0:00 Hey friends, welcome back to the Guitar Max channel. So, guys, I have been doing this a very, very long time. I've been reviewing guitars and guitar gear for many, many years and I actually had a birthday recently and so I was kind of reflecting on years past and how long I've been doing this and, you know, the highlights and the cool stuff I got to check out and also the really lame stuff. And at this point I've come to realize that there's a handful of guitars that I'm really just sick of at this point. And these are guitars that come around every few years and people sort of constantly reinvent them and I just, you know, I I think we can just kind of put these to rest. That's
0:45 basically the list that I have to share with you guys today. And I've got, I think, five things on this list. These are basically five guitars that I'm sick of and I would be perfectly happy if I never saw these guitars again. Okay, so I don't want to keep you in suspense, let's just get right to this. Number one is travel guitars. And when I say travel guitars, I'm talking about guitars that have some kind of weird gimmick where the big selling point is that they're smaller or they become smaller and they're easy to travel with. And so, you see a lot of guitars like this that have either, you know, they're headless guitars or they have like weird string routings or no bodies or something. Or
1:31 sometimes you have a guitar where it folds or you can disassemble it or it has like sliding portions that pop out to make it, you know, pack into a smaller space. And these are always not only are they kind of gimmicky, but there's almost always some kind of a big compromise with these guitar designs. Now, I will say the one exception to this is the Siari guitars that I checked out uh about a year or 2 years ago. And I give them a pass because those guitars are actually not compromising anything. Like you could use that as your main guitar regardless of whether or not you travel with it. And it has this crazy neck folding mechanism in it,
2:17 right? But that being said, those guitars are fairly expensive. So you would kind of I think expect that they're not going to have to compromise when they can put that much money into it and everything. But all the other ones, they're usually just like a bad guitar that is slightly easier to travel with. And the thing that has really reinforced this for me is when I did this event in Vienna, Austria a few months ago. And I traveled from Los Angeles over to Vienna, and I took my guitar with me, right? And this is, you know, my Harley Benton signature, right? It's a standard guitar. This is not a travel guitar. And all I did was I
3:03 unbolted the neck, and I put this in my luggage. And like a like, you know, not a guitar case or anything like that, just a standard size like roll-on luggage. And with the neck unbolted, it fit in there beautifully. And when I got the guitar, you know, when I got to Vienna, I went to my hotel room. I took this the guitar and the neck out of the luggage. I never took the strings off. I didn't change the strings. All I did was, you know, I loosened the tuners. I loosened the locking clamps. Didn't take them all the way out. I just loosened them so they weren't tight. And then I unbolted the neck. That was all I did. And I just reversed the process, put, you know, put the neck screws back in. I tuned the guitar,
3:50 and it was perfect. And I, you know, played a whole bunch during the Rocksmith Vienna event with the guitar and it was flawless. And it was like, "Okay, that just like it was a lightbulb moment for me. It's like, well, I was I mean, I I was planning on doing that, so clearly I expected it to work. But, if you have a bolt-on neck guitar, I know not every guitar is bolt-on, but a lot of them are, and certainly a lot of great guitars are, if you have a bolt-on neck guitar, you do not need a travel guitar. These guitars take up hardly any space when you remove the neck, and it completely defeats the purpose of a travel guitar. It's just like those travel guitar designs, they're just not needed. Now, look, maybe I'll end up eating my own words, you know, maybe 2 years from now
4:36 you'll see me reviewing another amazing travel guitar or something, but at this point I'm very, very sick of them. Okay, number two, the next guitar that I'm totally sick of is these acrylic body guitars. These are the guitars that are basically made out of like Plexiglas, and I guess they're, you know, the idea is that it's clear or colored, kind of transparent, and so it it looks different, it looks kind of cool. But, these generally are not good guitars, and they're extremely heavy. And do you guys remember that kind of marketing craze like in the late '90s and early 2000s where you could get like a phone or a radio or whatever, and it was all clear plastic or like colored
5:23 plastic? Like Mac computers for a while were like that. I, personally, I don't necessarily want to see the internal components of something I'm using, and I don't, you know, I don't want to like look through the top of a guitar and see all of the wiring and the pots and everything in there. To me, I kind of like the fact that those internal electronics are hidden from view because usually looking at the wiring and everything is kind of messy. I I think it ruins the look of the guitar a lot of the time. Everybody I've known who got one of those acrylic guitars like, you know, BC Rich made I think an acrylic mockingbird or something at one point. Everybody know that's gotten one of those guitars, it was something they were really looking
6:08 forward to and then they got it and they got sick of it pretty quick. And I'm in that boat as well. Uh acrylic body guitars, so you can see through them clear whatever. I don't know, maybe you want to use it for like some photos or something, but at this point I'm sick of them. Okay, let's get on to the third guitar that I'm really sick of. Uh real quick guys, of course if you enjoy videos like this, checking out new guitars and also staying up on all the latest news in the guitar universe, if you've not already subscribed, please consider subscribing right now. Now, the next guitar is one actually that I expected to like. Uh I was looking at pictures of these guitars. They looked really cool and different. And I got one and I was really excited to get it and I took it
6:53 out of the box and I started playing it and then very quickly, you know, within 30 minutes, I'm like, "Oh, this kind of sucks." The guitar I'm talking about is specifically a Kramer Night Swan. And really you can put along with this any guitar that has a bridge and a middle pickup, but no neck pickup. Now, the reason for this is it's kind of like if you took the concept of a missed opportunity and put it into a guitar, that's what these guitars are. For me, the middle pickup position is the least good sounding position on a guitar. And so, okay, if you're going to do a single humbucker guitar, a single pickup guitar, put it in the bridge position. I
7:40 think that's the most usable position for like a variety of playing. But, if you're going to do two pickups, well, put it in the neck position because that's going to sound very different from the bridge position, right? And most guitars, you know, most two-pickup guitars, double-humbucker guitars, most guitars are like that. But, let's say if you wanted a guitar with two pickups, but you don't want the pickups to sound very different, and in fact, one of them you just want it to be a worse-sounding version of the other one. That's what the Kramer Nightswan is. Also, the one I had was one of the old Music Yo Kramers. This is like in the early 2000s. And the pickups they used were these quad-rail pickups, which looked very
8:27 cool, but I found them to be extremely muddy, just like not very good-sounding pickups. So, that made it even worse. Now, to be fair, the Kramer Nightswan is not the only guitar that has done this. Um they've done this actually on a few Kramers. And then what was it? Like the the Blaze Bayley Dean, I think had it. But yeah, in my opinion, it's just an attempt to be different, and you just end up making a guitar that has two pickup positions, one is usable and one is meh. And then you sacrifice the thing that you could have done, which is the neck pickup position, which actually would have been nice. Okay, guys, so the fourth guitar that I am absolutely sick of. Now, this is a big one, and this is actually not one specific guitar, but a particular feature of guitars, which is
9:15 very, very common, and I am absolutely sick of it. I want to just put this in the permanent trash bin. And that is any guitar with a vintage-style Strat trem. Now, look, before you crucify me on this one, I'm not saying that that bridge, the vintage-style Strat trem or or the bridge, I'm not saying that it has absolutely no place on guitars. In fact, I actually had a really interesting conversation one time with Chris and Pelletier about why he likes those bridges specifically and he taught me a trick to help, you know, keep it in tune and everything. But the big problem is that because those bridges are so associated with like a classic strat design, a lot of
10:03 modern companies, especially budget guitars, always want to use that bridge because then they can say, "Oh, look, it's like a classic strat." And people like that, so they must like our guitar, too. But no, like if you get that design, that old clunky, creaky bridge design, and then you put it through like modern, cheap, you know, mass-produced manufacturing, and you put it on a beginner guitar for somebody that doesn't know how to do setups or saddle adjustments or anything, it's a absolutely terrible bridge. That bridge on a guitar, especially on a beginner guitar, it discourages people from playing the guitar because the saddles can be very uncomfortable, like they can dig into your hand, and you try to use
10:50 the arm, you try to use the whammy bar, right? The guitar will instantly go out of tune as soon as you touch that thing. The only way to really have it on the guitar and have it be usable, again, for a beginner, is to just take the arm out, tighten the tighten the springs down as much as you can so the bridge is just slammed against the body and it doesn't move. Then you can use the guitar, but the whole the whole bridge design is just an absolute waste, and I think it does a lot more harm than good for modern guitars that are trying to be like an old strat. Okay, so there's probably a lot of people that disagree with me on that one. Let me know down in the comments section below, but I've got one more thing, one more guitar that I'm really really sick of, and that is
11:35 guitars with built-in amplifiers. And I would even add to this these weird little amplifiers that you're supposed to attach to your guitar. You don't see too many of those because people have tried to do them and they usually suck and I think companies have just kind of given up trying at this point, but yeah, the guitars with built-in amplifiers, again, like the travel guitars, it's always a compromise. Usually, you end up with a mediocre guitar with a mediocre or less sounding amplifier. And you blend them together to make one of these electric guitars that you can take anywhere and play it anywhere, right? Like a perfect example of this was the
12:23 Enya Inspire guitars that came [music] out about a year ago or 2 years ago, right? And I reviewed one of these and I even did a like a torture test, you know, a drop test to see how durable it was and to its credit, it was pretty durable. I just dropped it in a parking lot and it still worked despite having sensitive electronics in there. But after messing around with that guitar for a while and and that's been the same as previous, you know, designs like this in the past, it it ends up becoming just like not a serious guitar. It's like, okay, if you really want to take an electric guitar to the beach and you don't want to bring an amplifier or whatever, you know, you don't want to deal with that. I Yeah, you can do that, but there's almost no
13:09 situation where you want to go somewhere and you specifically want to bring an electric guitar, but you're not going to bring any any of the accessories, you know, you're not going to bring an amplifier or you know, there's great battery-powered amplifiers, right? You don't want to bring anything else, but you really need an electric guitar. Like I feel like that situation is just not very realistic. And, you know, as it turns out there is another guitar design which is perfect for being portable, right? And it it it doesn't need any electricity and it's, you know, been used for hundreds of years. Oh, yeah, an acoustic guitar. We're at the point in guitar technology, right, where you can bring an electric guitar and you can bring a really, really small guitar
13:56 amplifier, electric guitar amplifier. You know, Blackstar makes these little ones. JBL brought out one recently. And these amplifiers sound really, really good. And you can bring that with your electric guitar and it's going to be just so far superior to any of these like built-in amplifiers that have been coming out in these electric guitars in the past, I don't know, 10, 20 years, however long they've been doing this. The other thing that bugs me about this concept is you think about how technology progresses, right? And let's say you get one of these guitars today, right? It has an electric guitar, it has a built-in battery of some kind, maybe serviceable, maybe not. It has some like uh computer hardware in
14:44 there. It's got the speaker, all that stuff in addition to all of the guitar electronics. And these things usually rely on using an app on your phone. Is this stuff still going to work in 10 years or 15 years or 20 years? You can easily go 20 years in the past and just get any old electric guitar and plug it into a modern amp, you know, they're always compatible, right? But 20 years in the future are you still going to be able to have like the app on your phone to connect to your amplifier guitar thing? Like I'm super skeptical that that stuff is still going to work down the road. Okay, guys, so look, those are my five things that I'm just
15:29 absolutely sick of, and I think we should just be done with them. But, do you think I'm wrong on some of this stuff? Maybe some of these things, I don't know, the travel guitars or the Strat bridge, right? Maybe that's some of your like absolute favorite stuff, right? So, if you think I'm wrong, let me know down in the comments section below. And if you think there's something I've missed, maybe a particular guitar or a guitar design that we should just put in the dumpster and leave it there, let me know what you think about that stuff as well down in the comments section below. Okay, guys, kind of a different video for me. I just kind of wanted to vent a little bit here, you know, cuz I get these I get these like emails from companies every day, you know, of some amazing new product that they want to
16:16 tell me about, and a lot of these things I just I see them again and again and again, and I'm like, man, just just give it up, okay? Just stop with this stuff, but so this was a kind of a therapeutic video for me, but I hope you guys enjoyed it. And again, guys, if you did enjoy it, thumbs up, subscribe if you haven't already, and I'll see you in the next video.
