Which guitar brand is the best? (electric guitars)

well quite an extensive list. firstly i have a gibson. ill go through every guitar.

Fender-i like them for a diff sound twangy good for some stuff, i like the whammy on them and how light they are, but i rest my hand on the bridge and it hurts my hand when i rest it on a fender bridge. so i have to compromise. really only thing. great guitars, good quality. the mexican ones are great guitars.

Hamer-tryed one from my amp tech who got me interested in them, great great sound, best bang for buck and they sound amazing. it acctually makes a crappy amp sound like a plexi. it has a plexi sound in it. fantastic. some design issues though for me personally. acctually only one and its so minor i wouldnt worry. firstly (good/bad i think bad but its personal) neck is thin. i like thick necks. but it has the little carved neck so u can hit the higher frets big plus. fairly light, if your small and cant hold somthing so heavy like a gibson for so long this is a good option. only other small thing is the pickup selector is on the bottom. naturally when i not playing my strumming hand raises up, i keep my rhythm pup off unless i need it but i flick the switch kills the sound handy when playing live. very easy, subconiously i do it now. (personal favoraite for money, i have a gibson but the sound on the gibson is beter but the price is higher. and for me i like the gibson better but hamer is great. try it. now. do it.)

Rickenbacker-no true comment, only tryed one of these well 2 my friends very old one and a new one i didnt like. very thin tone.
Aria-these are acoustics? i think ive heard of. never looked into a acoustic so idk.

B. C. Rich- dont like. designs are too foreign. too metal for me, thin body, high output pups. i just dont like the sound they give. not a full and rich.

Benedetto-never heard of

Bunker-never heard of

Burns-never heard of

Carvin-i was looking into these but you need to buy it without trying i dont like doing that. even with being able to return it. i think guitarslinger has one he can comment.

Cort-heard of never tried

Daisy Rock-What?

Danelectro-tryed my friends dads old one. kinda awsome. i think i tryed one and put it down about a minute later.

Dean- tryed this one. again a metal guitar. high active pups. thin body, light, very accesable. but didnt have the sound i wanted.

ESP-again very metal. made for metal. thin neck carved away. i tryed the one with through neck. good sound. not good enough though.

Epiphone-copy of gibson. good starting guitar. decent but nothing like gibson. unless you compare the high end ones to low end gibsons. the epis are better in that perspective. i have the plus top, great guitar. until i found m gibson. literally night and day.

Fernandes-heard of i think acoustic?

G&L-heard of never played. couldnt find.

Gibson-i own one! gibson les paul custom '68 ri. AMAZZING. each is different. i tryed 4 different of these. each unique. fantasticly rich full fat sound. heavy! 10.2 for mine! each is different laying and sound wise. reason i liked mine was because it sounded the best, but wasnt mucky, 2 others i tryed were mucky. couldnt really hear the qacctual note. very mucky. hard to explain. but i love mine. they still make great guitars. but it depends. if you wana buy there middle of the line, standard go for it, but the traditional i think is better, tryed a couple of each. also the stock sg, with nothing, no bells whistles anything is a good guitar. also with mine it had a fat, yet estremly fast neck. my teacher commented, he said i hate fat necks, but this one is fast. wtf is up with this.

Godin-ehh. no thanks

Gretsch-awsome but for a different type of music. no true comment although i can say they have a nice smooth sound resonating throughout the body.

Hagström-huh?

Hohner-heard of i think they make the beatle bass right? never tryed. see below lol

Höfner-nope this is the company tht makes the beatle bass lol that other name looks familiar, never tryed either

Ibanez- k so heres my story. ive tryed a good dozen of these. all not my style. thin neck, high pups, thin body, veryvery very light, although matters model. a decent guitar, but still not my style. if you like metal def look into this.

Jackson-i LOVE vintage jacksons. dont really like the newer ones. they seem to have gone to the ways of many cheaper guitars, imported and cheap labor idk if they do that, but they dont sound like they did in the 80s.

Klein-i think ive herd of?

Line6-they make guitars? i hate their amps. my only comment lol

LTD-made by esp. i think cheaper version. i was looking into esp and saw one of these and tryed it, good guitar. im not sure its cheaper, either esp is the higher quality or ltd is im not sure. although i tryed both never really thought of them seriously because of my unique like and style.

Music Man-they make guiatars? they make KICK ASS basses. seriously. awsome.

Olympia-what?

Ovation-acoustic right?

Parker-good guitar, only tryed one, not reall to my likeing.

Peavey- very awsome sounding. very good. again not my style, but great sound look into them

Paul Reed Smith-AWSOME. this was in my top 10 of guitars and i eliminated it later. fantastic. i tryed the custom one. the awsomer one lol. insane. so versitile. but however thin neck, body, awsome sound. didnt play how i would like but still awsome. it seems most people like thin necks... i dont i have big hands, like somthing i can grab. lol think of it like ass. lololol sorry

Ruokangas-never heard of

Samick-nope never heard of

Schecter-friend has one, its like falling apart... has a decent sound and tryed a couple but theres somthing i dont like about it tht i really just cant put my finger on, but not my choice. my friends taken his to the shop prob 10 times in the last 2 or 3 months. sodder issues. pickup issues, tuning issues. fret issues. basicly whatever could go wrong did. he bought it new and he had just had these things breaking down 2 months after he bought it. he doesnt care for his guitars like i do, but he doesnt burn them lol. it wasnt a low line one either, he said cost 1200 i think. this shouldnt happen

Squier-fender copy, cool starting guitar

Steinberger-heard of never played

Warwick-my friend has one of their basses awsome. its really top of the line. Oh YEAH! i recored with the 5 string version of one of the top of the line warwicks. insane sound. check my song on myspace.com/sheeponwheels to hear it once the mixing is done and you can hear the bass, also im getting the bass track so ill show u guys tht too, its cool.

Washburn-cool guitars, a bit like esp and ltd. i liked esp better.

Yamaha- tryed ther acoustics at my friends house never electric.

hope that helped a bit. ive tryed a lot but ignored alot because i dont play nowadays metal, dnt like thin necks or thin bodys, and they really arnt my style. guitars i like are:

gibson
hamer
fender(neck is so so, bridge hurts my hand but is good guitar)
prs
and ill throw in a peavey because i like there sound minus there design. however vintage jacksons are awsome, just new one i dont like.

there you have it. for a better explanation of the thinner neck/newer guitars hopefully somone will post, or better yet, get ur ass to a guitar store, grap your picks, plug into a vintage marshall, and blast the **ing roof off.

-wareagle.

most of took you 8 hours to right that one lol

lol nah, prob 10 minutes 15 at most. but its nice to put some input in there even if i dont know all them

Line 6 Guitars are somewhat a very futuristic guitars,they are nice,and their sound processing is awesome!

MusicMan guitars are of the highest end guitars ive ever played,the Steve Morse Model is pure sweetness

Fernandes Are not Acoustics,Fernandes is the brand that makes Vai's sustainer pickups,They Make Awesome Heavy metral Guitars,Robert Trujillo Uses (or Used?) Their Basses

Schecter Are Awesome!! Really incredible tones out of them,Also Ibanez

Is hard to tell wich one is the best,is like the classic question "wich is the best guitar player in the world" many would say Hendrix,because he started a revolution on playing and he played raw etc etc etc...This qould be the equal to a fender or a Gibson,jsut because they started it all,others might say John Petrucci s the best player in history becasue hes a technique master and melody maste and all that god-like stuff etc etc,that would equal a hig end guitar like carvins or musicmans,because they have all this modern electronics and equipments etc etc,so its rather a personal taste i think

anyways for Me,Ibanez,Schecter,VIGIER (they make awesome guitars) and Carvin

john petrucci uses a music man signature

Yeah,the new Signature,the Jon Petrucci Baritone BFR is a piece of Art

Fender are the best.
B. C. Rich, Schecter, and Gibson are my favorite especially for metal but I think I'll pick Jackson.
I never saw a line 6 guitar! Their amps aren't that bad though.
Dean, I never tried one but they have some good strings and crappy amps.
Ibanez has some reallyyy good guitars, but I dont think I'll ever get one not that intrested in them. Paul Gilbert plays Ibanez.
Yamaha I heard a bass one and an electric but can't remember the models and I hear they are good but my friend's bass didn't last long he started having problem with the pick ups and stuff

Well, again this kind of thing is totally down to opinion. And like what Guthrie Govan always says;

"So much of what's good about music ceases to make sense when you attempt to analyse it from a 'Who's the best?' perspective."

It goes for every other aspect of music too in my opinion.

Although you forgot to add Westone, so I added that in :P

yeh personal opinion here. completly.

ya totally, personal opinions,but isn't it a fact that fender is #1 brand?

lol no

Guerilla guitars are ****ing brootal !!!

my dad has a really nice fender, im not sure what it is, ill havta check it sometime. i cant stand it lol, i like my $300 jackson 10x better

haha

I choose Fender they're guitars are the most copied.

Plus they're clean sound is the best.

After that it's Charvel those guitars are made perfect.

Then Jackson and everything else.

I have a Hamer, voted for Jackson

relly? which do you have, i tryed the double cut one. insane.

Yeah this is totally opinion based, i personally like gibson the best, though i can't afford one, but i havent tried many of the manufacturers listed yet so who knows.

there's alot of good brands
and I didn't know whether to choose Fender, Jackson, Music Man, Ibanez, or Dean.

but I went with one of the originals, Fender.

I have a "slammer" by Hamer, it is my first and only gutar at the moment. It plays well, its just not for me. I dont know how to explain it.

I'd go with a washburn

agile guitars wernt there, theyer 7 strings are badass and hella cheap

well to get a good hamer u need to buy usa. not the japan or korea ones.

What you can only choose one?

screw that noise....I'll just not vote

I do like earphones, but upgrade them, put new pickups and better selector switch, tuners and if you can a bone nut. (my next upgrade) then you got a real nice guitar, with a gibson tone to it.

I think Gibson's are are overpriced prices of polished wood. I'd take a $500 dollar epiphone over a $2000 Gibson anyway. If your looking at an investment a gibson will hold it's value where epiphones will not.

Fenders are almost the perfect guitar. It's simple they seldom break and they are easy to play. Sure they are not all that pretty but if you want pretty go buy some flowers.

Look around the forum, see how many people have questions about fenders. the most common one is about the tremello. there have been lots of questions about the screwing up the action and inontion of the tune-o-matick bridges.

Have anyone heard of Starfire?

Fender Tele (can't beat the neck)
i add Dimarzzio Hot Rails to them as well as my (Fender) Mustang(s) (pictured w/ me at left, lol)
using a BBE this allows me to play using the neck pickup as my (90%) primary.

also nice
Godin (i have one i really like)
PRS i have my eye on one a friend is gonna let go of..
my dream plank = Anderson Tele-style ...ahhhhhh

anything w/ a flat neck should be used as a canoe-paddle, IMNSHO. (unless yer name is Reeves or Adrian, that is...lol)

RAWK!
Cs

I voted for Ibanez, because I like mine...like alot :)
My Ibanez is a 1989 RG model, so it is Vintage, which is a definite plus. It has a thinner neck that my Strat which I love,because the speed diff. is amazing; that being said, mine came with the Floyd Rose which has been on there since the guitar was made, and has added to my whammy madness. But I tried a new Ibanez RG w/ Reverse headstock and floyd rose trem, I personally think that it is a decent guitar, I just don't think that it is as good as mine is.
IMO on all that though.
Fender's are extremely versatile as well, mainly the Strat, you can get amazing blues tones like SRV, you can get the woman tone that Clapton had by rolling the tone knob all the way down on the neck pup, you can do Hendrix if that's your style, Yngwie Malmsteen even. Or you could dump a humbucker in the bridge position and have some awesome rock tones!

Carvin, which is the closest music store to me by about 5 times... :P so the whole not trying it was not a problem. :)

They are very well put together, sound good, only problem being pick-ups, on one of my two Carvins I exchanged the normal ones for EMG 81's. And well... I love them.

Jackson are good too, I have an old RR of some sort, got it from a garage sale for cheap, but it had allot of mods and a solid body so that's good too, but playing newer ones at music stores is not so good, as well as hearing of their failing quality these days. :/

I personally prefer Freshman guiatars like the FJ2, a brilliant jazz guitar.

Thanks everyone, I guess Gibson won. I know it's all about personal opinion but that was what I was asking for! Simply wanted to know what you guys think...
And I realized that I forgot to add the number one brand itself.. CAPARISON!

Peace

Doesn't it really matter on what you are playing? Like I know J Mascis uses a Fender a lot, guys like Cantrell and Dimebag used Dean often, and I imagine blues players would use Gibsons a lot.

So that makes me wonder then, what is the best "all-around" guitar, or I guess, what is the most versatile guitar?

@btimm My Ibanez Darkstone :)))

I can't say what the best guitar for anyone else is. I just wish I hadn't sold my PRS last year. Damn I miss that thing.

these are very much not the case. for instance, i am a fan of the band "tegan & sara", two twin canadian lesbian sisters (already awesome in my book). their older albums were a little... well hard to explain. but their new album (sainthood, 2008) can very much be considered a punk-pop album. lots of power chords and fast riffs. the quinn sisters exclusively play gretsch guitars.

as for ibanez, ibanez makes a wide variety of styles of guitars. their standard guitars are the "metal" or "shred" guitars, true. but i own an ibanez artcore which is very much different from that. they also make the artist series line which is an LP copy. ibanez is a very versatile brand of guitar and i respect them for what they do. they do make "copies" (my artcore is a 335 copy) but they are well made guitars.



what's funny is that i live in a neighborhood of st louis (soulard) that is littered with blues bars. some of the best blues bars in the city are a 5 minute walk from my apartment. i see blues players a lot. and i would say 9/10 of them play fender, with a majority playing stratocasters. of all of the blues bands i've seen, there is this one super old guy who plays with a big band (more of a R&B/doo-whop group) who plays a lefty les paul. i saw another guy playing, believe it or not, an ibanez shred-monster. but 9 times out of 10, they are playing fender.

i asked a question about it on this forum i don't know why these guys lean towards fender maybe it's just a coincidence.

alot of the big blues guys use Fender, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan

Man, all this talk about guitars makes me want to go out and get that Epi LP Custom I have been eyeing, the one with the silverburst finish. Must resist temptation ... and actually become decent first ... argh!

This is my opinion... Its based on me spending years at Guitar Center, SamAsh, and the local music shops trying guitars.

Gibson is the best hands down. Nothing beats Gibson Tone/Quality.
Ibanez (RG Trem series) is 2nd. Great long lasting trems. Comfortable to rest hand on. Downside: Very heavy
Epiphone: Made by gibson with cheaper materials. Not as great but still good.
BC Rich/Schecter/Dean/Esp: Metal only.
Fender: ABSOLUTELY THE WORST GUITARS IVE EVER PLAYED! Unless youre going to play clean ONLY.

I must second that.

i wouldn't say Schecter is metal only.
Fender makes great guitars, they just dont put "Metal" pickups on them, if you want a good metal fender get a Jim Root signature strat, its got EMG's or a Dave Murray strat. both must be great for metal or else, well, they wouldnt play them

Fenders are too twangy and bluesy for me. Works only for blues and some rock.

absolutely ridiculous. i'll go tell that to all of the rock bands that i listen to who play fenders and we'll see what they say. despite my absolute loathing of the post-dookie greenday. dookie was an amazing album and billy joel armstrong played a strat through it. brody dalle of the distillers plays a telecaster. you want to tell brody dalle that her guitar is crap except for playing clean? seriously that is stupid.

the guy in incubus plays fenders all the times i've seen him on stage

the guy in zebrahead plays a strat in the "the show must go off!" DVD

nick zinner of the yeah yeah yeahs plays a strat. you want to tell me that the YYYs are playing clean blues music?

seriously...