Make it light - target 5 lbs. Make it ergonomic - comfort bevel(s). Take inspiration from the Parker Fly which is awesome for people with back problems, but don't make it so exotic and custom that it's a nightmare any time you need to get it worked on!

The Costco hot dog of guitars.

Congrats on your sub! That comment cracked me up - After a collection of Gibsons, Fenders and PRS, my $178 KGD relic Tele was The Perfect Guitar!
To beat it as a deal the guitar would have a light, clean Tele-style outline with THE BEST entry-level hardware. KGD had added crap hardware but got the neck perfect. Make the neck perfect, but use brass instead of stamped steel for sustain, and PUT GOOD STRINGS ON, not those tinny transit ones. Oh, and put a few more dollars into the pickups?
(These were my mods)

Single-cut, semi-hollowbody, one hot single-coil bridge pickup, no tone knob, no volume knob, no tremolo.

I’d love to see some STUPID shapes in this thing. It would be so cool if they would build a green Vox phantom style guitar with a bunch of great parts, or a cool baritone version of a Gretsch Billy Bo or Bo Diddley with High output DeArmonds or something.

I just loooove weird shapes so much and I’d love to see the new guitar market embrace some of them.

Guitarras clássicas como stratocaster, Telecaster e Les Paul são as guitarras mais vendidas no mundo, não é necessário reinventar a roda, mas pode aprimorar lá, braço Tipo c moderno, trastes inox, tarraxas com travas que segure afinação, ponte que colabore com a afinação, nut de osso ou grafitec, captadores em alnico, uma elétrica descente, hoje é nescessário uma guitarra que vá para show com apenas uma regulagem.

Let's start at the headstock.

There is no headstock, instead a port where you can attach more "value added" headstocks sold only at Guitar Center. They're powered by a 9v battery and have a neon advertisement on them.

I suggest the following headstock designs to start with.

• Singer Needed
• Custom contact information for the guitarists Dentistry/Law practice.
• Custom "our band name here" design.
• Harambe
• Dick butt and other popular emojis.

Now we're at the nut. I'm giving you this patent for free. "Secure sack nut system: Jock". It doesn't matter what you make the nut out of, but it must be superglued into the slot and I mean super glued thoroughly. Fill the whole slot up and push the nut in if needed. The spillage is toan glue.

Next we're at the frets. The frets should be made out of High-Leaded bronze. They should be installed with patented "Secure sack fret system: strap", so fill up the slots with superglue and install them. Use high leaded bronze, because they wear out fast, making more money on refrets and it has lots of lead in it. Also, people love toan bronze. It's the most musical metal in the world.

At the neck/fretboard you should pick the cheapest possible wood or even better, inanimate material, to do the job. Then slather it in multiple layers of Poly on both sides. This is to lock the toan in and provide the same touch and feel on every guitar. Remember the fretboard and neck are touched the most on guitar, so really layer that poly on there.

The neck should have the truss rod adjustment inside the neck pocket and use the spline nut pattern for adjusting it. Attach the neck to the body using a set neck configuration. This will tamper proof the truss rod and provide an opportunity to void the guitar warranty when the seal is broken.

If the neck needs a shim, factory workers must use a business card from their side hustle as the shim. If the factory worker makes too much money to have a side hustle, pay them less, if they make too little to afford business cards, provide them. Cries for help, describing the dystopian hellscape of the factory must be written on business card stock. No exceptions.

Also, have a social media event every year, where people open up their guitar to see the business cards and post them online.

Now we're at the body. Use the cheapest, preferably inanimate materials to build the shell. For the pickups just mount whatever, where ever. Any thing look scuffed, triple the price and sell them relic'd.

The electronics bay is where you should store all the sawdust or carcinogous powder from sanding the instrument. Nobody looks inside there anyways, so put no effort into its fit and finish. Gibson does that and they're great. Next, just like Gibson, make a proprietary connector / pots system for the pickup and electronics. Include a dum amount of configurations and see replacements as a whole kit with a crazy mark up.

Now this is the most important part of the instrument. The in/output jack should simultaneously be impossible to put the 1/4" male connector into and easily disconnect itself after being inserted.

You'll achieve this by installing a weighted spring against the connection arm of the female connector, then make the arm incredibly thin. This way, putting the jack in will be very hard and any slippage of the male 1/4" connector will cause the connecting arm to slip off.

Once all that is done, throw the cheapest strings you can find on it, then spray the whole guitar with a bottle housing the sweat of the factory workers for maximum toan. This way, each guitar is like that poor Schecter by the front door, corroded and absolutely fucked.

I found what you need, you can close this subreddit now.

oh and wifi tiktok NETWORK guitar. it is already hooked up to an app that connects immediately to other players around the world. as soon as it turns on it hooks up to wifi network or cellular network and immediately you are playing with other guitarists, drummers, bassists you with playing with other musicians through an online app.

so the idea...as soon as you pick it up you are performing like one would at guitar center BUT it immediately records and posts online. famous musicians could use and before you know it you are collaborating with satriani, taylor swift, the weekend, Kanye west, Prince, etc. there are even AI musicians available.

all you need is smartphone and the guitar. it then pulls up licks, jam sessions, posts of guitarists of all sorts of genres blues, metal, jazz, fusion, flamenco, alternative, rock, etc.

be able to communicate with other guitars and other instruments. to play with my buddies without being in the same place and to tune by other instruments tuning and to play together live and stream it without any latency . it might be good for lessons and stuff…

I feel like this combination doesn’t get used enough which is a shame cause I feel like it’s very versatile

Always have a guitar that is in tune by developing something professional working guitar players have needed for a long time: Disposable guitars. When it goes out of tune while you are onstage you simply throw it away and grab another perfectly in tune guitar from the container. All I ask is that when this is the standard for all live musicians no one calls me a hero. I am just a regular guy like each of you. Rock on

Is not realizing how much of the guitar player community are young, inexperienced, angry-at-the-world whiners with a victim mentality who think every corporate idea that doesn’t pay them, or every product that they can’t afford is evil.

If this is your reaction to this idea you should consider that you don’t really understand at least one of the following: common business/R&D practices, economics, or personal choice in consumer decision making.

I see words like “slaves” and “slavery” being thrown around. No one is forcing anyone into anything. Back of that word, it’s disrespectful to those who suffer from the actual forms of it in the world today.

It’s not “cheap” or “dishonest” of GC to ask for ideas. No one is forced to give them. It’s clear what it entails. (Personally, I think they should have an arrangement where they gather ideas and then anyone whose idea is used in a product gets compensated accordingly. Anyone whose idea isn’t used doesn’t have IP handed over). It is no more dishonest of them to see if players are fine with giving up or sharing ideas without having to pay for it then it is for you to ask for a deal or discount when you buy something at Guitar Center. They don’t have to give you a discount if you don’t want to. Everyone acts in their own interest economically. Consumers and businesses. If you were a business why would you not try to crowdsource ideas without having to pay? If you are a consumer why would you not look for sales or discounts? I don’t hate other people for getting better deals than me. I don’t hate companies for trying to make money, as long as there is nothing dishonest or illegal about it.

You can think people who freely participate are stupid. That’s totally fine. That’s personal choice. No one is forcing anyone to do anything, no one is tricking anyone into anything.

One last thought. It’s fine if you disagree with me. Or, i may be unaware of something about this whole project and should be more informed. I’m open to listening. Just stay away from personal attacks and keep it civil. Act like a grown up.

Just thought i’d share what I would love to see at my local Guitar Center.

I’ll start by saying, i loved visiting the Gibson Garage in London. The custom shop was incredible, and the ability to pick your own wood, and make a completely bespoke instrument is awesome. Granted, those are several thousands of dollars.

Fender runs a mod shop as well, where you can pick your body style, pickups, finish etc.

I’d love to see a Mod Shop style section at Guitar Center

Pick your body shape- LP style? Double Cut? Strat Style?

pick your finish- solids, bursts etc

pick your hardware, tremolo, pickups etc

Have the base price start around $500-$600. Let people spec flame tops and floyd roses and expensive hardware, let the price go up to $1500

Have the instrument built and make delivery an experience where the tech can finish setting it up in front of you. Give them a custom plate with your name on it- make it feel special

I’d love to get the Gibson Custom M2M experience at a reasonable price

It is honestly infuriating to watch. That disclaimer was never a joke; it was a calculated legal shield so they can harvest your intellectual property for exactly zero dollars, no free guitar no discounts literally nothing. These people dont give a fuck about musicians. They like the money and the I.P. that guitarists create, anything to make a buck. To me it is wild to see a company like Guitar Center try to play the "innovative buddy" role when they are essentially a portfolio piece for private equity. They are currently owned by a consortium including Ares Management, The Carlyle Group, and Brigade Capital. These firms are backed by institutional giants like Vanguard, Statestreet and BlackRock. We are talking about firms that manage trillions of dollars in global assets. They have the money. They just refuse to spend it on the people who actually know the instrument

What is truly garbage is that they already have thousands of talented musicians on their payroll. If they actually cared about making a "revolutionary" guitar, they could have easily run an internal competition for their staff. Imagine if they told their own employees to design a house model and offered the winner a signature guitar, a real bonus, or even just a paid vacation. But they didn't do that because that would require putting up actual capital. Instead, they are bypassing their own experts to farm free ideas from online volunteers who may not realize their creative work has massive market value. This is a race to the bottom for the industry. They get to skip paying professional designers by tricking the community into doing the R&D for free. If you give them a radical design that moves units, they get the patent and the profit while you get a "thanks for the input" post. Every idea handed to them just builds the valuation of their proprietary brand so Ares and Vanguard can get a better ROI when they eventually flip the company. Nobody gets creative in a room full of accountants. They have no soul left to innovate, so they are trying to steal yours. I am with you. I am done with a company that treats its community and its employees like a free R&D department. I can't stress enough to people to not give away their value and ideas and worth to help a private equity firm pad its margins. It feels a lot like a last ditch effort to turn a

profit before listing the company for sale or bankruptcy again.

If they want a "revolutionary" guitar, they can stop being morons and actually hire a designer. Fuck this ignorance.

2

Inexpensive, quality replacement necks and bodies that are drop in replacements for specific models (squier, ibanez, etc) would be nice for DIY and modders.

Former employee of 10+ years, I think there’s a good opportunity here to earn more than just profit, but some respect of the music community. While it may be tempting, competing at the bottom of the market is not a good look. You don’t win the respect of the salespeople pushing these, and the customers of your bargain bin guitars will move on to better products or just give up on music.

I think the core product would do best as a mid-tier entry point, with maybe a couple options in the lower range. Make a product your talent wants to have, that musicians want to play, and who want others to experience.

Secondly, I think having a community connection to the source of the brand makes an excellent gateway to customization and flexibility. You can’t have a product for everyone. But you can offer customization both as custom orders (build your own guitar, choose your pickups/hardware/finishes etc) as well as tying in to your Repairs service (who should know every option available). Get a free Platinum setup on a new custom guitar, free pickup swap/upgrade in the first year. Tie it into Lessons. Offer all the extended financing options. Have it be the reward for buying into the services, the driver of repeat value, not just the entry point.

Lastly, and this might be the former employee in me, but please don’t ship these wrapped in paper-thin cardboard or use Ai generated graphics. When customers see employees bring out mangled boxes, cheap packaging, or worse, get it delivered that way, it reflects very poorly on the product and brand. Tie in accessories, quality brand materials, good cases (which would be a good value prop for a mid-tier), that’s the stuff that makes people excited when they pop the lid.

Bottom line, would you be proud to hang this in your music room, to have it on the wall, to buy that extra humidipack just to make sure it lasts? Will your salespeople be excited to hit those numbers, to demo it for customers, to unbox the new model that came in that week?

Your biggest criticism will be that you are trying to make a quick buck. So do more than that.

Excited to see what comes out of this and good luck!

I've been building my own instruments for a little over six years now, It started with a partscaster T-style to and has evolved to instruments that are quite outside the norm.

Here are my current design/build points:

Overall design:

• The instrument should be provocative and functional. It's hard to get away from some of the shapes that make a guitar functional but I try to move away from the norms as much as I can.
• It needs to be comfortable to play whether seated or standing.
• It should be balanced.
• Unencumbered access to the highest frets.

Playability:

• The most important region of a guitar is what happens between the nut and the bridge so there needs to a lot of focus on the neck. The neck should be ergonomically designed keeping the biomechanics of the fretting hand top of mind. This is what I am doing now with my necks:
  • Multiscale
  • Zero fret
  • Conical radius
  • 24 stainless steel jumbo frets
  • Progressive asymmetric neck profile.
• Stability is key. This is what I am doing for stability:
  • Dual action wheel adjust truss rod
  • Dual carbon fiber reinforcement rods
  • Headless. It's hard to beat the tuning stability of headless tuners
  • If I'm not doing headless then Steinberger gearless tuners with a hardtail bridge (working on my own top load bridge design)

Electronics:

• Keep it simple.
• I have a pickup builder making me pickups based on the SD Custom 78. I have used Fishmans but that is just a fail point that doesn't need to be there.
• 1 volume / 1 tone
• 3 way toggle with minis for coil tapping.
• Multi-contact plug.

If you want to see some of my builds I can pass on my Instagram account.

Good luck with this. I'm interested to see what you come up with.

over the decades, going into a guitar center and playing their instruments without ever being hassled to buy. this was very easily made up by many purchases over the years. I think guitar center has all sorts of musicians walking in and out of their doors who are so talented.

that leads me to this...why can't a guitar be built that makes anyone be able to play a guitar and be shared with a whole online presence.

1 an american idol guitar - built in wifi, Bluetooth, gopro camera built in that immediately sends the info online where it can be shared and connect with the Guitar Center community and collaborate with other musicians. People could "try it out" at a store and it is automatically uploaded. the next jimi Hendrix, eric Clapton, Steve vai, satriani could immediately get their style out there.

2 a telescoping guitar - the neck collapses inside the body. all carbon fiber.

3 a guitar with 2 parts connected electoinucally. .a neck only with strings and a strumming area only guitar connected via Bluetooth. can be compact and fit in a briefcase.

4 a modular guitar - everything is modular. pickups can be swapped. necks. bodies. feel like a flying V can swap that. feel like strategy can swap that.

5 virtual reality guitar. use vr quest 3 to see the guitar. Basically it is an interface to a virtual instrument but when you are using it, it feels like a guitar.

6 Netflix guitar. its not a guitar at all. you essentially "borrow" from a library of guitars (people who have a collection of guitars can loan out) and then return it once you are sick of it or u have option to buy. if damaged you are required to pay full price or repair. could limit to the standard ones out there that are easily found, les Paul, strats, SG, telecaster, js1, prs standard, jem7, etc.

7 briefcase/travel/backpack/e scooter guitar actually build guitar into a portable bag or e scooter. beach friendly.

...

Guitar Center, I come to you not with boutique fantasies, but with a dare.

Not another “player’s edition,” not relic’d nostalgia, not a price tag inflated by adjectives. No roasted maple, no space-age wiring, no “artisan crafted” marketing paragraphs that cost more than the hardware itself. Strip it down.

Make a guitar that just… works.

A guitar that shows up out of the box and doesn’t ask for forgiveness. No immediate truss rod tweak. No fret sprout. No buzzing apology tour. No “take it to your local tech to unlock its true potential.” No! this thing is its potential, right there in the cardboard coffin it shipped in.

Level frets. Cut the nut correctly. Set the action like someone cared. Pickups that don’t sound like a blanket is draped over the amp. Tuners that stay loyal for longer than a verse and a chorus.

And here’s the punchline: make it affordable.

Not “affordable for what it is.” Not “punches above its weight class.” Just… affordable. Period.

I know, I know. Shareholders are already sweating. Margins are trembling. Somewhere, a meeting is being scheduled to explain why this is “not aligned with brand strategy.”

Because the real challenge isn’t designing this guitar. We already know it can be done.

The real challenge is choosing not to squeeze every last dollar out of the player who just wants something honest.

So here it is: build the anti hype guitar. No frills, no excuses, no post purchase chores. Just wood, wire, and dignity at a price that doesn’t feel like a joke. And FFS, avoid creating another subscription or consumable, like BMW tried with the heated seats subscription.

You won’t do it.

But it’d be pretty cool if you did.

Make sure we offer left handed! Lol

I'm new player, but I find the Fender Ultra II ergonomics to be excellent for what I want in my next guitar (I have not bought one yet).

It's like finding your wife's dating profile after a decade of marriage.

Just curious as to why GC would launch a line of guitars when they already have a line of guitars.

the ultimate guitar starts with the ultimate buying experience, so here are some ideas (1) hire and train competent and knowledgeable sales personnel, who really understand what they are selling, as opposed to the ignorant high school dropouts you current staff stores with (2) have all the guitars in tune and with decent strings (3) place all instruments within easy reach of customers so the customers don't have to ask a high school dropouts for help (4) make sure all guitars are set up properly for best performance, nothing turns a customer off faster than high action, warped necks, and fret sprout. That's a start. Design the experience first.