In a perfect world

[TBman]

You walk into a guitar shop and tell them you want to buy a guitar.

So they bring out a bunch of guitars and find the one that feels the best for your hands, without any regard to tone, just playability of the neck profile, string spacing, neck radius nut width and most comfortable body style. So this becomes your guitar profile, which gets put into a database.

Then they take this profile and then match it to all the guitars that have the specs that fit your guitar profile, within a certain range of comfort going by a rating based on your profile.

[MrDB]

But then you wouldn't buy then sell 17 guitars before finding the right one for you.

You'd miss out on all the fun

[tadol]

But thats kinda what you do - you play a bunch guitars, note those things that you need to have, the ones you like to have, and the few you wish you could have, and you start looking. If you rule out anything that doesn't include the need to have, then you can start looking at the ones with the things you'd like to have, then with a little luck you'll find one that has all the needs, most of the likes, and maybe one or two wishes, and then you just have to hope it sounds good -

That, or send your list to Richard Hoover, tell him what you want it to sound like, and he'll build one for you - There are also some other custom builders that can do it too (to be fair) but its hard to beat a great custom Santa Cruz - then you'll just stop looking at guitars and be done!



Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!

[sid45]

kinda like modern dating.

[L20A]

You need to see a good luthier.

[Guitars+gems]

Sort of like the "Recommended for you..." or "Because you liked..." offerings that Amazon and Netflix place before you after tracking your recent purchases and selections?

Often those suggestions appeal to me, but if I made choices based solely on what those companies think I'd like, I'd miss a lot of books and movies that wouldn't fit my profile.

[Organic Sounds Select Guitars]

Originally Posted by Guitars+gems

Sort of like the "Recommended for you..." or "Because you liked..." offerings that Amazon and Netflix place before you after tracking your recent purchases and selections?

Often those suggestions appeal to me, but if I made choices based solely on what those companies think I'd like, I'd miss a lot of books and movies that wouldn't fit my profile.

I like this comparison! Good idea, Barry, but like Guitars+Gems says, the potential for missing out on some great instruments that we hadn’t considered before is too great.

[TBman]

Originally Posted by LWSog

I like this comparison! Good idea, Barry, but like Guitars+Gems says, the potential for missing out on some great instruments that we hadn’t considered before is too great.

Hmm, yes stuff could get missed, sure LW.

I guess it could be a tiered selection process where body styles would be graded based on proximity to the optimum for the player. Like all things computer related, "garbage in, garbage out" so the player/buyer profile would have to be pretty extensive and updated every so often.

[LadysSolo]

Neck profile and most comfortable body style wound be most important, because my guitars all sound different, so I pick the one to play that best fits what I want to work on that day. If they all sounded alike, that would be boring. I DO try out only the guitars that are comfortable to play, why would I want to play an uncomfortable instrument?

[DukeX]

What if you really like Dreads, OMs, and single 0s, all for different reasons, all with different neck profiles and string spacing for different styles of playing? Do you have multiple profiles?

[jstroop]

Originally Posted by MrDB

But then you wouldn't buy then sell 17 guitars before finding the right one for you.

You'd miss out on all the fun

Can’t find the Like button.

[vindibona1]

In a perfect world, you find the neck you really can bond with physically. You then find a body that suits you for feel and then color. You then bolt them together and string it up...

...Hey isn't that a Strat or a Tele????

Sounds like something Taylor could easily be doing.

[Purfle Haze]

Originally Posted by TBman

Then they take this profile and then match it to all the guitars that have the specs that fit your guitar profile, within a certain range of comfort going by a rating based on your profile.

I like this. It sounds pretty data-intensive, but so what. On the other hand, a good guitar store (e.g., The Music Emporium) does this already, because they know their stock. If you tell them, more like this guitar, less like that guitar, the next guitar they hand you will be closer to the one.

But sometimes it's nice to try a guitar that you would have thought was outside of your comfort range, too.

[MrDB]

Originally Posted by DukeX

What if you really like Dreads, OMs, and single 0s, all for different reasons, all with different neck profiles and string spacing for different styles of playing? Do you have multiple profiles?

The medical term for that is Multiple Guitar Profile Disorder

[jpd]

You need to go to Gryphon and Schoenberg