How do you ding your guitars?

[SweRocker]

I have always wondered this. I haven't played live yet and take very good care of my guitars. Is the most common way to ding/dent a guitar to drop it, or is it stage usage? As you might have understood, none of my guitars have dents/dings. I fear the day when I put the first ding onto a guitar, it will happen, it's only a matter of time. Because of this, I haven't had the guts to get a wall hanger, my friend had a little incident with an acoustic splitting in half (!) when it fell down from the wall.

And then you hear people say it just adds personality. I love the look of old beat up as hell strats and EVO, but both look nice in mint condition. Do you obsess over a ding, or do you feel that that's the price to pay when a guitar is used alot?

Maybe your kids have found sledge hammers and saw your pretty mint JEM10th and thought it would look nice with a rough surface?

[damo7v]

had to choose "other".

i do not ding my guitars at all. they are my children. i would not ding my children.

[lyconxero]

Hey now, even children get dinged now and then; most of the time being when they're playing. The same is true with guitars. Don't get me wrong, I keep my guitars in pretty good shape but they aren't so valuable to me that i'll cry over a little ding here and there that happened because I was having fun rocking out with it.

[LonePhantom]

well bumping in to furniture, book shelves, drum kit, etc when working in my little music room, playing on stage over the years, falling off stands (split a neck at the lock nut from that). You get used to it. as long as it still plays ok it's all good.

Saying that i'm going to re-finish my guitar shortly, still deciding on what colour and if I add a pearl or anything else to it.

[fyrie]

Most of my dings, and a fatal neck breakage came from guitars falling off of things. I put a nice ding in my first RG when it fell off a chair I laid it on. I had a Epiphone Accoustic break its neck when it fell out of a guitar stand onto a hardwood floor. I call that one a "Suicide". See... I won it from Sam Goody. It was signed by Mark Wills.

Actually, Mark seemed pretty cool on the Carvin DVD, so I guess the joke isn't as funny any more... but still funny .

[Shep]

Would you drop a baby?...i wouldn't drop a guitar.

[Distantshore]

I bought a special dinging tool from my local hardware store...lol

[bpd111]

Originally Posted by Shep

Would you drop a baby?

Not on purpose, but I would dangle one over a balcony. Oh wait, that's Michael Jackson...



The worst accident my VSBL had was tipping off a folding stand. I don't use it anymore.

[markg5150]

Originally Posted by damo7v

had to choose "other".

i do not ding my guitars at all. they are my children. i would not ding my children.

Same for me

[Mr. S]

walls always dent my headstock, if not that then its knocking into drums in our tiny practice space.... but no chips yet

[Algiman]

I look after my guitars, but I bought them to play them, not to wrap them up in cotton wool and lock them away, so a few "character" marks are inevitable. I'd worry about dings on a guitar if I bought it as an investment, but I only buy things that I'll play.

[JJEMMER777]

Originally Posted by Shep

Would you drop a baby?...i wouldn't drop a guitar.

My Jems are my children...like GOLD to me. Luckly I have not bumped or dropped or dinged one (I wont say yet cuz I don't want to jinx myself) and I play the hell out of them. I'm not one of those people that buys a guitar to stare at in a glass case. I have been jamming parties and giging with them for years. Always just try to be aware of where your are in conjunction of what's around you ie: furniture / other band members, etc. Seems to work for me. I've had one guitar accident.....about 10 years ago my ESP fell out of the guitar stand onto a cement floor...the neck broke in a million pieces....I would die if that happened to one of my Jems

[screamndemon69]

i try to be extremely careful w/ mine. eventually you get a ding or two. i believe in playing my guitars as i couldn't spend extra cash just for investment at this point - maybe one day.
most of my marks come from stage playing. every now and then something totally unexpected happens (obviously unexpected - DOH!) like while teaching i picked a new RG off the stand and bumped the side of it on the chair i was sitting in and and a match head sized chip occurred. another time while putting a Jackson in the case the strap came off (had it on wrong in the first place- DOH!) and it fell head first to a hard floor and put a sizable ding in the headstock at the tip (i put pics in a thread about that one once) but luckily that was the only damage. i was lucky since they don't make USA SLS models like this anymore and it is a neck thru.
i try to really take care of my guitars and right now i'm really "babying" my new 7VWH and have yet to play it on stage. mostly because of sweat issues on the hardware. my heavy handed picking seems to be brutal at times as well, especially on natural finished guitars - it leaves these worm marks (custom mahogany Jem, S520 natural mahogany oiled finish).

[Ferrous Lepidoptera]

My first few guitars were used, and already dinged some, so I didn't worry about it much. Over the years I've added some dings of my own here and there. Just bumping into things, a coupld of drops, straps failing, etc. I dinged my 3120, which I had bought new, somehow without noticing it when it happened. I'd made up my mind when I bought my 3120 back in 2000 that it was a player, and I wasn't going to baby it (though neither was I going to deliberately mistreat it.) It's in fair shape, does have a ding on the bottom of the back edge (don't even know what happened there, just noticed a ding one day.) My RG8670 on the other hand is still ding-free, and I notice that I have this kind of fear-of-dings when I'm holding it, and I probably play it less than I might otherwise do if it weren't for this. It's too pretty. My VWH (bought used, but in very good shape), I don't baby. I probably alternate between it and the 3120 as far as which guitars I play the most lately, with an old ('91) very beat up RG570 being the number 3 guitar in the rotation.

[Tom Gilroy]

Other people. My guitar was bought used, with a few dents and no new ones in about six years.