I just typed a massive long post on my iphone and then the thing crashed - so here's a super condensed version as I cannot remember half of what I said!
The name you PM'd me, I've never been on his site before. Bored the crap out of me. Tried reading what you wanted me to read, got bored. Way too much writing to keep my hung over mind awake. I've seen his posts on another forum and just shrugged the guitars off as they look ok but just another one of "those" styles.
I don't often follow other builders threads on other forums, the ones on this forum are more interesting than brand name builders trying to plug themselves on bigger forums. I'd rather follow the little guys build thread who is doing it for them self at home. Much more interesting to me. There is much better builders on this forum than I am, so they are interesting as well. Usually don't have the egos of the "brand names" either.
My last comment brings me to a reply to your "cutting hands off" comment.
A couple years ago I had a conversation with a mentor of mine about how I'd be looking at other peoples work and get very depressed about building, I'd want to give up. My depressed brain would tell my I'm useless and I'll never be as good as these others. I'd mope around and it'd pull me down. I'd question everything. Depression can be very poisoning. There was actually one point years ago that I sold off a heap of my tools and quit building as I was hopeless and it just depressed me even more, that and I was broke (global financial crisis) which also kicked the depression in the guts making things worse.
Anyway, back to the mentor, after I'd started building again I met this guy - he told me that he stopped looking at other peoples guitars decades ago for the same reason, told me to do my own thing, only worry about my own guitars and forget the others. This is advice from a guy who has had guitars play on some of the biggest stages across the planet and has international clients fly to Australia just to pick up guitars in person. He's been there, done that. Has nothing to prove and has great advice.
When I started to do this, not looking at other peoples builds - rather than compare, I improved. Rather than get depressed, I evolved.
All these USA and Euro guitar companies pumping out guitars that are very much the "fad" at the moment. Fads come and go. I'd like to stick around for the long haul and stick with my own style, which to me is very 80's metal influenced but with a bit of a more modern approach.
As far as design and creativity. Electric guitars have been around for a bit over half a century now, lots of companies have come and gone and millions of designs along with them. It's hard to be creative and come up with something new, then when you think you have someone will tap you on the shoulder and say "such n such" did that twenty years ago. Back to the drawing board.
Off topic even more, I had a discussion last week with this same mentor about marketing our product. He said that it's a different world to that when he created his name. All the music festivals he had to tour around to with stands and product displays etc. We also talked about people wanting free gear and working with endorsee's. He said he'd done that in the eary days and regretted it every time. Advised me never to do it. Back to marketing. The internet has changed the business. We can now see an item across the other side of the world at the click of a button have it on order. Yngwie talks about a similar topic in his book on marketing for musicians changing since he was in the MTV era and now its youtube era.
Anyway, lets get this thread back to the person it belongs to.