" Custom Shop Guitars" on Auction Sites

I am not sure if we have covered this before but I would like to get a general consensus from the forum as to how people feel about this topic.

I have begun to see more and more listings for G&L guitars listed as "Custom Shop" built. Even though these guitars are regular, off the line guitars. The reason for this is because the instruments came with a sheet titled Custom Specification Sheet. One could make the argument that almost every G&L is custom made because they don't crank out hundreds of the same guitar every day. Just because you had to sit down and pick out options from a pre-determined list, does that make it a custom guitar? I would not consider it to be a custom guitar let alone a Custom Shop guitar. Especially since it does not have the Custom Shop logo, COA or serial number. I know that at some time recently, G&L stopped using the word Custom on the build sheet and I believe it is because of the confusion it caused in the used guitar sales market.

So, what are your thoughts on this? Is it worth worrying about since we in the G&L community know what's what, or should people stop using this as a selling point, simply because they have a spec sheet that has the word Custom on it?

Tom

Hey, I hear you. Knowing what's what usually requires the experience of ownership.

Auctions are sales. Sales tactics sometimes include boastful, flowery, and exaggerated language.


Cheers,
Will

I'm with Will , but in the future it might be more confusing when we start seeing some of these new CS's actually being sold used

Just yesterday, a G&L dealer told me that the Doheny V12 (and any CLF Research model, e.g., Skyhawk, L-1000) was a Custom Shop guitar, to explain the pricing on it. I linked him to this site's page listing all models and noted that these CLF models do not allow options---clearly not a Custom Shop concept.

Back when I was more a 'casual observer' I pretty much figured G&L was a custom shop; and it wouldn't alarm me if most people's def. of a custom shop nowadays is simply picking from a list of options rather than taking something off the rack. That said, it was a lot less confusing before the actual Custom Shop existed. We'll see how well people self-police now.

The new G&L Custom Shop instruments are easy to identify, if you can see the serial number on the back of the headstock. If photos of an instrument in question does not show
the serial number, ask the dealer or private seller to send you a photo of the serial number.

As mentioned in the Knowledgebase post: Serial number significance:

In January 2018, the G&L Custom Shop was announced. All instruments produced by the Custom Shop will have the serial number format of "CSYYMMnnn",
where YY=last two digits of year, MM=two digit month. The laser-etched serial number will be located on the back of the headstock.
Above the serial number will be a laser-etched image of the G&L Custom Shop logo.

Hope this helps.