Share your shame

[Ricman]

Okay..

This place has had it's fair share of S**t recently - and I miss the good vibe - let's get it back on track....

So - Whats the most embarasing thing you've ever done with, or to, a guitar??

I'll start...I had a Hondo LP copy as a 10 year old kid......I was told that the thicker the strings the better the tone....so I put 13s on it...then I couldn't understand why all those little saddles on the bridge were not in a nice neat line - so I wound them all back as far as they could go....and then I found the truss rod.....you can guess the rest. After twenty minutes of allen key twisting the neck looked like a banana.

It never played well again, and I never knew why......

Your turn......

 

[robelinda2]

my very first guitar was a nylon string classical, i went home and stupidly put steel strings on it. 30 seconds after tuning the entire bridge comes flying off the guitar and hits the wall hard and makes a huge dent. i got in so much trouble for the wall damage.

 

[Ricman]

Hahaha...more!!!

 

[agt]

My first "nice" guitar was from a competing brand which shall remain unnamed. I bought it in 1988. I don't have huge hands, and the neck was one of the wide 'n flat 80's shredder types. Good sounding guitar, but I struggeld with that neck.

I tried my first Ball in the early 90's at a music store. An EVH. That experience changed my life. You all know how wonderful those necks are, as are all Ball necks.

I went home and took a large file to my guitar in an attempt to narrow the neck. I filed through the wood and metal frets with a vengeance.

It was never quite the same ...

I now own several Balls, the first of which was an EVH I bought about a year after "the file incident".

 

[fogman]

my very first guitar was a nylon string classical, i went home and stupidly put steel strings on it. 30 seconds after tuning the entire bridge comes flying off the guitar and hits the wall hard and makes a huge dent. i got in so much trouble for the wall damage.

LOL!!!!
I can't beat that one, but it's a good visual.

My worse thing was owning a Pink Washburn.

 

[Ricman]

Pics!!!

Edit - ok...best not!!

 

[fogman]

Pics!!!

If you're referring to me, I don't think I have any.

 

[Ricman]

Ohh, I'm sure you do....

 

[BigTony]

K, this has nothing to do with a guitar, but I have a few of those too. This is much worse.

A couple of months ago, I had girly trendy hair with blonde patches in it . I decided to dye the whole lot electric blacky blue thing. Anyway, I was running a bit late, and the missus finished dying it for me and I ran for the shower as it was friday and I had a gig.

Well, first off, when I did my hair, it certainly wasnt cool, I went to the gig looking like Roy Orbison with having a bad hair day! Not only that, but mid gig, I obviously hadnt spent eneough time rinsing it cuz as I was sweating, I had purple dye all down one side of my face! The second half of the gig was a nightmare, all I could think was that I must by now be looking like a ribena berry!
The following day I put peroxide on it to life the black, but insted, I ended up with ginger patches and most of it still black. What a nightmare!

Im currently sporting a skinhead.

 

[fogman]

Ohh, I'm sure you do....

This was way before my pic problem.
I don't have any that I know of. But you do have my curious.
The colour was actually called fuscia. So it's not a Barbie pink. It was more like the Albert Lee Pinkburst without the wood grain.

 

[candid_x]

Stripping a naturally and beautifully relic-ed sunburst Charvel strat and painting it aluminum silver - that stuff never really dries.

 

[JPBlueDawn]

I have a few....

1. I made a nylon string acoustic guitar that my family bought in Mexico into a key rack. It's a pretty sweet key rack.
2. I sanded down the Rosewood fingerboard on my first guitar (Harmony Str@t) thinking it would make it maple. It's now an art piece on my wall.
3. I thought I knew everything about guitars (with less then a year experience), so I did my own truss rod adjustment on a early 70's F****R acoustic. The neck twisted so far that it looked like a roller coaster track and the fingerboard popped right off. Out of embarrassment, I trashed the entire thing.

I'm glad im not the only one who started out as a tool and had no idea what i was doing.

Shawn

 

[PeteDuBaldo]

My very first guitar was an old Takamine. I was over at my grandparents' house and found some "new" old strings that my dad had left there 30 years before. They were flatwounds, and were about as thick as railroad ties. I put them on the acoustic and heard terrible sounds coming from the tailpiece as I tuned up. It was then that I noticed the tailpiece separating from the body. A 1/4 - 20 nut and bolt fixed that problem...



About 6 years back I was lead guitar for a reunion show with an old high-school band. I was playing my '67 Flying V and in the very first verse I tripped on the cable, ripping the cable out from the plug & leaving the plug in the jack of the guitar, while simultaneously time breaking the D & G strings. I was fit to be tied. The bar loved it.


Maybe Nick would like to chime in about the nylon string acoustic one of our students brought in last week.........

 

[Sub1 Zero]

Once I planned on sticking a floyd rose, EMG's, and custom paint into a Squier affinity strat, until my tech said something to the effect of "dude screw that, not worth it, get a different guitar."

Also, my friend had an acoustic with a broken headstock, and we were going to make a clock out of it. Well that didn't happen and I ended up bashing the hell out of it. It was a cheap guitar with sharp frets, and I split my hand open pretty damn bad..... Oh well, it was hilarious

 

[phatduckk]

my parents went to hawaii some time in highschool and brough me back a uke. the next monday i took it to shop class, cut it up, installed a jazz bass pickup in it and put some steel strings on it. it worked too. LoL. not a disaster but still pretty whacky

well u know when you break a low E usually the outer wrap just comes undone and you can see that one solid wire still in the middle? and ya know how if you pull both ends the whole thing unwinds? Well, bass strings are the same but fatter. so once i broke a bass string and twisted it up a bunch to snap it in 1/2... the core string actually broke but the winding was still on. i grabbed both ends and yanked it... the thing unwound, finally snapped but the core sting in the middle went in my palm (sideways, by my thumb), peirced thru the flesh of my palm and back in.

that hurt really bad

 

[dwells]

i road my ibanez in its case down the main street of geelong like it was a skateboard and mangled the case , was so fun but !!

 

[Larry]

There was this one time that I was going to sell my Dargie Delight... Shame...


That sucker ain't going anywhere

 

[savannah_sean]

In 1988 I got a carvin dc200 koa. carvin didn't do the greatest job choosing where to locate the strap button on the upper horn - they put it near the tip, but on the lower side, so the screw pointed directly upward. So when I went to swap them out for strap locks, I wasn't paying any attention to the fact that the strap lock screws were about half an inch longer...I just thought to myself "gee this screw is tight, and I still have a ways to go...guess I'll just crank harder!"...until I heard "snap!" and the screw went through the top of the horn and cracked the finish.

I did notice that carvin repositioned the strap button on the following year's model, so maybe I wasn't the only one that did this~

 

[brett8388]

When I was 19, I got f'd up and traded a new Les Paul Custom for a Yamaha Pacifica straight up. Sold the Yamaha a few years ago for $92. Nice move.

 

[mbgreene]

My bachelor party

Playing an acoustic at my buddy's house.

Decided to play Animal House

Smashed the guitar to bits over my own head

Still have a small scar on my thumb from where the stings whipped around and cut me when they broke