Have your most hated guitar features ever turned into your favorites?

[BlixaFan]

This might just be growing older or whatever but I've always thought that Telecasters are the ugliest guitars conceived of and sort of given them a pass for that since they were in essence the first solidbodies. Can't get it right the first time, I figured. The skinny headstock, the bulbous yet clunky body shape where the control plate and the square bridge and the weirdly curving pickguard don't feel as if they're working together at all, ugh. They really seem like a sore thumb compared to the sleek, aerodynamic, curving Jazzmasters and Jaguars where the pickguard and the chrome echo and amplify the lines of the body shape. The Stratocaster is sort of an in-between thing in that if you look at it too long you can tell it's not as sleek and sexy as it makes itself out to be. The symmetry isn't as nice in real life as it is when you picture a Strat in your head, but somehow it still maintains that illusion.

But, and this is largely down to G&L's new takes and Frank Black's patronage I think, I'm starting to come around to Teles. I can tell they'll never be my favorites, but now I could sort of see myself having one, you know? The pieces are starting to come together into something more coherent and I can imagine a place where the Telecaster would, aesthetically and iconically, fit and with that my resistance is kind of slipping away.

this is exactly how i felt about Teles for the majority of my life. and then i kind of out of the blue picked up a tele, and it's literally the best guitar in my collection. it would be the last one to go if i had to sell my guitars. and i've grown to like the body shape too. i also really like the feel of it when playing. it just feels like a slab of wood, with no contours, and there's something really cool about that. go figure

[higgsblossom]

To me, a Telecaster is exactly what I have in mind when I think about an electric guitar. Probably because one of the first guitar-related "heroes" I had in my youth was Joe Strummer.

I never liked humbuckers. That's currently changing, and I would never have expected it to happen with the cheapest guitar in my collection, my Squier Bullet Mustang. I really like how full it sounds with distortion.

[Guitarmunk]

Rosewood fingerboards and offsets in general. I thought those offsets were butt ugly and I would rather chew through my wrists rather than owning an offset.
My dream guitar was a black strat with maple fingerboard a'la the Gilmour black strat.
I had a black strat with all those features, then I found out the sound I was searching for was from a Jazzmaster.
Now the strat is sold, I own 2 Jazzmasters, a white CIJ with Lollar pups and a TVL, both with Staytrems.
I had a few Jaguars as well, including a Marr'guar, but I've never really found the sound I was looking for in them.
One will come around, eventually.
Been a Jazzmaster player for years now and still loving them.
And they are pretty now.

[mackerelmint]

Single coil pickups.

Part of that was just that the guitars I could afford/happened to get deals on were all fenders or based on fender designs, and I wanted to get different sounds, and not have the hum. It was like that for what seemed like forever at the time but was really just a few years.

Now I feel like there are good humbuckers out there, but it's easier to just go with single coils for the most part. I prefer the fender scale and the modularity of the designs, or maybe just the sensibility of the approach.

And singles, by themselves anyway, don't quack. And for that reason alone they will always win for me.

[audiopablo]

for me, it's the skinny Tele headstock. My first tele (and only one for years, my #1) was a 72 reissue. So I associated teles with a big headstock. I hated that small headstock on other teles. But now I have a lot of regular teles and it no longer bothers me.

The other is the neck pickups. I hated them on all my guitars. I realized it was my dark amp, my ears, my technique and just plain diming things. Now I love me a good neck pickup, especially on a jag. And the first thing I do is roll the volume and tone down a bit and work the sound a bit first.

[marqueemoon]

Expanding on my earlier comment about hot pickups I'd said just classic rock toanz in general. To be clear I still don't really like the Tube Screamer sound that much, but a good guitar into a cooking tube amp is generally something I can get behind soundwise these days. Younger me would be appalled at my preferred setup now.

[BoringPostcards]

I was never a big fan of humbuckers. Always found they lacked good clean tones.
I ended up having GAS for an SG a few years back, even though I wasn’t a Gibson fan either.
Ended up buying an SG Standard thinking I’d want to put p90s in it.
Turns out the 57 classics it came with were both excellent for clean and dirty tones.
Now I have an appreciation for both humbuckers and Gibson guitars.
I want to eventually get a Firebird, an ES-175 and an SG Jr.
Unexpected for me.

Always loved Telecasters. First guitar was a Telecaster. I like the playability and tone of Stratocasters, but never cared for the design; it being so ubiquitous and copied by every brand out there.
That also changed after getting my first Strat. Now I GAS for them occasionally as well, although I’m more interested in the G&L models S-500 and Comanche.
Their new Skyhawk reissue is giving me bad GAS lately.

These days my most hated guitar feature is price. Why can’t they be cheap enough that I can own all the ones I want? LOL.
I’ll be old and decrepit by the time so get all the ones I want. :p

[sirspens]

It's kind of shallow because it is just an aesthetic thing, but I used to absolutely HATE tort pickguards. I would NOT buy a guitar with a tort pickguard.

Now... I own 4 or 5 guitars with tort pickguards, and they are my most prized guitars.

I still hate sunburst, though.

[Fiddy]

Probably just neck pickups, can't think of anything else.

[sirspens]

Probably just neck pickups, can't think of anything else.

Oh, that's a good one! Except, it took the Jazzmaster to convince me of that. I still rarely use neck pickups on most other guitars.

[marqueemoon]

It's kind of shallow because it is just an aesthetic thing, but I used to absolutely HATE tort pickguards. I would NOT buy a guitar with a tort pickguard.

Now... I own 4 or 5 guitars with tort pickguards, and they are my most prized guitars.

I still hate sunburst, though.

Kinda with you here. I recently bought a tort pickguard on purpose for this thing.



I hate tasteful sunbursts. Garish 60's target sunbursts I'm ok with.