Guitar Gear Forum

What piece of gear surprised you the most?

As in, you had the least expectation for, but actually turned out to be a keeper?

For me, it's an Agile Spalted LP, and a Peavey Foundation V bass.
Both were cheap as hell, but ended up being amazing.

The Peavey bass beat out the Fender equivelent (both MIA and MIM) Jazz Vs. It also beat out the other various basses I've had over the years. The only contender for me was a Warwick Corvette $$ 5....which was also fantastic, but I expected that.


The Agile was LP GAS induced. Even drove 1.5 hours to go to Dave's Guitar with the intention of buying/trading for a Gibson LP Traditional. They had at least 7 used ones, and 4 that appealed to me cosmetically. After spending a few hours dicking around with them, only one of 4 spoke to me. Sadly, it appeared to have a hump in the neck around the neck joint. So disappointed at the time.
Ended up with an old PRS CE24 instead, which was pretty cool.

Anyway, a few weeks later I was watching eBay, and decided to take a chance on the Agile.
It showed up and was great, better than the Gibsons I had just played.
Don't know if whoever had it before me had set up work done on it, but it plays and sounds wonderful.
I assume it has the stock pickups, and I even like those.

What did you discover?

AMT Tube Magnum. Wasnt expecting much from it, but now I cant turn it off.

Jay Turser ES-335 copy. $240 for a new, left-handed guitar with real SD '59 pickups. It sounded and played fantastic, and it definitely killed any snobbery about synthetic fretboards. If not for a divorce that essentially wiped out my gear collection, I'd still have it now.

benjamin801 wrote:Jay Turser ES-335 copy. $240 for a new, left-handed guitar with real SD '59 pickups. It sounded and played fantastic, and it definitely killed any snobbery about synthetic fretboards. If not for a divorce that essentially wiped out my gear collection, I'd still have it now.

I had one of those for a while, and it was pretty sweet too.
Not just band for your buck, but just an overall nice guitar.

Ive heard alot of good things about some Jay Tursers. I'd like to try some of them out some time.

just gotta wear a mask when you play them. LOL

Mine was a JHS Sweet Tea. I was dead-set on selling my JSX and saving up for a Splawn Quickrod or an Orange Rockerverb, but the moment I plugged my Sweet Tea into the JSX's clean channel, I was sold. I never thought a pedal could feel so amp-like.

It wasn't that I was expecting it to be not bad but I am still surprised at how nice the PRS SE guitars are. I love my se singlecut.

AL2000

wasnt expecting a 225 dollar guitar to sound and feel so good out of the box. love that guitar.

also mako mak4. clips were great but could not play one before buying. first time playing it was a huge surprise that it just killed all the clips i heard.

Snowstorm wrote:It wasn't that I was expecting it to be not bad but I am still surprised at how nice the PRS SE guitars are. I love my se singlecut.

I had one of those too....in tobacco sunburst. different pickups really helped that guitar out, but it always just felt plastic-y and stiff to me?

my '72 Deluxe. Got it in a trade with the intent to flip it. but the neck is so fantastic and now that I had decent pickups in it I don't see it going anywhere

A yamaha PA. When it electrocuted my face via the mic/grounding issue it was a bit of a surprise.

G&L S-500. I bought it intending to keep it, but only to use sparingly when I felt like single coils. Ever since I bought it, I've played it more than my Rampage and Promod. Completely in love with the dynamics and clarity of single coils.

For me it was a couple OD pedals. The first was the Danelectro CTO-1 which I got when they were first out and being sold for like $30 each. Talk about killer value! I didn't expect that pedal to outperform Keeley TS-808 but it definitely did, for a fraction of the price no less.

The other was the Xotic BB-Preamp. I bought it thinking "oh here might be another good OD" and found out that I would prefer it over all my other OD's. I returned it and paid a little extra for the custom shop mid-boost version and never looked back. I could care less about other overdrives now, seriously.

SX tele. dropped some fender pickups in it, golden.

wow there is a ton of gear that surprised me...

Marshall Mosfet 100 - really great SS amp, could easily be my main gigging amp.

Ibanez CF-7 - I bought it mostly because I was sick of kicking the chorus knobs out of place during gigs, but it turns out it also sounds amazing. Great pedal.

Mighty Mite Motherbucker. I had really low expectations for this pickup but it sounds great. It's been on my strat bridge for a while.

Behringer Ultra G - great sounding unit, beats my HK Red Box.


There's probably more...

My MIC Ibanez ARZ307. Wasn't really expecting much, but it's now the axe I reach for the most.

Pigtronix Class A Boost. I expected to like it, but maybe not quite as much as I do. It's basically always on now.

a 1960's Harmony 1260 Sovereign acoustic guitar. Basically a 50 year old Martin D18 you can buy for a couple hundred bucks.

An agile I payed in a store. Think it was a 3100. Killer guitar.

My VHT Deliverance 60 - bought one without ever having played one and it has been my favorite amp since, been using it at least 4 years now.

Electro-Harmonix Pine 4x12 cab - basically bought it just because it was cheap and looked awesome. It's pretty much the only cab I use these days. So killer

And last but definitely not least, my MIC Ibanez Artist AR320 - ordered it from MF simply because it looked awesome, and it arrived basically flawless in every way. Even the stock pickups are awesome. It's in a dead heat with my '89 Hamer USA Californian as my favorite guitar

I was quite surprised by PRS Custom24 mostly because I didn't like it much. The more I play it the more I like it. I was kind of like that with my MarkIII when I first got it. It took me a month to warm up to it and now I wish I had it back. I traded it and cash for my LPC 68RI.

Fulltone OCD. It just had that quality to my tone.
Jam vox, great modeler.
Fender lite ash tele, never liked teles until I played it.

Mesa Recto


Traded an ad30 head straight for a triple recto with plans to flip it since the recto was an easier sell. Turns out I just didn't know how to dial them in and they can sound great


Like most gear I don't jive with, it was totally user error. Oh well.

My Jag partscaster probably... Actually I'll make it my AW-3. GREAT auto-wah.

The Little Kustom practice amp I just got for room playing really surprised me... especially in quality for the price.