i intend for this to be for my own benefit, and for others too. i have around 1,100 to spend on a custom guitar, and any future savings will be coming in at 15 bucks a week

now we all know ran has a fair amount of fans here, and im one of them. however, the shipping and customs cost plus the incredibly long wait is reason enough to look around for other guitars. now, once you get too expensive, i think its best to go with custom because most companies only have a few models that are 1 grand and plus that are any good and fit your exact wants. for example, id like a rhoads 24 fret with ebony fingerboard and neck thru construction. they simply dont exist unless you go custom. so that brings me to the point of this thread, who are some other custom builders who might be able to build you the guitar you want? some say www.warmoth.com is good for customs, if youre smart enough to build a guitar on your own. www.espguitars.com and www.jacksonguitars.com are the obvious choices, but they are all literally in the 3-4 grand range. www.nealmoser.com is a custom guitar builder that worked with bernie rico himself, and seems quite skilled however hes moderately to expensively priced


so do you know of any other builders?

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warmoth kicks ass, but OMG, IT WILL B A BULT -- ON NEKK!@!!!!?!!?!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...G=Google+Search
there's many just check them all out.

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yeah, theres a lot. but thats not really that helplful death cs. and yes, im looking for a neckthru. i was hoping someone would respond with helpful correct links, ive tried googling and somethings slip through the cracks

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Check out Carvin

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www.JonezGuitarz.com

Jonez guitars are pretty good. I probably will get my custom from them.
They did that crazy guitar for the guy in Impaled. The one with the hands.
I don't know what their prices are though.

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You could try Mayones. http://www.mayones.com/eng/

I very much doubt they'll be cheaper than Rans, but it's worth a try. Mauser from Vader uses them.

i know just the guitar youre talking about hahaha


and thanks you two, this is what im talking about. so far, only carvin guitars are as appealing as a ran though

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http://www.kaufmanguitars.com/
http://www.kleshguitars.com/ <-- Very cool guy, he is originaly from about 20 mins away from me.

http://www.zacharyguitars.com/
http://www.specimenproducts.com/index.html
http://www.shamray.net/news/show.pl <-- Good if your loooking to copy a major brand.

http://www.angelfire.com/la3/powerguitar/index.html
http://www.lgmguitars.com/splash_guitars.html

Youre welcome.

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I want a custom seven string sometime in the future ...

those shamray guitars might beat out roads. thanks a ton,dead!

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Zachary Guitars look interesting.

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I'd find a local luthier in your area, and ask him how much he'd charge. If I were to ever get a custom made guitar, I think I'd do that. They will probably not be that cheap, but who knows.

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mods could we maybe sticky this?


therea re no custom luthiers in my area, i live in a fairly smalll area.

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i'm sure theres one in albany

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youd be suprised, haha. we have a guitar center, thats it

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I guarantee theres one somewhere in your general area. especially if theres music stores

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if you dnt want to ship and wait for it from poland then why do it from russia?

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Just get ran dammit.

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dude shut the fuck up, some people like to check out all their options before putting down over a grand for something instead of just jumping on a bandwagon. he specifically made this thread to see what was out their besides ran guitars, so stop wasting space in this thread and I demand you give me back the 3 seconds you stole from me. NOW

Omg ran guckign ownzeres though i have never seen one in life or played it2348uth324 Gte It or diezer

i think this thread is an awsome idea and who the fuck knows perhaps another 'ran' will emearg and everyone will jump on that bandwagon too

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Yeah, I've looked at Shamray, and I don't know if it's better than Ran or what. They're overseas so I don't know how the whole shipping issue is gonna handle, and they're not really that cheap. I wanna know a good custom shop that could do the things that Ran or Shamray could do, but they're located in the US (no not Jackson or anything like that haha). And plus, how the hell do you navigate through Shamray's site? I can't read anything on there, and none of the pics seem to work.

i had the same problem silent night

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I checked them out before I finally found Ran guitars. They didn't look bad at all.

I search the world before I finally found Ran guitars. I looked for over 8 months. I know what I wanted and just finally gave up and realized I was going to have to get a custom guitar made. I'm sure Ran guitars is not the only guitar builders in the world that make custon guitars but they were the best priced I found.

I had links to over 50 guitar sites that make custom guitars but I long ago deleted them all. I do remember this one small company in Ireland that had some really cool options and looked like they made good stuff too.

I decided on Ran to build my custom because it cost less ( even with shipping and Customs tax ), I only had to wait 3 months, and they had the right options and quality I was looking for. The Invader body shape was just what I was looking for and when they said they would use my Kahler bridge the deal was done as far as I was concerned.

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Fust FYI.

There used to be a US custom guitar company named Hex Guitars that had prices and options that compared with Ran. I wanted to get one from them but they closed their shop down. They had some nice ass guitars too. I think that Deicide had them make a few guitars too.

Edit: Hmmm, seems I found out something disturbing about Hex guitars that was posted on the Nile web site. Here

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more like tommy hoax eh

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If you're interested in an instant quote, just go here:

http://shamraybass.com/guitar/

oh right. KXK guitars might be good. Karl's spear guitar is a KXK.

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the site works fine for me.maybe youre just looking at the russian site? maybe blizzard could help you look for the word that means "english, damnit!" in russian :P

regarding hex guitars, that makes me really, really nervous about custom guitars. soul, you ride dariusz' dick way too hard. frankly, if i didnt know better, i think you were simply trying to sell rans and nothing more. as demon said, i want to price around and find what i can

the waiting time for shamray guitars is about 8 weeks from what ive seen. they give you pictures as their building it. they offer different options. they have a forum where you can talk to the builder. they have very few problems regarding customs and all that because they are in russia, not poland, and russia is more lax on that kind of thing

im shopping around because its taken a year to build up this much money and im very wary about spending it. im not going to follow a certain hellraisers constant "buy a ran" advice when there are tons of other custom shops worth discussing. ran guitars might be the official guitar of choice for metaltabbers, but it isnt for metaltabs.com

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Hell yeah I'm glad I didn't order a guitar from him. I am doing research on this guy right now and there are people all over the country looking for his ass.

Seems he has tried to put the same scam a few more times since then. One being Gothic Guitars and the new one might be Monson Guitars, but the last one has yet to be investigated completely. It looks to be the same old tricks but it could be a legit company. Tommy buys a domain name and collects money and guitars for trade and then splits.

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the problems seemed to be from american customs, not the polish ones

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No, I don't try to sell Ran guitars here it just works out that way. I did lots homework about custom guitar companies and just found Ran to be what I wanted. That doesn't mean they are the only custom guitar builder, but for me they were perfect. I get nothing for posting about Ran except being able to share with everyone. The Ran guitar thread was once a locked thread remember? No one gave a damn about them until I actually got one, which I ordered months before I ever seen and joined Metaltabs.com. I was searching the guitar zone threads about a month after I joined, found the Ran guitar thread, brought it back from the dead to tell everyone that I had actually ordered one, and shortly after managed to get it closed because of that. Everyone else brought the subjuct up again and now it is a sticky. All I did was buy one and posted about it. Everyone else just thought it was a good ideal and got one too. I know Dariusz would like to someday open a shop in the US but there would be huge law suit problems with doing that. I just truely believe in Ran is all.

Yes, there are other guitar builders out in the world and you might like what they have to offer. Ran will do anything, sure, but it might cost you a bit more while another company will have that option as standard. It is up to you to decide. I will post links to companies as I find them and try to find more on this Tommie Hex dude so that some of us don't get scamed. It nearly happened to me I was thinking about ordering from Hex but they shut down before I had a chance. That is when I started looking and found Ran as being one of the many builders outside the US.

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??? explain

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NOT A RAN CUSTOM SHOP. October guitars.

@GD. I asked him if he had plans to ever get shop open in North America like the one in Spain so that US Customs office wouldn't be able to fuck everyone on an individual import tax basis. I want another Ran someday you know. He said he would some day like to have a shop in the US but that it was not in the near future for Ran. I'm just guessing he would have legal problems though.

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yea your back

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I might check out a few of these places, I would like to find a builder a bit closer to home. Shipping alone put 240 euros on top of my Ran bill.
I might see if I can find any decent custom builders in Aussie or something, at least then it'll only cost like $100 to get it over.

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Shamray's not bad, I looked at them before, but I never really paid too much attention to them. My rough quote from them is about 1600 dollars. They have a pic of an awesome BC Rich type V w/ red bevels, very nice looking. Only thing on their quote page is that it's like waaay more detailed for the options than like ESP and Jackson shops, and there's buncha options that I don't know what they are.

I ordered one too after you got yours and I'm still damn happy that I did order my Ran, it's a one-off kickass guitar that can't be matched.

I owe you big time for that buddy

im not sure what i would get

shamray looks awsome and seems a lot more flexible (with logos, decals, designs , shapes, woods etc etc), but ran seems to be a better quality, they LOOK a lot better than shamray, shamray seems a bit cheap and tacky compared to ran.

i want an rg shaped body and the shamray one i saw looked a bit dodgy, the ran rg looks cool. so i guess im may have to go for ran.

I've never been impressed with Shamray.. I once saw a picture of them cutting some Alder in half with a chainsaw.. when they could have easily used a table saw and had MUCH cleaner results.

That pretty much turned me off.

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lol, yea, the pictures do make them seem a little primative, owell the end results are pretty awesome

check this
http://www.shamray.ru/show.php?id=126&lang=en

sexy

and these pictures show that i was wrong and that they can do an rg shape pretty good. but i'l still end up going for ran
http://www.shamray.ru/show.php?id=116&lang=en

this is pretty cool work aswell
http://www.shamray.ru/show.php?id=454&lang=en

awesome paint job
http://www.musicforums.ru/sh_int/br...98988&apag=last

kick ass RR
http://www.musicforums.ru/sh_int/br...08843&apag=last

HOWEVER
this kinda puts me off
http://www.shamray.ru/show.php?id=462&lang=en
it looks like a toy!!!

shitty inlays, ran do them MUCH better (go down the page):
http://www.musicforums.ru/sh_int/br...23759&apag=last

Its because of the guitar designs. Some are obvious BC Rich body copies. BC won't stand for that. Copyrights are only valid in the country they are registered in. Thats obviously why Dariusz can get away with it.

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Not completely my style, but I thought this was cool:

http://www.musicforums.ru/sh_int/br...84195564&cpag=5

And these Lp styles are pretty nice lookin

I think a druggie owned this one:

http://www.shamray.ru/show.php?id=199&lang=en

And the overall finish looks clean on this one:

http://www.shamray.ru/show.php?id=459&lang=en

dissection-there are people in the us who rip off those companies...

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It's like Warmoth isn't it?

wow i never knew there were so many... the only ones i know of are the custom shops of big brand names, Carvin and Ran...

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Those LP's look real flash Must be a pretty good builder behind that business

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theres waaaaaaaayy more then that too. there used to be a luther who made custom made aucoustic/classical guitars in the next town but I think he passed away some years back

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Rockmace Guitars. Very Nice custom made guitars that use new Kahler bridges.

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They look good, they have a patented neck design too.

Pretty fuckin expensive but.

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http://www.lgmguitars.com/splash_guitars.html
Some of the most br00tal guitars I've ever seen. I'm sure they make some fucking astounding customs. I don't know about the price though.

+1 Jeremy does great work!

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Anyone who gets a custom made of essencially a plain ol' run of the mill les paul has to be on something.

You wouldn't happen to know what one of those bad boys would cost would you?

Well, that's not really why I meant it but....oh well.

I knew what you meant I'd just like to add that pot makes you do stupid shit like spend your well earned money on cheetos and "custom" les pauls haha . Sorry.

Niiiiiiice. That Leviathan in standard is $1700 US which isnt all that bad I guess, its a fuckin awesome shape.

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Man i swear by Carvin's. I have two, the only guitars i have, and all you have to do is buy them, and most people, not all, dont like the pickups, and you just got to put the ones in you like. And the best part is, they are RIPPIN, and with $1,100, you can make a Carvin that is amazing. They have some crazy custom stuff they can do to their guitars.

Edit: Those Leviathans are awesome, but 1700 is the base price, he won't get out of there without spending at least a little over 2000. He could get a DC, that isnt a bolt on,with the best fret access of ANY guitar i have ever played and get all the BEST options,(which there are way more than many other custom places), and leave with maybe some money still in his pocket. If thats not awesome, than i dont know what is.

*bump*

can we add to this?

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Jackson Stars

Cheap, very high quality, rivals US models, and a very, very broad selection of sexy guitars that you may find in custom lines but these don't have the heavy price tag.

japanese rhoads look so good!

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http://img247.imageshack.us/my.php?image=rrj2sp1kd.jpg

She will be mine...oh yes...

dear god i want one of those. there will be a USA model of alexi's guitars to be revealed at the next NAMM so i hear

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Dude these aren't expensive at all and these guys ship to the US, the RR-J2SP (the one I want and posted a pic of) is only $1,181.22.

And that Flame top NASL with the floyd is only $624.57, that is a fucking steal for a sweet looking axe that has stock Duncans and neck through construction, here's a better pic, it looks fucking hot.

http://img520.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nasl11py.jpg

The guy that took that pic changed the pickups and the pickup rings.

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