what's so special about the James Tyler strat, as opposed to say fender custom shop?

[wisem66]

as above !!!!

[Neil.C]

Not lime as the citrus tree. Just to be clear.

Thanks, yes I guessed it was of the "Unter den Linden" type rather than a fruit tree.

I had no idea Basswood was Linden/Lime though. As I always saw it on far eastern guitars I assumed it was a tree that was just indigenous to those areas.

That's something I have learned.

[TheGuitarWeasel]

I'm a big fan of using 'interesting' other woods ... there are two massive chunks of Australian jarrah (eucalyptus) in my must get round to using cupboard. It is fabulous for fingerboards, being as hard and tight grained as ebony, but with the look of a slightly planer grained rosewood.

[DLM]

Practise makes you play better, not a nice piece of flame maple. I love a nice looking and playing guitar and I've spent a lot of money on expensive guitars and I'm sure I will in the future but you surely don't need a £2000 piece of guitar porn to be " optimally prepared" for a gig. It's just personal choice and some people will pay big bucks to have what they consider the best. Nothing wrong with that as that's what money is for but for me I'd take the £1000 guitar plus amp route rather than blowing £1500 on a guitar which is no better. Nice choice to have though.

Of course! One of my favourite quotes ever is John Suhr's "Practise cures most tone issues". But what happens when you've practised all you can? I'm not terribly interested in "guitar porn" either: the thing is a tool for making the sounds in my head happen. Function over form every time. The problem I face here is a dearth of availability in the "gap" you describe between function and form, i.e. between a £1000 guitar and a £1500 guitar: it's hard to find blingless performers with otherwise top specs. I guess the decreased markup makes such instruments unattractive for retailers and builders alike.

Just looking at Suhr now, and it's £2k for a guitar with a basswood body.

I'm reminded somehow of the story of a woman asking Picasso to draw her: he did so very quickly and demanded a couple of thousand for a few seconds' work. She said she thought that a lot of money for the time he took to draw it. His retort was that she wasn't paying for the time he'd taken to draw her, but for the time he'd needed to get that good.

At this level, one is not simply paying a "sum-of-the-parts price", and I think the little story explains the price-premium of craftmanship well.

Back to Tyler: I'm among the naysayers on the headstock, but it wouldn't be an obstacle if the instrument was otherwise everything I wanted. (Which is unlikely: I've yet to see a Tyler with the features I'd choose, Suhr and Anderson are closer matches.)