So the wife and I are heading into Chicago to attend a little shindig where free booze will be flowing. We live in one of the suburbs but thought we’d treat ourselves to a mini-vacation and book a room downtown if we could find one for under $200.
Boy did we ever! Using one of those travel websites I was able to book a $380 room at the Hard Rock Hotel on Michigan Ave. for $175 on a Saturday night. Even with taxes, fees, yada, yada, yada it was still under our $200 limit. Sweet!
Since I booked through a travel website, I decided to head over to the Hard Rock Hotel’s website and see what kind of amenities they offered. Lo and behold, I found that they offer Complimentary Gibson Guitar Rentals! Now I don’t even want to go to the party. I want to hole up in the room and have them keep sending me guitars.
The cheapest guitar they show on that page has an MSRP of $2400 (the single bass on the list is half that). The most expensive guitar I own is my Ibanez electro-acoustic that cost $500. My only electric is a Strat knockoff by Peavey. I know guitar shops charge a lot less than the MSRP, but I have still never held such expensive guitars before.
So, which one should I start with? The Les Paul Custom? The SG carved? The ES hollowbody? Let’s say my wife drags me to this party anyway and I only have time to play a couple, which ones should I definately try?
Hmm, maybe I should have posted in IMHO since I’m looking for opinions. But it dealt with music, so I thought I should keep it in CS. I leave it up to the Mods.
Is there any attributes to these guitars that I should be paying attention to as I’m playing? Kinda like sipping a fine wine, I should be looking for a certain palette or some such? Is there some reason I should try one guitar over another? Even in your opinion?
I’d work my way through the ES-335, the SG, the [del]token[/del] bass, a Les Paul and one of the acoustics. I’m not really a gearhead, I’m just into trying different instruments based on my mood.
This is the right forum for your question, since it’s about a musical instrument.
The ES makes the most sense, if you’re going to be amp-less. The acoustics would be too loud to play in the room, and the solid body guitars too quiet. And the ES is a damn fine guitar.
Now, if it were me, I’d have a great deal of difficulty passing up that LP custom, but not if I can’t hear the thing.
I don’t know, but I’m picturing a hotel full of Guitar Center noobs with Marshall stacks, and I’m really really sure I wouldn’t want to stay there. There’s no shame in being a beginner, but I’d like to get some sleep!
I take that to mean something like a pocket pod where you plug the guitar into one end and headphones into another. No actual speaker on the amp. However, I would figure that the acoustics would be too loud to be played in the rooms.
It does say that no one else will hear it, at least. But that brings us to my answer: it depends on the amp!
If it’s guaranteed that no one else will hear, either there’s recording-studio quality walls between rooms (which would come in handy for sex, woohoo!), or some lame amp setup/headphones, which aren’t really worth it, unless you’ve never played any of those guitars. You could play any of those guitars in a Guitar Center or somewhere, anyway.
Ah, okay, that makes a whole lot more sense. In that case, I’d be all over the LPs, but I’d need to figure out which of the 3 (!) LPs I’d want to sleep with. Although the ES would still be tempting. Are two of those LPs actually the same guitar? Well, maybe not, if this isn’t a typo:
I foresee back problems.
Another issue is that if your SO is trying to sleep, the sound of even an unplugged solidbody can be really annoying if you’re both in the same room.
If you’ve never played a Les Paul before, you may be surprised how they feel compared to your strat copy. I’ve got a '72 Les Paul that I just love, but it’s a totally different beast. Much different than playing my Strats. I pedict you’ll like the SG better due to it’s light weight and thin body profile. But by all means, TRY THEM ALL!!
ES 335 w/tremolo paired with a NEW fender silverface amp nice clean rev and just enough distortion for sustain…I used to have this pairing till’ they were stolen. (dont need a strap to play compfy)
I had a 78 black beauty gold hardware custom lespaul, way heavy, but sure sounded like zeppelin.
SG too small for my fingers.
Had an Ephophone Doubleneck…wish I didn’t have to sell it, the necks are more like the lespaul w/SG body.
Fenders good for bass, but,I never liked the guitars, they tend to squeal at bad moments, and always sound fendery no matter the settings.(dont know how yngwei makes it sound like that)
I currently play late 80’s Charvel standard, a bit lighter on the back, paired with a cheaper than Marshall, Behringer half stack.
You HAVE to play a Les Paul. All night long you’ll be going “wow, this sounds just like…”. The 2008 Standard with the fancy neck looks like a good way to go. You should check on availability before getting your heart set on anything.
I imagine they’d rent out regular tabletop line 6 Pods. Pocket Pods are sort of a pain to navigate and tend to flop around with all the cables hanging off unless you have it anchored to something. Regular Pods (2.0, XT) have everything laid out nicely and are easy to use.
Good idea about bringing headphones. Maybe a strap too, and a tuner, capo, picks, extra strings, recording device, favorite chair, books, cat, dog…
Some pods have a stereo miniplug input so you can plug in an ipod, computer, etc. so you might want to bring a male to male stereo miniplug cable.
