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Would you buy a custom guitar that wasn't an iconic shape.


KasterGuitars

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Sure!

 

It would depend, of course. I like semi hollows the best, and they all fall into a couple iconic shapes for the most part. For instance, the 339 is perfect for me, and it's just a shrunken 335 (so still iconic).

 

But there have been some unconventional shapes that I have found to be appealing.

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Define "iconic". I think what you mean by that are the mainstream designs you'll see hanging up on the wall of your average GC; Strat, Tele, LP, SG, ES, Archtop. However, pretty much anything Fender or Gibson have mass-produced is "iconic" in some way. There's the Fender "offset" style used in the Jaguar, Jazzmaster and Mustang, then there's Gibson's Explorer, Firebird, Flying V, and "offset SG" used in the Ripper and Nighthawk series. That's not to mention the plethora of body styles B.C. Rich has introduced, which are instantly recognizable as Warlocks, Mockingbirds, Beasts, Bichs, Stealths, etc.

My current custom project is a Strat build; it's supposed to look and feel like a Strat, and so it has the traditional body style and appointments of one (with the exception of an HSH pickup arrangement and a few tricks in the wiring). However, just because I don't currently have a desire for a truly original design doesn't mean I never will, and just because I have learned what defines an LP or a Strat (which isn't, IMO,the name on the headstock) and have happened to fall in love with an iconic style doesn't mean that's all I'll ever be interested in.

I started on bass, and in that field, what you'd call "iconic" is pretty much limited to the Precision and Jazz body types, and a few vintage oddities like the violin "Beatle bass". Almost every other mass-produced bass guitar is derived, however loosely, from Fender's asymmetric doublecut style, which is itself only an up-sized Strat. The biggest oddball design is the singlecut aka "whaleback" style, which is AFAIK the exclusive domain of the boutique builders. However, despite these similarities across most of the spectrum, there are very few blatant copies, the major genre being the Jazz clones built by boutique shops like Sadowsky. Most other builders see fit to deviate from the standard dimensions, proportions and accoutrements of the two "iconic" styles as it suits them. So, I've generally adopted the viewpoint that an instrument is defined more by its control set and its pickups than by its body style; you can't keep track of the individual variations other than by brand and model, and at that point you might as well say what you really have instead of what it imitates.

That viewpoint also leads me to see the similarities in guitar designs rather than the differences, and so I generally point to a guitar like the Rockingbat and say "that's an Explorer-style", or to the Canton Klein and say "that's a Steinberger-style". At which point the purists proceed to beat me over the head with their guitar straps.

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