"Best Playin' Guitar Ever!"

How many times have we heard this? Go to EBay... a store is selling 17 guitars, and they are all the winners. "This guitar has the twang", "Led Zeppelin all-the-way", "Keith Mojo", "Screaming Bridge Pickup". If there were that many great sounding guitars out there we'd all be in guitar heaven. The fact is, THERE ARE NOT THAT MANY GREAT SOUNDING GUITARS OUT THERE. In the hundred plus instruments I have probably owned (I try to get them in my house, and then in the privacy of home plug them into my own amp, and get everything just the way I need to, in order to evaluate the guitar as a 'keeper'... or not). You can't sit in Guitar Center Hollywood, while Eddie Van Halen Jr is repeating his riff over and over again next to you, and get a good read on a guitar. To the point... if the maker is good, I find the percentage of really great guitars can vary. For upper-tier Custom Shop Guitars, it may be roughly 1 out of 6 that you test drive (assuming nobody got there before you). For MIM Fenders, it might be 1 out of 20 or even 30. There is also the mystical power of the man in front of you... the true salesman... if you try it in the store. He or she can literally 'hypnotically effect' your ear. "Now isn't that just the best guitar in the world... Woody and I play it every evening after the doors shut... and I don't know why it hasn't sold yet... in fact, I was going to finally take it home with me tonight!". So you try it again, in case there is something you missed... and ... "damn!"..."if you aren't right"... well... sort of.