GitFiddle
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2010
- Messages
- 11,166
- Reaction score
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Well, I started out as one that leaves it stock and rides the crap out of it. But that started changing after my first road trip longer than 100 miles. My hands went numb from the hard plastic stock hand grips. Those were quickly replaced with padded grips.
Then not long after the stock battery died from a bad cell, during its first season of use. That was upgraded to an Interstate battery. Then every spring, I had to rebuild the carb to stop it from leaking all my gas out at a stop sign.
Then the shifter disintegrated and the replacement was made with better materials (The original stock was discontinued for poor quality). Then the stator stopped working, causing more dead batteries. Turns out the stator somehow sliced its own wires (Its completely internal to the engine and not affected by anything on the outside of the bike).
Then the stock intake manifold rotted and started cracking (made out of rubber). The replacement was made out of aluminum since the original stock part was discontinued due to poor quality.
Then when it was time to change the brake pads, I decided to do it myself. I had to go out and buy special allen wrenches to remove the front caliper. When I moved to the rear brake, then I had to jump in the car again and buy a set of torx wrenches to remove the rear caliper (metric threads too).
After most of that, whenever I bought any Harley Screaming Eagle aftermarket parts, I discovered they were all made in Korea.
Other than all that. Pretty nice bike.
My point, even a stock production guitar out of the box, should be nice and ready to rock. Production parts and materials are not selected for their long term wear and confidence to the consumer. They are selected to provide the cheapest solution to produce the product and cut costs anywhere and everywhere.
There are many that are perfectly happy with a stock production guitar. As they should be. There is nothing in the world wrong with that. But there are many others that have discovered that they can tweak a slight bit more quality or sound out of a stock product, and notice the difference and enjoy it.
If you buy a new pickup truck:
Are you happy with the stock tires?
Do you replace the next set of tires with the exact model that came on it stock?
Are you happy with the rims?
Do you keep the same air pressure in the tires that came stock?
Do you install a bedliner to keep from scratching the shiny paint(even though the bedliner usually causes more wear than the loads hauled)?
Do you install spray-in bedliner to keep it from rusting out(which they always do)?
Stock doesn't mean the best. It means just enough to pass off the product. There is no harm in improving a stock product to make it more reliable and last longer.
