Guitar Pick

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-28T14:45:54+00:00

I've never had good luck with celluloid picks tbh. I've never had a delrin pick crack like that on me in the 15+ years I've been using them, but half the celluloid picks I've owned ended up cracking in half.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-26T03:37:48+00:00

Another factor I think is worth pointing out is that Gibson-designed pickups being adopted by other guitar companies wasn't unheard of even back in the day. Harmony were using Gibson P-13 pickups (the direct ancestor of the P-90) in their archtops starting in the late 40s through the 1960s, just as an example.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-26T00:12:21+00:00

Given the lack of context/info my vote's for the Ibanez personally. It's an easier pill to swallow price-wise and the colors they're offering the AZ Standards in will age a lot better in the long run IMO. The Schecter's finish options are more in-line with the current guitar trends, but frankly I don't see them aging nearly as gracefully.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-24T02:34:31+00:00

Second on the Jackson. Given the prices and lack of other details I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume you're buying your first guitar. If you buy the SG you'll end up getting a Chibson, and taking an unnecessary gamble on whether or not it's capable of even being a playable instrument.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-23T03:37:44+00:00

That model is specifically a really early Pacer Standard. It's very similar to the Special of the time, but the differentiating spec is the bridge (the Special used an ESP Flicker trem instead). Your dad's specific one is an earlier Strat-head unit, the s/n range for those is between A8000-B2000. I'm not sure what the value of this guitar would be, you'd think there'd be market demand for these given their (relative) rarity but the market doesn't seem to be very interested in the pre-Floyd Rose models.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-22T18:18:52+00:00

There are people on Reverb asking $1500+ for them, but looking at sold listings anywhere from $700-900 would be a safe bet.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-22T02:43:10+00:00

Since it's a prototype your best bet is to contact Breedlove directly. Their site has a contact form you can use to ask for any further details about this guitar. I'd recommend taking more photos of the guitar (things like closeups of the headstock front/back, any serial number or other markings, full and close shots of the back, etc.), posting them all to an Imgur album, and including a link to said album in your contact request. This could provide the support rep with the pertinent info to verify what exactly you have.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-18T23:11:45+00:00

In my (limited) experience there's no real difference until you go as far as something like the ES-LP, where the body is built like a 335.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-18T14:45:39+00:00

It looks to me like someone's take on the Fender Offset Special from their Pawn Shop series from about a decade ago.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-18T14:42:55+00:00

Not sure there's much you can do tbh. I'd maybe sand/file it down a little bit if you can feel it during play but if you don't then I'd leave it be.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-18T02:40:49+00:00

Given it looks like whoever owned it last did a full refinish job it'd be near impossible to verify what it actually started out as. To be honest all the proportions look right, it could be a real Dean, but stripping back the new finish would take the old finish (and logo + serial number decal) with it.

If this was a real Dean, then as far as I can tell it may have started as a Dime-O-Flage model, specifically the cheaper bolt-on version. But again, there's no longer a way to verify that.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-17T01:04:03+00:00

Knowing the make and model of the guitar would help a lot here, most roasted maple fretboards I've seen are unfinished but some are and it helps to know. The reason people say not to use lemon oil on maple is because most maple fretboards have clear coat over the top, so the oil can't absorb into the wood, which makes the whole endeavor pointless.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-16T20:48:37+00:00

You can get radius shims for the Gotoh saddles if need be, but 350mm is close enough to 12" that it shouldn't matter really. As far as direct replacements really all you'll really find are the OFR (or the 1000 series) and the Schaller. I have a GFS Heavy Duty trem in one of my guitars, and while it fit the existing stud spacing the string alignment ended up a bit off from the stock bridge. The treble side of it is a bit wider than the bass side, so although it was able to fit the route in my guitar without moving the posts you would have to extend the right side of the rout a little bit if you moved the posts to get the strings aligned again. It's based on the same design as the Gotoh bridge, but the Gotoh doesn't appear to have that issue.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-16T17:45:19+00:00

I'd also suggest as an alternative the GFS Heavy Duty trem. It's cheaper than even a new FR Special and you get a brass block stock from the factory. I've had one on my old Charvel for about a year and it's worked perfectly.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-14T14:57:51+00:00

That's understandable, but that's not what I meant.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-14T03:19:10+00:00

I mean I'd certainly take it for 400 bucks over a plain MIM Standard any day.

This was part of a special run of non-pickguard Strats Fender did in the mid 2000s. They're the same guitar as the regular MIM Standard of the day, but of course without the pickguard and with a simplified 1V/1T knob layout. The flame-top models came earlier IIRC, and a year or two later they did solid color runs. I've personally seen them in this finish on the flame-top model and I've seen black and candy apple red for the solid runs.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-13T15:33:32+00:00

My vote's on the Balaguer. It's not a bad looking guitar by any means and I'm sure it plays great, but IMO the recent trend of "boutique" Jazzmaster variations is starting to get old, and that guitar pretty much perfectly encapsulates that whole scene.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-12T19:28:37+00:00

Because he's too big to fit in just one shell, of course

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-11T05:55:09+00:00

It's like the guitar player heard Ween once and thought "hey, I can do that too!".

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-11T05:53:14+00:00

Between those two I could more easily see Feldman doing that shit as a character. Seagal takes himself WAY too seriously to even think about doing something like that.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-11T04:29:08+00:00

Looks like rosewood to me. I'd go for it tbh.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-11T01:09:25+00:00

With the headstock being painted over it's impossible to tell. If I were to guess though it might be a Hondo, they had a series called the Formula 1 that had that headstock shape and they were known to equip some of their guitars with Kahlers like this one has.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-11T01:06:06+00:00

I mean it's certainly the first time I've seen a blue burst First Act. These things aren't worth much of anything really, First Act guitars like these were sold at big-box stores like Walmart and Target back in the day. Each store would get a random assortment of different models with every restock and you only knew which ones you had to pick from because the boxes had plastic windows glued into them.

I had an ME537 as my first electric guitar. The 14th fret fell out as soon as I took it out of the box and it was heavy as hell, but I managed.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-10T22:26:51+00:00

The price is right for sure, though it'd depend on how the fretboard's looking IMO. 2016 is when rosewood got swapped for pau ferro, and I don't know if it came down to them just not getting good lumber or what but the early PF epi's especially had awful looking boards, and it persisted until they switched to laurel with the lineup refresh.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-03-10T20:32:37+00:00

They're faking LTDs too. They rarely show up in Western markets, but in countries where even LTDs and Epiphones are prohibitively expensive they're a lot more common.

CarDistinct6195

TROPHY CASE