I've recently been doing research on different types of electric-guitar brands and I've discovered that there are a lot of smaller manufacturers that create very interesting guitars for a decent price. It all started when I discovered Kiesel (which is not a small manufacturer by any means) and really got into more affordable custom guitars that are still very high-quality. It made me realize that brands like Fender and Gibson (which I wasn't interested in in the first place) are really overpriced as shit. Even ESP's LTD series seems a tad bit overpriced when compared to Kiesel.

If you don't really care about a wall of text talking about some things that I've discovered then here's the question this thread is supposed to be about: Do you know of any other smaller guitar companies that have some very innovative designs? Do you own an interesting guitar yourself and what do you like/dislike about it? I'm mainly asking this because I'm looking for a new guitar myself. Also if your answer to those 2 questions is no then you may ofcourse still partake in the discussion, I'm not trying to exclude anyone's thoughts here.

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The guitar designs of these smaller companies also speak to me a lot more. For example, I love Strandberg's Boden series (not that I have one) due to their insanely low weight (like 5 pounds for a 6-string model) and headless design. And through Strandberg I accidentally found out about Steinberger guitars (due to remembering Strandberg as Steinberg for some reason...) with their minimalist (also headless) design and insane tuning stability. In fact I was tempted to buy a Steinberger, but their current series is just a bit too cheap & low quality for my taste. They're like 400 dollars and not even that light despite their minimalist design. Currently I'm very intrigued by Traveler Guitars, which, as the name suggests are primarily meant for traveling. Their main series consists of ultra-light guitars (like 3 pounds) with no headstock due to their in-body tuning system. Here's an example: https://travelerguitar.com/products/ult ... tric-maple. They're a bit cheaper than Steinbergers and way more minimalist. I don't plan on buying one because it wouldn't be the best main-guitar but I absolutely love the design. They do have a higher-end series called the Vaibrant Deluxe which currently seems perfect to me: https://travelerguitar.com/products/vai ... smic-black. They weigh slightly more than 5 pounds, have a Floyd Rose dual-locking tremolo and 3 decent pickups. Also they have 24 frets and a 17" neck/fretboard radius which is exactly what I'm looking for. I don't intend to use it while travelling, because, well, I don't travel. If I were to buy it it would purely serve as my main guitar. The price tag of 700 leads me to believe that the guitar is of atleast decent quality (no sharp fret ends, no shitty volume/tone knobs and good overall build-quality is what I expect from a decent guitar), though I still need to do more research on that.

Anyways, if anyone knows another company that has a guitar similar to that Vaibrant Deluxe then please let me know because I'd gladly spent some more money on a similar guitar that might be of higher quality.

I came across Prestige Guitars lately, and thought they had some interesting takes on classic electric guitar designs. Especially interesting to me is the single-cutaway guitar with P90 pick-ups, with a much slimmer and lighter body than Les Paul and copies. It's made out of quality materials and parts according to the specs, and it was about a 1000€ on Thomann from what I remember - that's significantly less than any Gibson single-cutaway guitar with P90 pickups. And you don't have to get an ugly gold top either.

https://www.prestigeguitars.com/electric-guitars/

Prestige Guitars definitely seems interesting, thanks for sharing. They're not really my kind of guitars, but I can very much appreciate what they're doing with the designs and their pricing. I'd definitely take one of those over an actual Les Paul despite them being way cheaper.

Another manufacturer I forgot to mention is Acacia Guitars. I found out about them through a playthrough video of Viraemia's new single. Viraemia's guitarist (Josh Hernandez) uses a beautiful looking Acacia 7 string which inspired me to check them out. Man, their guitars are beautiful, just look at this: https://www.acaciaguitars.com/carbon-quilt

I'm still on the hunt for more lightweight, minimalist guitar manufacturers. Found this guitar model by Hofner recently: https://www.thomann.de/nl/hoefner_shorty_deluxe_bk.htm. Unfortunately it's probably not a very good quality guitar judging by the 200 dollar price tag. If there were a higher-end version of this (say for like 800$) with better pickups, locking-tuners and all that stuff I'd probably be tempted to buy one. Unfortunately (but obviously) most minimalist guitars seem to be meant for travelling, which is not what I'm looking for.

Prestige is cool. I work across the street from their showroom. Their stuff is all manufactured in South Korea and then assembled at their Vancouver location. But they make good stuff. I think if you wanted to go the Les Paul/SG route, you'd be better off grabbing one of theirs as opposed to any USA Gibson made in the past 20 years.

A few of my somewhat less common favorites:

*A Reverend Spacehawk, kind of 335-ish, but with hot Railhammer pickups, a great Bigsby tremolo system, a killswitch, and contour and phase-shaping controls.

*A Godin LGXT, kind of a hybrid of Fender and Gibson design ideas, with thick-sounding Seymour-Duncans. It also has piezo pickups for acoustic tones, which can be blended in, and synth pickups to use as a MIDI controller.

*An Ernie Ball/Music Man Silhouette, which is basically a Strat on steroids (not a superstrat). Some complain about the bridge humbucker being thin, but mine is pretty fat.

*A Parker Nitefly, another "super" Strat with Dimarzios, but also with piezo pickups.

*An Agile multi-scale 8-string. Generally they've made quite cheap guitars for the features they have. Quality can be spotty, but this one is quite solid, and satisfies my needs for extended-range jazz and djent noodling when my 7-strings won't cut it.

There are also some of the super high end custom builders like Caparison, Mayones, Suhr, and Anderson, but I don't have any direct experience with them.

I had the luck to play a custom shop Mayones Regius 6. Incredibly light, with a lightning fast neck, no fret buzz even with really low action and stays in tune even if thrown down from a cliff. For a professional metal player It's worth the 3000+ euros they ask for



Lately I've been looking for a LP-like guitar. right now my options are a good LP studio that i've found in a shop and a LTD EC-1000 VB Duncan that i've yet to try: i've heard that Prestige guitars are better than those two, but they are hard to find here

LTD EC is only vaguely LP-like. The difference in feel between that and a Gibson Les Paul Studio is huge. I know because I own both kinds. The EC is much heavier. the 2016 Studio I have being highly weight-relieved, and the neck feels more like a shreddy guitar in Gibson scale length in the LTD. It seems like the natural tone of the LTD is also very dark compared to the Gibson.

Thanks for the info! I can't wait to try it, i like shreddier necks but the weight may be an issue

https://gittlerinstruments.com/shop

Now this is interesting. No idea whether they're a well known company but I have never heard of them before. They have one affordable model (1500 USD) which I really like. The other ones are all like 8000 dollars, which I guess is to be expected for a guitar made 100% of titanium.

Edit: Just found another company that makes a guitar which is basically a cheaper Gittler T2. https://alpguitarsamerica.com/products/ ... ess-guitar

Sorry for the double post, I'm just gonna post in this thread anytime I discover an interesting brand. This time that brand is AMG Guitars. They use a very special construction method called "Quartersawn Non-Adjustable Neck-Through Solid Body Construction". Apparently there are only a handful of other brands that use this method. You can pick your own electronics, hardware and bodyshape. They're very high-end guitars, in fact the guy behind the company calls them "The best guitars in the world". Here's their website: https://amggtrs1.wixsite.com/amg-guitars. I'm assuming they're still working on the website because it's pretty ugly. Anyways, I do want to believe that this construction method is superior, so I'm gonna do some further research on it.

I had never heard of them before, but I just checked out their website and I'm very impressed. They have this $700 headless model called the "Geodesic" which has frickin' Fishman Fluence Modern pickups and stainless steel frets. I've never seen that on a guitar under like $1250. They do seem to have a bad rep as a brand though, which I guess is because of poor quality control. It says here that Agile guitars are made in South-Korea, Indonesia and Vietnam, so the the quality of the guitars will probably vary a lot, which is a risk I'm not willing to take. Still, they have some really cool guitars.

Oh and I also wanted to mention Halo Guitars, they're a custom shop that give you an incredible amount of options for your guitar. Their guitar customization tool is pretty fun to mess around with as it renders all the selected options into an image allowing you to actually see how the guitar would look pretty accurately. Here it is: https://www.haloguitars.com/store/custom-guitars.html

Edit: Fuck it I might just buy an Agile. I did some more research and their quality control seems to be way better than it used to be. Now I just have to decide which one to buy... I was originally looking for a 6-string but their extended-range guitars are really cool. It seems that they don't have as many models as they used to though, so I don't know whether new guitars are still being made. The pendulum 10-string is nowhere to be found for example.

Edit 2: Just found out that shipping an Agile to Europe is gonna cost a shit ton of money (around $250). However, it seems that there exist some tricks to get around this. If anyone here knows how I could get it shipped for way less then please let me know.

Westone.

Solid, affordable instruments that punch way above their weight. You can find a decent model for £200~ but you can easily get one sounding like it's three or four times the price. I got a Westone Thunder A-1 bass many years ago and it's still by far my favourite instrument.