Official Luthiers Forum!

I gave mine to my daughter

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Mike

(MH)===:::

Do you really want it out there and to have people base their opinions of your work on it, ten, twenty or thirty years from now??
I see new makers selling their instruments prematurely all too often. Even well seasoned makers can have unforseen problems with an instrument and may find themselves in a bind with a client. It's almost a certainty with a first, second or third guitar.
Early guitars by any maker often have lots of problems that may preclude them ever being right enough to satisfy a finicky client.
Save yourself the headache, keep it or if you must get it out of your life, find a recipient (close friend or family not the general public) to give it to (or at least buy it for only the cost of materials and hardware) and save yourself a load of grief down the line.
Don't destroy it though, it can be a valuable window on the progress you have made some day.
A good friend of mine recently agreed to make one of his first clients a guitar in exchange for the one he sold him at the beginning of his career, even trade, just to get it out of circulation.
'Nuff said.

I have my first electric as well as my first acoustic still, and like many people apparently, they are just wall art and a reference point to see where I came from. I will always love them both, as they were my first.

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http://www.sixgunguitars.com

Sentimentality aside...

I would keep it. My first definitely has a lot of issues. The way I see it, those issues serve two purposes. The first is, they remind me not to repeat those mistakes, and the second is, in some cases, they provide me the opportunity to learn how to fix those issues after-the-fact.

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Jim Hansen

I kept nothing. Sold 'em all. Don't regret it, either.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Keep it around as a warning to customers of what will happen if they rush you.

Mike

OMG!
(I should have done that back when my shop was in a music store)

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Thanks for all the responses, folks. I've decided to keep this one. I even spent a little time fixing it up some. It actually doesn't sound too bad. It's better than my second classical.

Thanks for the offer to store it, Coe, but I do have room.

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Regards,
Phillip Patton

http://www.pattonblades.com

The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of low price has faded.

https://hoosierbladesmith.wordpress.com

My first electric guitar is a horrid looking creature that I have hanging on the wall in my attic studio. My first acoustic has been hanging in my shop for years. Shes 20 years old now and looks older but still really sounds and plays great.

Having said that, if it didn't play good and sound good I'd have no issues with getting rid of it.

My first (I only count acoustics as a guitar I have built, because anything before that has been Warmoth parts that I painted myself) is now in Afghanistan, hopefully killing Taliban by playing "evil" music. I have attached a picture for reference...

It doesn't look very good at all, the top is in a bad shape because I had to re-position the bridge, and the underside of the top is worse because I had to remove the brace and replace it due to the top going potato chip. It sounds ok, had a stewmac hot-rod trussrod which I am not sure if I like so much...

I attempted to fit a Martin dovetail neck into a mortise and tenon joint, at which point I decided it was less work to make my own neck from scratch for the second build, which was a vast improvement to the first one.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

IMO you're looking at this from the wrong angle. What you should be doing is looking for a bigger place to live in/have your workshop in, then you'd have enough space to not have to consider the idea of dispensing with your first guitar-shaped-object. Just sayin'....

Cheers,
Dave F.

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Cambrian Guitars

"There goes Mister Tic-Tac out the back with some bric-brac from the knick-knack rack"