had it re-fretted and set up, I got another surprise. That thick neck was amazing. It supported my big hands in a way I had never felt before. Five minutes after plugging it in, I was flying up and down the neck. A few months later, the blackguard was gone and this beater had become my new number one player. Being flexible with my needs helped me bag my favorite guitar for only $100.

Now that we’ve laid out the basic ideas, you can start looking for deals. Next time, I’ll get into some of the specifics of inspecting a parts-guitar, asking the right questions, and haggling for the right price.

Rex Krueger is a musician, writer, and teacher living in Gainesville, Florida. Read his blog on all things DIY at nonamecustom.wordpress.com

Partscaster Express Volume 1: Why Play a Partscaster?

Fri, 25 May 2012 13:00:00 -0500

Why bother? Why spend your time and money on a guitar made out of parts when there are so many guitars that sound and play great right off the rack? It’s a good question, especially when gig-worthy guitars seem to get cheaper every year. Besides, who ever got famous playing a guitar made out of parts? Well…Eddie Van Halen for one.

But you’re probably wondering why you need to get involved with all this worrying about neck shape and pickup selection when you can just grab a guitar that works and play the damn thing. Well, I only play partscasters, and here's why:

1.) You know every part that goes into it.

Most affordable guitars cut costs somewhere. Ever tried to do a volume swell on your guitar only to find that the volume pot does essential nothing until the last ¼ of its rotation? That kind of quiet/loud performance is a dead give-away for cheap pots, or a pot with a linear taper instead of the smoother audio taper. Other victims of cost cutting can include shoddy tuners, buzzing frets, and an improperly slotted nut. (Do you hear a “ping” sound from the nut when you’re tuning?) All of these issues need to get fixed eventually, so the real cost of affordable guitars can be hidden. When you assemble your own instrument out of parts, you know exactly what’s going into it. Quality parts equal fewer surprises and less maintenance.

2.) You can get exactly what you want.

At some point, most guitarists look at their instruments and say, “This guitar would be perfect if only…” For instance, I love Telecasters, but I hate the standard Tele neck pickup. I’ll throw just about any other type of pickup in there instead. But in my quest for a better Telecaster, I’m not about to hack up a valuable American Standard while routing out the neck pickup hole. By playing a partscaster, I don’t have to worry about resale value. They aren’t worth much anyway, so why not experiment?

3.) A blank headstock is freedom.

Guitarists get awfully uptight about brands, but they shouldn’t. Especially when it comes to bolt-on type instruments, we’re mostly talking about mass-produced objects whose designs have been optimized for fast, cheap manufacturing. Guitars aren’t very complicated in their construction, and the instruments most of us play aren’t “crafted” so much as bolted-together. For Fender-style guitars especially, there are few secrets left. Builders know how these instruments are made, which is why there are so many good Fender copies out there. So, why not skip the nail-biting over brands and focus on how you sound instead? Once you give up on having the “best,” you can focus on finding what works for you.

Convinced? Great. Let’s go ahead and assemble a Strat out of parts right now. For the neck and body, we’ll go with Warmoth, since they’re a highly regarded American builder and they do all kinds of options. For the pickups, let’s use Seymour Duncans, since I like them a lot. We’ll use Grover tuners and a Wilkinson tremolo because we should have the best parts in this guitar. Let’s add it up:

Warmoth Strat body (poplar, Alpine White finish)	$ 320.00
Warmoth Strat neck (all maple, gloss finish)	$ 266.00
Seymour Duncan loaded pickguard (pots/switch/jack included)	$ 279.00
Wilkinson Tremolo	$ 108.00
Grover Rotomatic Tuners	$ 45.93
Strap Buttons	$ 5.00
Neck Plate	$ 5.00
Wiring and setup by a good tech	$ 108.00
Total	$1088.93

And when we compare that to an American Standard Strat priced at $999.00, we find that we just spent an extra $89.00 by assembling our own!

Wait a second; I thought this was supposed to be Frugal Guitarist. I’m not seeing any savings here and we didn’t even go for any fancy custom options. This brings us to the one speed-bump in my love of parts guitars: if you make your own, you can easily pay more, not less. Companies like Fender save money through the economy of scale; they control costs by buying parts in bulk, using a lot of automated manufacturing, and limiting options. You’re probably not going to beat them for cost; at least not with the parts list I just assembled. Now, there are a lot of lower-priced parts manufacturers like GuitarFetish out there. I'll cover these companies in future installments, but even though many of their parts are quite good, their stock is made overseas and they don’t have the same reputation for quality that Warmoth or similar US builders have. For right now, it’s enough to understand that building a parts-guitar that really rivals a name-brand, American-made instrument is usually cost-prohibitive.

So, why did I just waste your time convincing you to roll your own when an American-made, name-brand guitar is often cheaper? For one thing, all the reasons I love partscasters still hold true; they’re still hackable, modable, tweakable instruments that free you from brand anxiety and allow you to get whatever options you want. Apart from commissioning a custom builder to make you a totally unique instrument, partscasters are the only way to really optimize your guitar to your needs. The options in woods, finishes, and electronics are staggering.

More importantly, there are at least two ways to get a partscaster on the cheap. One way to save money is learning to do a few simple assembly tasks yourself. By doing a little finish work or some soldering, you can save big money. The skills involved aren’t rocket-science and you get the added satisfaction of playing something that you made.

The other option is buying a partscaster used. While they cost a lost upfront, partscasters don’t have good resale value because they lack that name-brand appeal. Why not let someone else suffer the depreciation when they sell that fancy parts guitar? I’ve bought a bunch this way and I’ve been really happy with the guitars I got. This option limits the personal touch of assembling your own from scratch, but you can always make changes later. Buying used is probably the best way to get started with partscasters, so in my next installment, I’ll talk about finding and buying a partscaster for a good price.

Rex Krueger is a musician, writer, and teacher living in Gainesville, Florida. Read his blog on all things DIY at nonamecustom.wordpress.com