Who has ordered a custom guitar..

  • Thread starter Thread starter midnightlaundry
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I’ve ordered a few, generally speaking they have taken double the time frame promised. Only go with a well established company that will still be in business, we’ve all seen these single luthier stories go bad.
Second all of this- I’ve ordered a bunch of custom stuff and I love it, but it all took way longer than initially quoted.

And I’ve seen several people who ordered from smaller builders and had qa issues- basically look closely into a brand before buying from them
 
I have literally never heard of a from scratch, custom guitar being delivered on the schedule promised at point of order.

Bartlett

that guy runs his custom builds with the efficiency of a Swiss Watch manufacturer

Pricey as all hell but the builds are exquisite and you can tweak anything you want
 
Lacello can literally hand build you anything you want for half as much as anyone else and just as nice. And on that, I'm out!
 
I’ve had 3 Caparison custom builds and they were all killer.

As of last year the custom shop is now open to the public, it used to be artist builds only.

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I’ve ordered several. I’ve had 4 Custom builds from Skervesen and they’ve always been great on communication, updates and delivering on time, never late. But they were clear that it did take a year on the last order I did. It was shorter on previous orders. Not sure what the time is currently.

The last 2 I ordered I’ve kept.
One was a 7 string HSS model. I could not find an HSS 7 string that existed anywhere at the time and like to believe it was the first ever :cool: But who knows.
The other was a 6 string with a 24.75” scale length.
I love their 4AP model, I’ve ordered 3 of those and sold 1.

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Two from Carvin in the 00s, One from Moser in the 00s, Two ERGs from Cerberus in teens/20s (not sure if they still have US custom shop, but would highly recommend checking out for what you're seeking), one ERG from kiesel around 2014 was pretty good, one ERG from Kiesel about 5 years ago (dud that I've seen on reverb half a dozen times since), one from Gibson (not what I ordered), one I put in an order in for March of 2024 from a builder in Australia that was 8 months out, turned to 12 months, now 18 months. A few others. The build giveaway I'm doing is 6-8 weeks out for body and neck, the rest I'm DIY.
 
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I’ve had 3 Caparison custom builds and they were all killer.

As of last year the custom shop is now open to the public, it used to be artist builds only.

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I emailed back and forth and really wanted a custom Horus. But they really only offer a few choices on the base models. Good for different tops and things like that. But the starting price just did not seem worth it over the cost of the standard models to me. I wish I could order a hard tail Horus without the 27 fret and instead have full sized HH pickups, they won’t do things like that. I understand though, it’s a small builder.
 
I ordered multiple kenneth lawrence explorers and all of them arrived with correct specs and was worth the money, but i wouldnt do it again because his wait times is insane.

Also ordered 2 esp custom builds and both of them had things that was wasnt the way i ordered them and one of them i rejected, the other one i took only because my son wanted to buy it and he didnt care that the specs wasnt the same as how i ordered it, but i wont order another custom build from them, i waited years and was pissed off they didnt follow the spec sheets.
 
I've ordered twice from Schecter: complete ground up custom orders (8-string Telecasters with Floyd Rose etc).

They were great. Asked questions to make sure they understood what I wanted. Actually tested some thing first before they agreed to do it (theyd never done some of the things I asked for).

Since these were complete one-offs, they hand cut everything (didn't have any CNC programming for it).

They'll do whatever you want as long as it doesn't infringe someone's trademark and it's physically feasible to actually do.
 
I emailed back and forth and really wanted a custom Horus. But they really only offer a few choices on the base models. Good for different tops and things like that. But the starting price just did not seem worth it over the cost of the standard models to me. I wish I could order a hard tail Horus without the 27 fret and instead have full sized HH pickups, they won’t do things like that. I understand though, it’s a small builder.
It’s not so much because of the size of the company as much as the builder/designer wants to keep a leash on specs that work with each design, tonally and visually to retain a certain level of brand quality.
 
Are you a millionaire dude? 😂

I heard Bartlett’s LP replicas are impeccable 🔥

You seen my guitars, you hardly can get that at warmoth 😁

bartlett's builds are incredible. on par with gil yaron imo. obviously the cork sniffing with a certain crowd can become quite intense so take it for what its worth.

tom will do just about anything and obviously the price tag goes higher with the more crazy stuff you want. if you're ever in the market for something like that, drop him a line, he will literally get on the phone and talk to you about your influences and what kind of sound/tone you're after, its an incredible experience.

and as far as warmoth goes, i promise you'll be able to do all the things you can on your current guitars on the warmoths. i promise lol
 
bartlett's builds are incredible. on par with gil yaron imo. obviously the cork sniffing with a certain crowd can become quite intense so take it for what its worth.

tom will do just about anything and obviously the price tag goes higher with the more crazy stuff you want. if you're ever in the market for something like that, drop him a line, he will literally get on the phone and talk to you about your influences and what kind of sound/tone you're after, its an incredible experience.

and as far as warmoth goes, i promise you'll be able to do all the things you can on your current guitars on the warmoths. i promise lol
I know, I don’t say Warmoth aren’t great.

I just like the perfect fit and finish on my guitars and the neck joint is comfortable (one is set neck), plus I like the visuals I got too.
 
I know, I don’t say Warmoth aren’t great.

I just like the perfect fit and finish on my guitars and the neck joint is comfortable (one is set neck), plus I like the visuals I got too.

all good my friend, enjoy your customs in good health :cheers:
 
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