Modding: Is it justified, or do we justify it?

[WhippingPost]

A friend (who is an excellent bass player, but a rookie guitarist) bought an Epiphone SG recently. He played it all of two days before he had ordered a set of pickups and new electronics for it. Another friend bought an Epiphone Les Paul from me (which I delivered in stock form), and had ordered new guts for it before I even had the chance to drop it by his house. Oddly, neither of these fellows are forum dwellers. So, where did they get the idea from?

When I questioned their motives and explained that they should spend some time with the guitar before deciding if anything needs to be replaced, I was reminded that almost all of the guitars I've bought I've modified in some way. When my motives for these modifications were questioned, I realized that I often wasn't sure why I had done the work. They all played and sounded great beforehand, and they didn't necessarily sound better afterwards (just different). Only one of them actually needed the work that was done.

So, are our modifications justified, or are we trying to justify our modifications?

[mudfinger]

We justify it. My justification? It's fun to tinker.

[Shawn Lutz]

The justification is you do it because you want to and if that makes you happy that is the only justification you need

I have always been a modder so I like making guitars to what I want them to be. I just like. They don't stay stock for very long. I replaced TRC, pickups, bridge and TP on my Trad + pretty much right away. The only time I don't tinker is if it is a custom built guitar to my specs.

I do question some folks who mod where it really doesn't make financial sense (in my opinion anyway). For me it doesn't make sense buying a Studio and spending $500-700 modding when they should have used that money and move up once class and bought a better model to begin with...but hey, whatever makes you happy!

[121064]

I have no need to justify my modifications to anyone. I want my guitars to sound a certain way and when a set of pickups or something else on the guitar isn't what I want, I change it to suit myself.

I know a guy who, after buying an R7, changed the pots and caps because they put in linear-taper pots in it and it sounded like shit. He's ecstatic with the way it sounds now, with burstbuckers, though he's heard the Lee Roy Lester with the Ellis humbuckers and now he wants some of those.

No one needs to justify anything like this. Do what you want. Who gives a shit what anyone else thinks?

OP - in your role as guitar seller, I believe you were out of line saying anything to your buyers, regardless of your personal relationship. Why do you care what they do to the guitars, as long as you get your money?

[121064]

Originally Posted by Shawn Lutz

The justification is you do it because you want to and if that makes you happy that is the only justification you need

I have always been a modder so I like making guitars to what I want them to be. I just like. They don't stay stock for very long. I replaced TRC, pickups, bridge and TP on my Trad + pretty much right away. The only time I don't tinker is if it is a custom built guitar to my specs.

I do question some folks who mod where it really doesn't make financial sense (in my opinion anyway). For me it doesn't make sense buying a Studio and spending $500-700 modding when they should have used that money and move up once class and bought a better model to begin with...but hey, whatever makes you happy!

I have the advantage of being an Ellis pickups endorser (they're in my Fenders and when my turn comes up in line, I'll get my 'buckers) but the 490/498 pickup set in my studio was mud and sludge, even lowered to flush with the rings, so I put some Lovers in as a stop-gap until the Ellis pups arrive. The Lovers are kick-ass pickups in their own right.

[jfwund]

Yes.


Or another way to put it: I mod my guitars for two reasons. (1) If there's a specific problem that needs to be addressed. (2) To make it more my own, more personalized and thus more an extension of me rather than the same pieces of wood and wire that everyone else can pick up at Guitar Center.

I will at some point be switching noiseless pickups into my strat -- that's to solve a particular problem. I will also be putting a mint green pg on there -- that's just making it more how I want it. Numbers is right, nobody really needs to justify any of this to anyone but themselves so long as it's their own money to spend. Have fun with it -- if it makes you want to play the guitar more, it's all for the good, right?

[Zhangliqun]

There's a hint of a scolding tone to the original post, as if there's a lecture on "waste" following close behind. Are we really supposed to seek external justification or even absolution for doing what we want with our own guitars? My own view is complicated and full of enough shades of gray and internal contradictions to thrill a disaffected college student or Euro-intellectual:

Did the modification make the guitar sound and/or play significantly better? Or did it not make much difference but it looks more cool?

1) If you answered yes to the first, it is justified.

2) If you answered yes to the second, it is justified.

3) If you answered yes to both, it is justified.

4) If you answered no to both, it is justified. (Because now you know what not to do on your next attempt.)

5) If it ate into your rent money or took food out of your wife and kids' mouth, or prevented you from honoring some other financial obligation, it is NOT justified.

I hope that was confusing enough.

[ARandall]

Interesting to note that your two examples were both epi's

They are well known for having worthless electrics/pickups, even to the general masses.

If you'd mentioned about a non-forumite modding a R9 or similar then you might have got a different response.

[axepilot]

If you owned an all original '59 LP and wanted to mod it with a Floyd Rose and Super Skull Shredder pickups, it's all good - it's your guitar.

No need to justify anything.

[WhippingPost]

Thanks for your opinions, everybody.

I didn't mean to imply any sort of lecture in the op, and I think my questioning of their motives may have come off a bit different than it actually was... I didn't interrogate them so much as asked the reasons, offered my opinion (just like they offered theirs every time I modded a guitar), and installed the items they wanted installed. Also, I only sold one of those two guitars.

I'm a tinkering car guy, and I highly doubt I'll stop tinkering on guitars anytime soon. I'm not casting stones or pointing fingers. I just wanted to see some opinions on the underlying question: are the mods we make justified, or do we seek to justify the mods we make? I've made some justified mods, but I've also done plenty just because I wanted to. I'm ordering parts for my next...

However, I don't think the "Epiphone guts = junk" thing is as widely known to the masses as anyone on this forum thinks it is. The SG buyer wanted a "rock" sound from his guitar. EMG's (a passive set) were the order, and new wiring because I'd done it to my Classic. The guy that bought my LP wanted the guts replaced because he'd heard me remark one time that I wasn't crazy about the taper of the pots. Oddly, he's an all-knobs-on-ten guy. Also, he wanted a "rock" sound from his guitar...

[axepilot]

I had a Strat for several years that was my test bed. I had 2 pickguards (SSS and HSS) that I would would swap out with all kinds of pickups, switches pots, etc.

I had a friend that wound pickups and he would send them to me for a second opinion.

That guitar and all of the modding was great fun, and I learned tons doing it.

[Quill]

Originally Posted by mudfinger

It's fun to tinker.

and,

Originally Posted by axepilot

... and I learned tons doing it.

Yeah!

[River]

Originally Posted by ARandall

They are well known for having worthless electrics/pickups, even to the general masses.

Jeez. Just when I think I can get by without calling you out for a week or two.

"Worthless", huh?

Hyperbole suits best the weak of confidence.

I know great musicians who smoke the vast majority of the rest of us with stock Epiphones. If music were a competition, I'd dare you to throw down against them. But it's not, so I'll just ask you to temper your hyperbole down to oh, maybe, 100C.

"Worthless", my ass.

[captain tightpants]

I don't need to justify my modifications. I do it because I like to tinker. Tinkering keeps the demons at bay. Idle hands, and all...

[zontar]

Some people are modders by nature, others are not.

I had a friend who modded every guitar he had in some way or other.

Me?

Most aren't modded.
And if they are it wasn't right off the bat.

[NovaSDF]

Originally Posted by Shawn Lutz

I do question some folks who mod where it really doesn't make financial sense (in my opinion anyway). For me it doesn't make sense buying a Studio and spending $500-700 modding when they should have used that money and move up once class and bought a better model to begin with...but hey, whatever makes you happy!

I respectfully disagree. I think there is a valid reason to spend money on buying a lesser guitar and then on upgrade parts.

If I had bought the Gibson Faded SG, I would have spent about $600 used, and they are nice guitars for sure. Instead, I bought the Epi SG used for $200. I'll spend about another $400 upgrading everything - so in the end my Epi will cost what the Gibson would have cost. So why buy the Epi?

First of all, I'm on a budget so I can spread the cost over time. $200 got me the guitar. This month, I saved up an extra $50 so I ordered a Tonepros bridge. If I have some extra scratch next month, I'll order pickups that will sit in a box until the following month when I can save up enough to order the wiring harness. The month after that, and I get my really cool set of custom pickup rings. Will probably take another 2 months to save up for my custom one-of pickguard. By fall, I'll have saved enough to buy the locking tuners.

Once I'm done, however, the guitar will be my guitar built to my specs. Tonepros bridge, the pickups I want for the sound/style I play, locking tuners to make string changing quick and easy, and a custom one-of look.

If you like tinkering or if you want a guitar with a very specific and unusual look, then buying an Epi or studio and upgrading it makes total sense, or at least it does for me.

[HenryHill]

Originally Posted by River

Jeez. Just when I think I can get by without calling you out for a week or two.

"Worthless", huh?

Hyperbole suits best the weak of confidence.

I know great musicians who smoke the vast majority of the rest of us with stock Epiphones. If music were a competition, I'd dare you to throw down against them. But it's not, so I'll just ask you to temper your hyperbole down to oh, maybe, 100C.

"Worthless", my ass.

LOVED this guy playing his Epi:

In Performance at the White House | Gary Clark, Jr. "Catfish Blues" | PBS - YouTube

I remember as a kid when no one really modded their gear, and there weren't thousands of pedals to change tone. You couldn't change much, there were no boutique winders. People played gigs with what Leo or Orville were putting out. Mostly thru Fender amps. If a pot in a strat went bad, they put in a new Fender pot. I think there were wahs, but it was only for 'those hippys'. A tele was a tele or a tele deluxe. There were a few kinds of LP's, but they had the same pups. Nobody swapped out caps or pots or pups. Everybody was happy with that. But not anymore.

My point is that while I think it's great that there are so many options available now, people used to just play the instruments, and that was the way the instrument sounded, and the audience loved it just the way it was. Nobody needed or wanted much different. The audience sure didn't. I am amazed how much time and money is spent on chasing some theoretical perfect tone nowadays, instead of just playing the instruments.

If you want to change something, good on ya, I have no qualms with it, but maybe just playing it like it is would be good enough. Maybe just play it unless it's broke.

[Quill]

The Epi thing keeps coming up ... I keep picking them up in shops, and I've yet to play a bad one.

Originally Posted by HenryHill

I remember as a kid when no one really modded their gear...

I do sometimes worry about the impulse, what it reflects ... tinkering is one thing; especially when it involves learning a new skill or solving a problem or stretching yourself in some way - how can that not be good? Well - even then, if it requires a kind of introspection that is too much and takes us out of our lives and too far down into ourselves, that might not be good. Really, whether our guitar resonates just so or our sound is exactly what we think we have in mind - these are not real problems, and may not merit the energy we give 'em.

But if it's light-hearted and fun, then maybe the energy we put into it can kind of turn around and become a source of energy in that weird way that fun things grow.

{sigh} There aren't as many places to play as there once were, and sometimes the playing that gets done ... the situations can seem forced. Maybe for players who want to play out but can't seem to make it happen, the tinkering can be a way of burning up an excess ... ok, I'm taking my arm-chair Freud and gettin' the hell out of here before I start losing friends.

[b-squared]

If it sounds like crap, I'll modify it.

BB

[kingedb]

I justify my modding so yes it's justified. My justification....I wanted to.

I have a lot of fun tinkering with my gear.

[RichBrew]

I stuck some different pickups in one of my Les Paul guitars some 18 months ago, purely as an experiment. The differences were minimal, if at all, and I reverted back to the original pickups. Things do get replaced if worn or broken, but otherwise I spend the vast majority of my time with guitars playing them.

RichBrew

[NovaSDF]

Originally Posted by RichBrew

I stuck some different pickups in one of my Les Paul guitars some 18 months ago, purely as an experiment. The differences were minimal, if at all, and I reverted back to the original pickups. Things do get replaced if worn or broken, but otherwise I spend the vast majority of my time with guitars playing them.

RichBrew

The whole pickup thing is a can of worms in many respects. In my case, I wasn't happy with the stock Epi pickups and wanted something hotter. The set I installed in my Epi LP made a huge difference in the sound.

Having said that, you could go through a fortune experimenting with different pickups.

There was a great post on here a while back about using micro connectors used for RC cars to connect the pickups to the posts. In theory, it would make your pickups plug and play. I was thinking that you could have a couple of different pickups for different occasions, say country vs. metal, already set up in their own pickup rings. You would just have to remove the strings, unscrew the pickup rings and unplug the pups, plug in the new pups and screw down the rings. Tune up and good to go. You wouldn't even have to worry about adjusting pickup height, as they would already be set up in the rings.

I could see a setup like that being awesome for a working studio musician who may have to play a lot of different styles. You could swap out pickups in only a few minutes armed with only a Phillips head screwdriver.

I actually ordered some of the connectors, but never used them. I still think it's a cool idea though.

[zontar]

Originally Posted by NovaSDF

I respectfully disagree. I think there is a valid reason to spend money on buying a lesser guitar and then on upgrade parts.

If I had bought the Gibson Faded SG, I would have spent about $600 used, and they are nice guitars for sure. Instead, I bought the Epi SG used for $200. I'll spend about another $400 upgrading everything - so in the end my Epi will cost what the Gibson would have cost. So why buy the Epi?

First of all, I'm on a budget so I can spread the cost over time. $200 got me the guitar. This month, I saved up an extra $50 so I ordered a Tonepros bridge. If I have some extra scratch next month, I'll order pickups that will sit in a box until the following month when I can save up enough to order the wiring harness. The month after that, and I get my really cool set of custom pickup rings. Will probably take another 2 months to save up for my custom one-of pickguard. By fall, I'll have saved enough to buy the locking tuners.

Once I'm done, however, the guitar will be my guitar built to my specs. Tonepros bridge, the pickups I want for the sound/style I play, locking tuners to make string changing quick and easy, and a custom one-of look.

If you like tinkering or if you want a guitar with a very specific and unusual look, then buying an Epi or studio and upgrading it makes total sense, or at least it does for me.

For some buying the better guitar is the better choice, but for others this is a better path--especially being able to spread the cost over time.

As well there's the modding the cheap guitar you already own.
Yeah my LP Copy in a sense may not have been worth what I spent on modding it--it certainly didn't increase the resale value---but now it plays and sounds better than it ever did.

And I couldn't have got a decent guitar for what I spent on the mods--and if I had bought a guitar for what I spent on the mods--guess what?
I would've modded that one.

Normally I don't mod, I buy something I like as is, but sometimes that's not an option.

[freefrog]

IMHO and IME, "cheap" guitars (especially from derived brands like Epi or Squier) are intentionally fitted with inferior parts (electronics and hardware) in order to limit their performances... It's logical: if Epi's sounded as good as Gibson, Gibson would sell much less guitars.

IOW, from an economical POV: "cheap" prices "must" translate in a cheaper tone, or expensive models won't sell no more.

So, yes, modifying "cheap" instruments makes sense.

I've recently bought a Steinberger Spirit.
It had 3 epoxied ceramic pickups looking like rebranded EMG HZ's.
These PU's were playable but sounded "generic", bland, lifeless.
I've changed them for a Bill Lawrence, a Fender and a Duncan. Although the stock PU's were playable, they simply can't be compared to the new ones. I've used this axe on stage the last Saturday night and it sounded as good as any of my pricier instruments. It wouldn't have been the case with its stock PU's.

Regarding expensive guitars, mods can make sense too: a guitar is a whole which work on "synergy". Sometimes a single part is enough to kill its tone. It can be a bad pot, a bad nut, or anything in the hardware. Finding this bad part and changing it can simply resurrect the axe.

Short story about it: I've once pulled a Strat copy from its grave just by changing... its plastic pickguard. The original one was fitted with a thick soft aluminium foil which was totally dampening the acoustic resonance. A new pickguard without this foil has simply unfroze the high range which was muffled until this mod.

[alligatorbling]

anything can be "made better"... once its the "best" , someone will find out a way to make that even better.

people get a great deal of satisfaction out of DIY jobs that make their gear play and sound better....

its also a lot of fun to customize, as you have SO much to pick from as far as what to replace, and what to replace it with.

doing so also makes the instrument your own in a unique way.

[rockstar232007]

I prefer to use the term "upgrading".

[axepilot]

Originally Posted by freefrog

IMHO and IME, "cheap" guitars (especially from derived brands like Epi or Squier) are intentionally fitted with inferior parts (electronics and hardware) in order to limit their performances...

Not exactly. They're fitted with cheaper parts to keep cost down.

[old mark]

I own 2 guitars that were modded when I bought them*. I have done some changing parts to several of my guitars to make them more playable, such as replacing a nut or bridge, but I have never replaced pickups or electronics. I tweak them to get the sound I think is good out of them, and I have been really happy with stock components most of the time. I do also have 2 Fender types that were built from parts**, but again they existed before I bought them.

*Epiphone Dot, MIC, 2010, with Gibson 490 pups.
Gibson LP Studio 50's Tribute, P90-replaced all electronics-Tom Sweet P90's.

**Tele made from aftermarket parts, P90 at neck, Rosweood board.
Stratocaster Fender MIM neck, Fender Starcaster MIC body, DiMarzio pups, Fender electronics. (I did this one myself from a stock MIM Strat.)
FWIW, my OTHER Epi Dot is completely stock including pickups and sounds different, but just as good as the one with Gibson pups. It is more jazzy/bluesy, whereas the Gibby modded Dot is a rock n Roll machine
mark

[Iron Broadsword]

Now that technology and access to tech is where it is, and modding is easy and fruitful, I think it only makes sense that tinkerers will tinker. I'm a tinkerer, and I just enjoy trying new things. There's a simple joy in seeing what you can make gear x sound like, and it kinda brings out the mad scientist in you.

But here's my question - Why do people care what other people do with their gear? Who are you to say what I should/shouldn't do with my stuff?! :P

[freefrog]

Originally Posted by axepilot

Not exactly. They're fitted with cheaper parts to keep cost down.

Your answer doesn't exclude mine: low cost has often the wonderful power to create cheap tones... :-)

And I'm not sure it's only a question of cost. A bad guitar pickup is not THAT cheaper to build than a good one... but it will surely protect the huge benefits due to more expensive gear.