A PartOFailure (also Part-O-Failure or POF) is a guitar made of expensive top-of-the-line components, originally to some individual's idea of perfection, but now for sale, usually on Craig's List or eBay, for a not-small-enough fraction of the cost of its original components.
Component hallmarks of the PartOFailure may include exotic wood, gold-plated or titanium or some other expensive metal hardware, lurid transparent finishes over highly-figured tops, highly-figured fretboards of exotic wood, expensive tuning machines with idiosyncratic mechanisms (Steinberger gearless, for example, or those ones with a little pop-out string winder in each knob). 7 strings, 5 strings. Tenor or baritone scale lengths.
Combination hallmarks may include certain vibratos on body styles not traditionally associated with that vibrato type, or not associated with vibratos at all. Welcome to the dismal village of Floyd-on-Firebird, up the highway from Bigsby-on-Jaguar. Lipstick pickups on a custom Les Paul.Going against type on the plating of the hardware of the instrument can push things in the direction of POF. Gloss black everything on the dual-humbucker Tele? Check.
It must be remembered that the presence of any or even all of these features on a custom-assembled guitar does not qualify an axe as a POF. If someone puts all this stuff together and then plays it and/or loves it until the day they die, that's great!
It only becomes a failure when after going to such lengths and expense to satisfy their personal desires in a way far too specific to appeal to future prospective buyers, the person who built it or commissioned it comes to the conclusion that it just hasn't worked out, and tosses it up for sale on eBay or Craig's List.
The player who couldn't live without an SG with a Fender floating vibrato decides that he (and face it, it's probably gonna be "he") can't live with it any more.
That is the surrender, the moment of failure that makes a PartOFailure, that throwing in of the towel in the (usually vain) hope that they can recoup some of their financial investment when some other guitarist will be attracted enough to their Danelectro U2-shaped pink flametop with gleaming gold Floyd Rose.
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