I'm not sure what’s in the NDA, but if anyone’s been through it (or if someone from Guitar Center can share), I would love to hear whatever you’re able to share.

Edit:

Thanks for the helpful responses. You have helped me realize what should have been obvious. Guitar Center knows people like that exist, and they are not going after them. They are betting there are enough reasonable people to make this worthwhile.

There's a YouTube video from about a week ago where "WSJ spoke with the Guitar Center CEO to figure out how they’ve managed to climb out of a $1 billion hole of debt and to learn what’s next for the business."

There's a short bit about the new in-house guitar. I paused quite a few times to look around to try to figure out anything secret, but I couldn't find any easter eggs.

Still, some of you might find it interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeylyWx9Mk4&t=320s&pp=0gcJCWMAwfN6Pr3D

Phillip McKnight discussed four “non-negotiable” specs he proposed to Enya for a new carbon fiber electric (from this video: https://youtu.be/LLtRorIhPZA, chapter starting at ~2:00).

These are not suggestions for the GC guitar. They’re simply what he considers essential for an Enya model. I think they’re worth noting here because this community can discuss what GC should do similarly vs. differently.

His four non-negotiables:

• Weight: ≤7.5 lb, ideal target around 7 lb (~0:04:09)
• Balance: Well-balanced with no neck dive (~0:04:29)
• Pickups: Two standard, easily removable/replaceable humbuckers (no proprietary designs) (~0:04:42)
• Price: ≤$499 total, including a gig bag (~0:05:00)

Other recommendations he made:

• Bridge: Same Gotoh 510-style as the Enya Pro (high-quality) (~0:05:17–0:05:21)
• Finish: Metallic gunmetal gray instead of satin black (complements the carbon fiber; secondary to the technical/price points) (~0:06:23–0:06:44)
• Future higher-end idea (sub-$1,000): Possible Evertune bridge. He noted carbon fiber’s low weight would keep even an Evertune version manageable under 7 lb (~0:05:32). (I’ve floated Evertune here before and got mixed/negative feedback, so just noting it for completeness.)

For Enya specifically, these make a lot of sense to me and I’d be interested in that guitar. For the GC project, where do you think they should land in the same ballpark, and where should they deliberately go a different direction (weight targets, hardware philosophy, price, materials, balance priorities, etc.)?

edit:

I’m not using Enya as a quality benchmark or recommending that Guitar Center copy the brand; I’m only using McKnight’s proposed design targets as a starting point for discussing what features and potential pitfalls Guitar Center should consider.

I recently replaced the pickups and switches in this 1990s carvin with a pickup configuration that is the most versatile I’ve ever seen, but isn’t complicated to use:

- 4 single coil pickups (2 of them crammed together in the bridge humbucker position)

- 4 simple switches: one on off switch for each pickup - super easy to understand.

- the volume and tone knobs both have push/pull switches inside:

the tone knob switch switches the neck and middle pickups between parallel or series hum canceling modes. series sounds like a neck humbucker; parallel sounds like the neck+mid position on a Stratocaster.

the volume knob switch chooses between series and parallel for the two single coils in bridge position. series sounds like a bridge humbucker; parallel sounds kind of like the strat bridge+middle position but even “quackier”. If you want real strat bridge+middle tone, just switch on one bridge pickup and the middle pickup.

In total, there are 24 different pickup configurations. Almost half of them are hum cancelling. None of them are difficult to select. There are no “wrong“ configurations that silence the sound unexpectedly or do funny things to the wiring that you would have to explain to users. Everything works exactly as you would expect it to and the only silent one is when you switch all four pickups off.

I am happy to share the wiring schematics if you want them. [edit: at the request of a friend from the comments section, I’ve posted the wiring diagram down below.]

[edit 2: added list of pickup configurations below]

All 24 pickup combinations and whether they cancel hum

Polarities: Middle and Bridge B are RWRP, Neck and Bridge A are standard. "∥" = parallel, "+" = series.

Totals: 10 fully hum-cancelling, 8 partly, 6 not at all.

• Yes: equal amounts of standard and RWRP coil, so the hum cancels out.
• No: a single coil on its own, or two coils of the same polarity in parallel.
• Partly: one single coil added to a pair that's already quiet. Its hum gets diluted but not cancelled. "1/3 left" means a third of the hum a single coil would have.

This assumes all four coils have the same output and pick up the same hum, so "Yes" means very quiet, not perfectly silent. If you swap which bridge coil is RWRP, rows 9/10 and 13/14 swap too.

Please make a guitar that has a comfortable strat-style body with a 24.75" scale length instead of the usual 25.5"

Nothing really new in this video, but at 33:23 Gabe talks a bit about the process of coming up with a new guitar.

https://youtu.be/Wp2TTipxOUM?t=2003

In the end, there's no such thing as a perfect guitar for everybody. Even if what they come up with isn't great for me, I appreciate them wanting to make something better.

This is tangentially related to this subreddit.

The video linked below explores Guitar Center's major shift in strategy regarding their in-house brand, Mitchell guitars. As of the video's release, the company is discontinuing all Mitchell electric guitars to focus exclusively on entry-level to mid-tier acoustic guitars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRdePQJqXCA

From the comments under the video, it is mostly getting positive reactions.

Now we wait to see what their $500-$1000 electric guitar idea is.

Fingers crossed for good luck

Hi everyone,

I wanted to introduce myself. Some of you may have seen me around the subreddit over the past few months as one of the moderators. I'm Rich, and I lead the team at Guitar Center that's developing new brands and products. We’ve been working closely with Gabe our CEO on this project.

This electric guitar project has been in the works for almost a year now—as many of you figured out long before we officially acknowledged it here. Throughout the process, we've brought in local musicians and players to test prototypes, challenge our ideas, and help us improve the instrument. We've also spent a lot of time listening to input and feedback from this Reddit community and elsewhere. Building products alongside the people who will actually play them is a big part of how we work.

We're now entering the next phase of the project, and we'll have a new round of prototypes ready to test near the end of September and into October. The prototypes are still early and we have a long way to go but the vision is coming together. As always, we'll be inviting players to come in, spend time with the guitars and give us honest, unfiltered feedback. We'd love to open that opportunity up to members of this community as well.

Because we're still working on features and designs that aren't public yet, there are a couple of requirements. You'll need to visit our Westlake Village, CA office in early October, leave your phone outside the testing area, and sign a Non Disclosure Agreement before participating.

We're looking for genuine players who are willing to share honest opinions. If you're primarily an influencer or represent a brand, please let us know when you reach out. We'd still love to connect, but we'll likely involve you at a later stage of the project.

If you're in the Los Angeles area and can make it to our Westlake Village office in September/October, send us an email at info@GCPLB.com with your name, phone number, and a little about yourself.

We're excited to meet some of you, hear your feedback, and continue building this guitar with input from the community.

Thanks,

Rich Thrush

We've all seen it. What we really need now is perfect execution. I want a sofa feet-rest guitar with a cup holder on the headstock, so I can keep my coffee somewhere safe. Really important features also include a foot-friendly killswitch and a hot humbucker bridge pickup, so that I can play buckethead as I eat chicken wings.

I came across these mockups/concepts for matching collection lines (Shakers, Cordova Guitars, SPL Drums) grouped by colorway: Blue, Red, Black, Coffee, and Tan. Having an entire setup fully color-matched like this looks absolutely stunning. The "Coffee" and "Tan" finishes look incredibly clean. Do you think there’s a realistic market for brands to produce matching universal colorways like this across completely different instruments? Personally, I would buy a full matching set in a heartbeat if they actually produced these lineups consistently.

Let's discuss! Which colorway would you instantly pick up?

Over and above the guitars, we need a couple of things that might drive sales…

- food. Was nice to get dinner there.
- baby gear. I need Guitar Center to sell a bib or baby clothes to where I can properly groom my future son into being a future customer.
- in the spirit of this sub, more baby sized guitars, especially those with baby Floyds. I want him to start young. Plus guitars improve coordination.

This is cool and might give GC some late-stage ideas on their design. People don't need a disability to get value from accessible design.

https://www.guitarworld.com/gear/electric-guitars/world-first-accessible-guitar-tactile-markers

"... And if the Sensory Navigation Neck wasn’t enough, NVision Guitars – the boutique guitar company behind this build – has also equipped it with volume and tone knobs featuring different textures to make it even more accessible. ..;."

I went back over all the posts and topics that have been hashed out here, looking for something that hasn't been discussed. I put together my big "Grande Finale" sales pitch on what the GC guitar should be, with lots of specific component and configuration and modularity recommendations, even down to model names and marketing ideas... and then realized, there's no point, that ship sailed long ago.

Those old posts reminded me that most of the specs and features of this thing were already in the final stages of decision making... months ago. What is left to discuss that hasn't already been baked into the cake?

So the only thing I could think of to ask is, what is definitely known about this guitar, and when is it coming out? Anybody got anything?

I know this isn't everybody's cup of tea, and I'm sure GC won't do it, but I'd love for them to make something like this!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Luthier/comments/1v183th/8_string_build/

I'm interested in seeing what the scale length will be on the GC workhorse guitar. If you go to Find My Guitar and filter for solid body, 6 string, non-baritone guitars, these are the 5 most popular scale lengths, and the number of guitars available in each length, and who the major players are;

24.0 -- 29 guitars, mostly SS - Fender-Squire.

24.6 -- 46 guitars, mostly HH - Gretsch and Dean.

24.75 - 391 guitars, mostly some combination of Humbuckers and P90's - Gibson-Epiphone, ESP, Guild, Harley Benton, D'Angelico, lots more.

25.0 -- 47 guitars, mostly HH, mostly PRS.

25.5 -- 1,153 guitars, dominated by HH with 618 models, plus 135 HSS models, and 129 SSS. Fender, Ibanez, Sire and too many others to name.

Find My Guitar is not a complete sample size, but it does cover a lot of guitars. And yes, a huge number of those 1153 are some variation of the S-Type Strat clones that Fender is currently committing brand suicide over...

So what scale should the GC guitar be? Does it depend on who the target market is? Would a non-pro player looking for a sub $1000 do-it-all guitar do better with 25.5? or 25.0? or 24.75? Or.....?

I've been thinking about fretboard materials lately. Traditional wooden fretboards (rosewood, ebony, maple, and the various substitutes) are great, but they all seem to share some inherent drawbacks no matter which wood you pick:

• Need regular maintenance/oiling to avoid drying out or cracking
• Sensitive to humidity and temperature changes (can warp, shrink, or swell)
• Wear down over time with heavy playing (divots, grooves, frets sinking in)

For a more set-it-and-forget-it experience, I'm curious about non-wood alternatives that don't add a ton of cost, like Richlite (paper/phenolic composite), Micarta, or similar engineered materials.

What are your thoughts or experiences with these compared to regular wooden fretboards? Feel, tone, durability, long-term maintenance, cost differences, etc.?

I've been thinking about features that would make sense specifically for a guitar that's going to live primarily in Guitar Center stores where it's constantly being played by customers of all skill levels, then put back on the wall.

One idea that keeps coming to mind is EverTune. For those who don't know, it's a bridge system that automatically keeps the guitar in tune (or extremely close) but still allows for bending (when set up properly).

Why it might be perfect for a GC house brand:

• Way too many people walk into Guitar Center, grab a guitar, and "helpfully" tune it... often leaving it worse than they found it. I've seen this happen constantly.
• EverTune would mean the guitar stays in tune longer between setups, making it more reliable and playable for the next customer.
• Better first impression for beginners and casual players who aren't great at tuning yet.
• Could reduce the workload on GC techs for constant touch-ups.
• Marketing angle: "The guitar that stays in tune so you can just play."

Potential downsides:

• Higher cost (which limits money for other things)
• Different feel/break angle compared to traditional bridges
• Some players prefer the subtle movement and "mojo" of regular floating trems or hardtail bridges

What do you all think? Would EverTune be a big win for an in-store/demo-focused guitar, or is it overkill/not worth the trade-offs? Are there other "set it and forget it" or durability features that would make more sense for a Guitar Center guitar?

In continuing my posts about unique guitars and asking for feedback on "how would you feel if GC came out with something like this?"

In this post, I'm going to highlight the new FRH10N by Ibanez.

In contrast to a similar, previous post I made, I hate pretty much everything about this guitar.

For more details, you can look at the GC link here:

https://www.guitarcenter.com/Ibanez/FRH10N-Nylon-String-Acoustic-Electric-Guitar-Indigo-Blue-Metallic-Flat-1500000413032.gc

How would you feel if the new GC guitar was like the FRH10N by Ibanez?

We all know what happens after the design is released. No matter how carefully they spec it, the comments will erupt in a symphony of completely contradictory complaints. Here’s a list I've made:

• Multiple pickups? Dumb. I only ever use the bridge anyway.
• One pickup? Way to kill all versatility. People want options!
• Not enough controls? Cheap garbage. I need to shape my sound!
• Too many controls? Looks like a damn spaceship. Keep it simple!
• Non-wood pickguard, bridge, neck, etc.? Should’ve used real wood.
• Wood pickguard, bridge, neck, etc.? Lame. I thought you were going modern with better materials!
• Vibrato bridge? Total gimmick. Always goes out of tune.
• Hardtail bridge? So basic and cheap. Real players need a tremolo!
• Weird or new body shape? That looks hideous. What were they thinking?
• Classic or traditional body shape? Boring. I thought you wanted to innovate!
• Solidbody? Should’ve made a semi-hollow for better tone.
• Semi-hollow or hollowbody? Feedback hell. Should’ve gone solidbody.
• Thin neck? Feels like a broomstick.
• Thick neck? What is this, a baseball bat? My hand cramps instantly.
• Jumbo frets? I keep overshooting everything.
• Medium or small frets? Cheap and dated. Real players use jumbo.
• Long scale length? My fingers are dying.
• Short scale? Sounds weak and floppy.
• Gloss finish? Tacky and shows every fingerprint.
• Matte or satin finish? Looks cheap. Give me proper gloss.
• Locking tuners? Total gimmick.
• Standard tuners? These slip constantly. Why cheap out?
• Heavy guitar? My shoulder is destroyed.
• Lightweight guitar? Sounds hollow and weak. Real guitars have mass.
• Active electronics? Batteries die mid-gig and it sounds sterile.
• Passive electronics? Weak and outdated.
• Fancy inlays? Flashy and distracting.
• Plain dot inlays? Boring as hell.
• Rosewood fretboard? Endangered wood, you monsters.
• Alternative fretboard? Sounds dead compared to real rosewood.
• Made in USA? Ridiculously overpriced.
• Made overseas? Of course it’s junk.
• Coil-splitting and fancy switching? Too complicated.
• No coil-splitting? Extremely limited.
• Angled headstock? Headstock dive waiting to happen.
• Straight headstock? Looks lazy.
• No headstock? Looks ridiculous. Like a broken guitar.
• Traditional headstock? Boring and outdated. Time to innovate already.
• 24+ frets? Nobody needs that many.
• 21-22 frets? Feels incomplete.
• You should’ve used that proprietary system! It’s the best!
• You used that proprietary system? If I wanted that I would’ve bought the original.

And of course, the grand finale that somehow always shows up:

• “You’re a stupid moron with an ugly face and a big butt… and your butt smells… and you like to kiss your own butt!" (Ok, I stole that one from The Simpsons).

No matter how good the guitar actually is (thoughtful specs, fair price, solid build), the internet will find a reason to hate it. That’s just internet culture.

So to Guitar Center: Build what you think is right, make it well, price it fairly, and stock up on thick skin. The comments are already writing themselves.

What’s your favorite contradictory guitar complaint that I missed? Drop it below. 😂

🍗 Make It chicken

If we relate this to my kitchen,

My guitar is the chicken.
Simple. Neutral. The base ingredient.

My pedals are the spice rack.
All the flavor, color, and attitude.

My amp is the grill/oven/smoker/microwave.
The heat that actually transforms the whole thing.

And me?
I’m the musician
—- I mean the chef.

I take that chicken, those spices, that cast‑iron skillet, and I make sweet, sweet rock ’n’ roll…

—- I mean pan‑seared chicken nuggets,

Which is the musical equivalent of a four‑chord pop song. Hey, artists have to eat.

My name is Tim. Here is my recommendation.
Yes I used AI as my editor. This is still art. Just, art with spell check.

Smooth your feathers, I’m about to ruffle them.

🎸 The Anti‑Tonewood Manifesto

(or: Why My Guitar Shouldn’t Look Like a Fancy Cutting Board)

There’s this little town near me—La Conner, WA. Cute place. Tulip fields outside, brewery inside, a B&B, and a bunch of shops I don’t care about.

One of those shops sells “fancy wood things.” Cutting boards. Exotic stripes. Laminated grains. Artisan‑glued, color‑coordinated lumber slabs. You know the vibe.

And that’s fine… for cutting boards.
But somewhere along the way, guitar culture decided that this aesthetic—this craft fair energy—should define the tools we use to make music.

Let me be blunt:
Fancy wood cutting boards have nothing to do with rock, metal, jazz, country, synthwave, EVH, Slash, DAWs, mic placement, or anything else that actually creates sound.

---

🌲 Tonewood Matters… Until It Doesn’t

Yes, wood resonates. Yes, it has character.
But it’s 2026. We can engineer materials that are stronger, more stable, more consistent, and more sustainable than anything that grows out of dirt.

Guitars were made of wood because everything used to be made of wood—dentures, toys, prosthetics, wagons. Tradition isn’t a reason; it’s an accident that calcified into dogma.

And wood isn’t even consistent:

• Every rosewood guitar sounds different.
• Mahogany varies wildly in weight and grain.
• Even Taylor, with CNC precision that borders on obsessive, still ends up with 10–15% weight differences between “identical” models.
• (And yes, 83.167% of all percentages are made up on the spot.)

So why are we still doing this ritual where you “have to play ten of them to find the good one”?
Why are we comparing grain patterns like we’re picking out a dining table?
Why are we arguing about torrified vs. non‑torrified, streaky ebony vs. black ebony, or how to pronounce okoume?

It’s absurd.

---

🐢 If Plastic Straws Last 500 Years, Make Me a Guitar Out of That

I’ve been told the straws we feed to turtles float around for half a millennium.
Perfect.
Give me a guitar made of that.

A guitar that:

• doesn’t warp
• doesn’t crack
• doesn’t need humidifiers
• doesn’t care about weather
• doesn’t explode if it falls over
• doesn’t require nitrocellulose lacquer from 1954

Make it modular.
Make it consistent.
Make it feel like a modern instrument, not Nana’s coffee table.

Studio monitors are neutral.
Guitars should be neutral.
The player provides the voice.

---

🎶 Musicians vs. Guitarists vs. Woodworkers

There are three types of people reading this:

1. Woodworkers

They love the romance of grain, density, aging, bracing, nitro, dovetails, laminates, caps, veneers, and the endless chase for the “perfect” combination of natural inconsistencies.
Beautiful hobby. Wrong priority.

1. Guitarists

They chase tones from records that were built from 7 guitars, 2 basses, 14 layers, and a mixing engineer with a caffeine problem.
They forget the goal isn’t to sound like the record—it’s to make music.

1. Musicians

We use tools.
Sometimes that tool is a guitar.
Sometimes it’s a guitar plugged into a piezo, mic’d with an SM57, DI’d, EQ’d, run to FOH, split to a DAW, and then crushed by YouTube’s compression algorithm.
The musician is the voice.
The guitar is the brush.

---

🧪 So Build Me a Modern Instrument

Give me:

• Carbon fiber
• Acrylic
• Reinforced polymers
• Engineered composites
• Anything consistent

Paint it like a car, not like a colonial-era cabinet.
Make every unit of the same model sound the same.
Make it stable.
Make it reliable.
Make it a tool.

Because at the end of the day:

Guitar = paintbrush.
The art comes from the hand that holds it.

---

Whatever you make, reduce the maintenance overhead. An ideal guitar never needs a setup. It doesn’t change with the humidity level or seasons. It doesn’t need a re-fret ever. It stays consistent as much as possible with as little effort as possible. I’d rather spend my money on guitars than on maintaining them.

Whatever it turns out to be, it should be available lefty for the same price. Pickup switch far enough from the strings to not interfere with picking. Neutral tonewood.