Hopefully mischief will see this post. He's pretty knowledgeable about guitars. (I'm sorry to say, I'm completely ignorant about 'em.)

The guitar I have that's least like a Tele or a Dot—and which I love to death—is a Gibson L6-S. Kind of an idiosyncratic beast: very charming 6-way tone switch against two humbuckers gives it a lot of tonal range; very warm on the clean side, sounds great dirty.

It was a short run in the 70s, so it might be a bit of a hunt tracking one down, but you should be able to do it for about $700 without having to deal too hard. Slighty funky cut, Les Paul sort of look but not quite.

Mine is named Lorraine.

Try a 12-string acoustic, especially if you like to do a lot of single string lines and double-stops. Also, a solid rhythm player on a 12-string will be much appreciated in many string bands. If you read music, violin and horn solos from classical composers that sound a bit weak on a regular guitar can jump to life on a 12, and there's no shortage of free sheet music available on the web.

Want a completely custom guitar? Want to specify body woods, colors, pickup types, neck radius, fingerboard woods, electronics layout, and engraved text on the rod cover? Do you want it in about 6 weeks? Go to carvin.com . All American for 50 years.

Here's another idea: pick a different instrument. Some fairly nice keyboards run in the $600-$700 range. A harmonica is cheap as hell, but will challenge you for a lifetime. Bongos, what can you do with two drums? I bought a kalimba about a year ago. Learning a new instrument has been both difficult and fun.

Another consideration: Take professional lessons. Learn to sing. A music theory course.

I love my Tele deluxe because it has Fender Lace humbuckers in the bridge position. You can get to sound almost like a Les Paul.

A baritone guitar would be cool to own. I'm getting ready to buy a Takamine Nashville TNV 460 SC with a cooltube preamp.

I really want a proper hammer-action 88-key electronic piano...

But, yeah. Lessons are good.

Here's some useless guitar jabber:

I learned music on piano, became much too lazy to read so I did the by ear method. Also being a spatial thinker & relationships of notes to other notes, guitars are terribly confusing to me. You get 1 note per key on a piano. Why the hell would you want to move a note around and be able to hit it on different strings?!

That being said, on guitar, I can play creepy plinky spider-killing-moth background music on National Geographic specials. What?

The guitar I have that's least like a Tele or a Dot—and which I love to death—is a Gibson L6-S

I've always loved the way they look, but never played one. Actually, while liking the look, I always sort of wondered about the quality of the L6-S because the only person I knew who owned one was, um, not the kind of guy you'd expect to own a quality anything, including guitar. But maybe that was the one nice thing he owned. Good suggestion, though, I wouldn't have thought of those...

Try a 12-string acoustic, especially if you like to do a lot of single string lines and double-stops. Also, a solid rhythm player on a 12-string will be much appreciated in many string bands.

I'm planning on getting a 12-string acoustic later (replacing one, actually; I had one that I really liked until some shitbucket burglarized my apartment), but this time around I'm on a mission to reward my self with some augmented electric rock.

Does anybody have any experience with Flying Vs? I've wanted one for a while, but the handful of times I've played them, they felt kind of awkward when setting down, like it was going to slide off my lap. Never played one standing up, which is how most of my real-world usage would happen.

I've actually owned both of those guitars, and loved them (and was a fool for selling them). My third favorite would be a Danelectro U2, though they are unforgiving beasts.

Both of which? And what's the story with Danelectros? People seem to love them, but I always see them for sale dirt-cheap.

I've always loved the way they look, but never played one. Actually, while liking the look, I always sort of wondered about the quality of the L6-S because the only person I knew who owned one was, um, not the kind of guy you'd expect to own a quality anything, including guitar. But maybe that was the one nice thing he owned.

Misfit guitars—you never can tell by who owns 'em. I can't vouch for the consistency across models, but mine is just plain nice and I get the impression that the L6 family is pretty well-liked by the folks that have played 'em. Closest comparison I can make is it's like a less fat (and less pointy) SG; but I haven't played on SGs all that much, so hey.

The L6-S story is an odd one; guy I was in a band with a few years back bought it out of the blue one day and brought it to practice...for me to use. No prior discussion of it, other than general sentiment my Casino didn't seem to be the perfect guitar for the band, and my assertion that I wasn't really in the market. So here's this guitar, and it's For Me To Play, which puts me in the position of feeling a bit coerced into taking some backhanded financial responsibility for its purchase.

I think I was supposed to be really tickled, but I went and had a tense discussion with dude because it seemed like a pretty fucked up play at the time. But we talked it out, I made it clear I was happy to play his guitar that he bought with his money for himself, goddammit, and who knows what the future holds, and we left it at that.

And I played the hell out of it and ended up buying it off him a year or two later after the band had broken up. Heh.

A few years ago when my 70s SG with a Bigsby (man I love that guitar) started going out of tune easily when playing live, I decided to get another one (actually, my wife was nice enough to buy it). I wanted a hollow body, and played a few Gibsons/Epiphones, but what I ended up getting because it sounded phenomenal--way better than the others I tried out-- is an Ibanez AWD83. It's a semi-hollow body, but sounds really great.
I keep repeating that because I never thought I'd like an Ibanez guitar, mainly because I didn't before, but it plays well and, uh, sounds well.

And for the price we paid, you could use the leftover money to get an older synth!

Cortex's guitar is pretty damn great as well.

Want. Can't afford right now, but next year. Maybe I'll dust off my clarinet.

I keep repeating that because I never thought I'd like an Ibanez guitar, mainly because I didn't before, but it plays well and, uh, sounds well.

I've got all kinds of guitar-brand prejudices like that, and it kind of drives me nuts because I _know_ I'm depriving myself of cool guitars. To get around it, I had my wife go guitar shopping with me this weekend... she doesn't know anything about guitars, and suggested ones for me to play based mainly by looks. Which was cool, because it had me trying out a bunch of stuff I always would have avoided on my own.

And Cortex, your story sounds awfully familiar... I think instrument-ownership murk crops up a lot in bands. There's a strat floating around our practice space that could be argued to belong to pretty much any of us at this point.

I have no evidence to back this up, but for some reason (perhaps the comment about a weird direction) I keep thinking you need to buy a Schecter. But I worry you may apply some of that guitar prejudice against them -- I know I have (and still do on occasion). But not all of the bodies are cartoonish.

I have access to a Danelectro reissue and it plays surprisingly well and sounds good considering the cost (though replacing strings is a bear). Going this route would definitely give you some leftover cash.

I have always been fond of the sound of an SG.

If you had more in the budget I would do a Travis Bean song and dance.

Well, I'm kind of hoping to bust through the guitar prejudice... tell me more about the Schechters.

an Ibanez AWD83

sleepy_pete's guitar, there? Great fucking thing. Definitely worth trying out if you want something in a semi-hollow.

I think instrument-ownership murk crops up a lot in bands.

Yeah, I get the impression it's pretty common. Which makes sense with enthusiasm + limited means + maybe being drunk or high when making financial decisions, but, yeesh. I did my damnedest to avoid it in that band, because I knew I had very different feelings about the finances and dynamics of being in a band; that was the weirdest situation we had, the second-weirdest being the time I pretty much had to go out and buy a Fender Deville 2x12 to not break up the band. And it's an awesome amp and I love it, but (a) we did not need a 2x12 and (b) not being in that band anymore, I really don't need a 2x12. I wish I'd gotten a 1x instead; a little lighter, a little less expensive.

In the mean time, there's a used 2x15 bass cab, a new bass head, at least one guitar, and some recording equipment floating around in a complex web of co-ownership and hock among some of the other folks who were in the band, one of whom apparently sold his house recently to deal with some debt issues. So, yeah. I feel pretty okay about being a weirdo about not going in on equipment.

tell me more about the Schechters.

Well, it's just a feeling but when I was thinking about what I know about the guitars you have that there was some kind of rock! middle ground to be found between what I think is the trebly sound of the tele and the smoothness I would expect you'd get from the epiphone dot deluxe. Schecter seems to have quite the metal following, but I've mostly heard them used in more indie rock settings and they've sounded excellent there as well. I am kind of partial to the S- and Tempest series as opposed to their more popular C-1. They're also supposed to be eminently playable over the long haul, but I don't own one myself, and funnily enough that brings me to my biggest gap in my first comment. Have you tried a Rickenbacker out? If I were buying another guitar, after I bought an SG, then I'd be looking at those. My bass is a Ric and I love it. A couple of friends have had different models of the Rickenbacker guitar and they've been happy with the sound and the playability. One friend had a 650S (Sierra) which was an amazing guitar -- not classically Ric, but still Ric.

I've loved the Rics I've played, but I've never, ever seen one for less than $1200. If I see one in my price range, it'll get checked out for sure. And thanks for the Schecter info; I'll keep my eyes open.

Yeah, they are super expensive. Maybe that's why I left it out of my first comment?

Don't get a Flying V. SG's sound and play just the same, and you can sit down with one. They keep their value better, as well. My favourite Gibson, other than an ES-335. The Vegas High Roller looks cool.

Dannys are cheap, but they play well.

I have 4 full size guitars.
The first is a Strat clone I built when I was in high school. I built it from a kid, modded to meet my own specs, using the best I could afford at the time (which wasn't much). I played it to death and it is now a guitar hero autograph book.
The second is a Strat clone I built in college from pieces parts, modded to meet my specs, but upgraded by triple the budget.

Both instruments have the following specs:
2 single coil, 1 humbucker at the bridge (bye-bye nasally strat sound!), individual switches to punch each pickup in or out. 1 volume control, 1 tone control. Whammy bar with locking nut and fine tuners at the bridge.
The second instrument differs from the first in that the neck is 22 frets not 21, the pickups are EMG Select and the humbucker is tapped so it can be either single or double coil, the bridge is a Floyd Rose/Kahler unit. The fingerboard is rosewood. Nearly every piece of hardware is black: black grover rotomatics, black bridge, black body, black strap buttons, black switched, etc. It's pretty much exactly what I want. Unfortunately, I no longer own an amp and my Rockman is on the fritz.
The third is an acoustic guitar that I use for playing to my daughter. It's a Seagull M6. Its sound is not bad for the price - harmonics really pop out better than instruments that cost twice as much.
The last instrument is a Hello Kitty Strat which is intended to be a collector's piece, maybe for my daughter in 10 years.

Your new guitar will stand or fall based not on how comfortably the body fits you, or what pickups it rocks, or how solid the tuners are (they can always be replaced, for a nominal price). No, not even color matters. It's all about the neck.

You want a straight neck that feels good under your fingers. Sure, you can look down the neck, but the real proof's in playing it. How do the frets feel under your fingers? Too big? Can you feel the frets along the edges of the fingerboard, as if the fret wire was cut just a little too long so your hand doesn't run as smoothly up and down the neck?

Play something up and down the neck so that you can hear any intonation problems. When you barre a chord in tune on the third fret, is it still in tune on the ninth fret, or the thirteenth?

Necks have all sorts of profiles -- some are blocky and almost squared-off (lots of Gibson flying V's are more like this), some are thin like a crescent moon. Read about the different shapes, try a few different guitars out, even ones you don't like, until you're familiar with a neck profile you find comfortable.

Scale length is the vibrating length on the strings, and it varies from guitar to guitar, but there are basically two different scale lengths around for electrics: 25.5" (Fender Stratocaster, Tele, &c.) and 24.63" (Gibson Les Paul, SG, &c.). Scale length is one of the most important factors governing tone and feel: the Fender scale length makes for tighter strings and a crispier ringing tone, while the Gibson scale length gives a softer feel and a muddier sound, and bendier strings.

Rethink getting a tremolo. There are very few things you can do with a tremolo that you can't do with your hands. Same goes for effects. Playing with reverb or compression/distortion hides problems in your playing and is thus not suited to practicing.

Pickups are very personal: I like P-90s; they're hotter (they pick up more signal) and on my Music Man Axis Sport with its Fender scale length, they ring like chimes of Satan. A Tele will get you very different pickup sound than its cousin, the Strat. My Gibson has vintage humbuckers. Nice.

Whaddaya want your fingerboard to be made of? Rosewood boards have a nice feel without a glossy finish, while maple usually has a finish to it. Try a variety; you never know what suits you the most.

Neck through body construction or bolt-on neck? There's nothing wrong with either; Fenders are slightly more portable for being bolt-on. Neck-thru guitars resonate more, in your hands and through an amp.

All guitars can change greatly with a little custom setup. You can either get someone else to do it, or start tweaking it yourself. If you do, get a metal ruler for drill bits with a one thirty-second and one sixty-fourth inch scale, a set of allen wrenches to match your guitar, and Guitar Player Repair Guide by Dan Erlewine.

You can get a good new or used guitar for $800.

Here are my favorites (owned and coveted)

Music Man Axis Sport P-90 hardtail: Leo Fender started Music Man after he sold Fender to CBS in the 70's. As Fender gave over its production to CNC machines in fewer and fewer plants, further and further offshore, Leo's new company dedicated itself to building extremely high quality guitars in the Fender mold. The Axis Sport is like a Telecaster Mark II, with red-hot P-90's.

Gibson E-335S: Not to be confused with the hollow-body jazz/blues ax of similar name (ES-335), this was a short-run ebony-fingerboard shredder's guitar from the early 80's with a thin, light, beveled body (think SG), with fatter hips and a nice round ass. My particular 335S is pre-production; the blank was sent to a paint shop to try new colors, the (black) color was rejected, and the body languished until my friend, a luthier, bought it, put vintage hardware (including a set of old LP pickups) on, and eventually sold it to me.

Gibson J-45: the warhorse of rock acoustics, the J-45 has a roomier sound than most Martins or Taylors. I think they fill space in recordings well, and are fun to play to boot. There's a Martin that compares, called the CEO-IV, that I covet. It has a slightly more triangular neck profile, and the fingerboard is some kind of composite matter, very smooth. I like slope-shouldered dreadnoughts.

You can find old Gibson LP Juniors online; I love the junior for its simplicity, with just one pickup and such clear, high sounds. Nothing rocks like a Junior, not even an LP Standard.

But really the proof is in the playing. Trying out new guitars is fun, if you ignore the douchebag sales-help they hire in most guitar shops. Bring a pick if you use one and just pull 'em down off the wall, plug 'em into an amp, and play as you will. Don't be embarrassed that the help is trying to show off how much faster a player they are than you. If they were really cool, they'd be the one shopping for guitars in their spare time, not you.

Heh. I totally agree that neck-fit's important, but I'm all over the place on the guitars I own. Usually prefer rosewood fretboards, but I really like my telecaster with raw maple.

But really the proof is in the playing. Trying out new guitars is fun, if you ignore the douchebag sales-help they hire in most guitar shops.

Jesus Christ, yes. I've been doing most of my looking at used shops around the Twin Cities, but I figured that for completeness' sake I had to stop into Guitar Center. It was like paying a visit to hell, with testosterone-drunk dorkwads bugging me every three minutes about how this ace totally shreds and did I know that the dude from Foo Fighters uses one?

My lead contender now is a used G&L ASAT. I didn't expect to like it, but it blew me away.

Yeah, my Axis is rosewood and my Gibson is ebony, but I love the maple on my brother's Tele Plus. My neck fetish is really individual to guitars, though; I can't say there's one type I prefer, just that you can hold and play a guitar and say, "nice neck!" even if it's a "shitty" guitar.

Whenever anyone plays one of my guitars, they mention the neck. Makes me so proud.

Those G&L ASATs are great axes, especially since you can get 'em relatively cheap.

So, in case anybody's still paying attention: it's down to the used G&L ASAT and a used SG. Leaning towards the SG-- I want this guitar for pure rocking out, and god knows an SG's built for that-- but it has those cruddy, cheap tuners that Gibson used to use. Anybody have much experience changing tuners?