What makes a guitar SO expensive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter antispatula
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You pay for detail. Is this the best piece of wood available right now? Are all of the frets just right? Is this neck right for this guitar? I don't want to sound like a guitar snob, but I do lean to higher priced models from reputable manufacturers. I don'tmind paying for a guitar that has a properly cut nut, correct saddle height and the hundred other details that make a guitar a pleasure to play. I have played less expensive guitars that played fine and sounded good. I bought a few. Then I replaced the pickups, had a new nut put on, replaced the pots because they got noisy, replaced the knobs cause they kept falling off, replaced the tuners because they started to slip, etc.

I'd rather buy it once.
 
Light said:
Flat out bullshit.
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I hear where you're coming from mate but I've played GREAT guitars built from scratch by relative amateurs ... it takes time to get a neck right but fret dressing is hardly an enormously skilled task. Choose a decent hunk of wood, make it into the shape you want, stick on decent hardware and electronics and you're virtually there.

Acoustic guitars are a different kettle of fish and those I would put at least in the same bracket of expertise as a violin, in terms of skill required to achieve greatness ... but I can't accept that a skilled violin maker would have any trouble at all knocking out a highly competitive Tele or Strat with his eyes closed.

Peace,
Nik
 
noisedude said:
but fret dressing is hardly an enormously skilled task.
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That is perhaps the most ignorant statement I've ever heard out of a person who has even rudimentary knowledge of what they are talking about.

I build both acoustics and electrics, and I can tell you that doing an electric right is not easier than an electric. It is a different set of skill, to be sure, but to do it RIGHT (and granted that I do not make a simple Strat or Tele clone) is just as time consuming, just as intricate of work. The fact is, there are almost no tasks in guitar or violin making that are all that difficult. They take an attention to detail, but they are not all that hard to do. What separates a great guitar builder or violin maker is not their skills so much as their knowledge and experience. And making a guitar takes a much different set of knowledge and experience. For instance, I don't make classical guitars. Every now and then (actually, a couple times a month), someone comes in and asks if I make classical guitars. I tell them I don't. Not because I don't have the skills, because I do. Carving braces, necks, bending wood, etc., I can do all of that. But when I was done, I wouldn't know if it was any good. I just wouldn't know. I don't have enough experience with the instrument. Now, I could build a couple hundred and develop that experience, but I don't really have any interest in doing so. I want to concentrate on improving my knowledge, skills, and methods for the electrics I make, or from time to time making an acoustic. It is not that I think that classicals would be difficult. It's just not what I do.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
It's not that I actually disagree as such with what you're saying so much as, as a pianist and a flautist primarily, I still think there's more 'to' most classical instruments than ANY electric guitar. I can totally understand why you might disagree with this, but I can only illustrate my point by saying that I have played extremely cheap guitars that play as well as any Custom Shop Fender, PRS, Ibanez or Gibson I've ever picked up. A simple swap-out of pickups and you're there, IMVHO. The same is never true of acoustics (although there are some that sound admirable given their cost). I can bang out some blues, rock or funk on any of these instruments. Naturally I would take the Custom Shop over the Squier every time but not always for the right reasons!!!

On the other hand, I have never played a cheap piano that would even begin to do justice to a Beethoven piano sonata, or a sensitive piece of Chopin. I have a Clavinova myself because of space constrictions, but I don't try to fool myself that it is even vaguely a real instrument ... because it doesn't sound or play one.

Electric guitar has some subtleties but I just don't think it's fair to say it is as hard to make as a quality piano, violin, bassoon, flute or cello. That's my perspective though and, as I say, I can totally understand why, as a person who makes (no doubt extremely fine) guitars, you will totally disagree with me!!! :)
 
Light said:
That is perhaps the most ignorant statement I've ever heard out of a person who has even rudimentary knowledge of what they are talking about.
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Perhaps I over-stated my opinion ... fret dressing can take years to do and do well, but I could teach any teenager in half a day now to straighten a neck, remove the grooves, re-profile and skim progressively to a finish. Perhaps, like diminishing returns, it takes many more years to improve by a small percentage. But I could have any such person return a guitar without any warping/twisting problems to its owner with a decent action and low buzz with no difficulty at all.

We are operating at different ends of the food chain on guitars, Light. Neither of us is working at the level by accident but because of our own ideologies relating to the instrument. Feel free to continue to put me right and I will continue to consider my position!!
 
Supply & demand
People demand good stuff cheap & business supply cheap stuff expensively & yet people buy it. If there was a great demand the supplier should be able to supply quantity at reduced prices & make a good profit. Instead they supply more at higher prices sighting demand - it's not as if the items are scarce & if they are it's a manufactured scarcity.
If there's no demand they either dump them OS cheap to create a shortage at home & then put up the price due to demand & scarcity.
Buyers USUALLY can't win.
Good music stores try to supply good stuff at reasonable prices & create a relationship with customers that results in continued custom.
Now that we have Super sellers, Mega Suppliers etc that's become a boutique concept with people thronging to the relatively lower prices at BIG stores putting the little fellas out of business & therefore killing off competition so that they can then put up their prices.
It's called capitalism gone 80's again.
Cheers
rayC
 
Just out of interest in whether my argument was even slightly true or not I took a random kid who was hanging around in the shop yesterday and got him to stone, re-profile and dress a Squier Strat I had lying around. I told him how to do it at each stage but I didn't supervise him doing it. Half an hour later I had a fingerboard and set of frets that looked like new. Yeah, he might have taken a slither more off the middle of each fret that the sides with the camber of the board, but for a first try without help I thought it was pretty damn good ... so good in fact that I took the neck straight off and bolted it to a Strat body I've been working on for myself. It has no buzzes and plays great and will go nicely with this bit of swamp ash with Kinman and Duncan pickups in it. Can't say fairer than that!!!
 
noisedude said:
It has no buzzes and plays great ...
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I'm with you Noisedude:) Even though not produced by an artisan, the tool (instrument) will achieve the purpose intended -- to make music. Perhaps we forget the intent of the 'tool' sometimes? If all you have is a log & a stick, you can still make music ... if you're an optimist:) More logs & sticks ... marimba!

"Tig make better log than Grunt!"
"No, Grunt make better log than Tig!"
"Maybe, but Drock play log with more feeling than Yelp!"
"NO! ...,"

Sounds silly doesn't it?

RAYC is right--the masses will always accept lower quality at higher prices but I, for one, am encouraged that the demand is there and growing. Forums such as this one have the opportunity to disrupt the masses' thinking by making available individual opinion. There is nothing to be gained by making music a sacred item only accessible to a select few. Perfect instruments, intonation and maintenance; very nice to have but not required to make music.

Sounds like you own/work in a music shop. If this is true, you know that if you sell that kid a plank of wood with a 2.5" action, he'll be back in a little while looking for something better. If not, music was probably just a passing fancy. (I went back;)

I think too that like respect, taste and appreciation of artistry and workmanship cannot be taught. Once one has played a few 'logs', one learns for oneself the value of these things and seeks out the higher quality. Sometimes, not often enough, this affects the suppliers.

"Flart! Now there a log banger! He rocks on log!"
 
I run a shop but I don't own it yet! One of the things we are really hot on to set us apart from the big boys such as GC-style chain Sound Control is that every guitar gets properly set up before it goes out. There are an awful lot of dingey guitar shops around here where every guitar is dusty and tarnished and plays like crap. I put the same effort into setting up an £80 Strat copy as I do something like the '76 Strat or the Smartwood LP Standard I set up yesterday. Foolish? Perhaps, but it saves people from buying into the myth that they need to spend more in order to get a guitar that actually plays. After your first guitar, it's all about personal taste ... if a particular guitar rings your bell then buy it, or get the nearest you can afford ... but don't ever decide based on the name on the top!! It gets tedious when over Christmas two of us set up more than 300 cheap strats sold via Ebay, but at least you can sleep at night knowing you've not done anyone over.

Sure, I'd love a solid gold flute, but if I can't perform as well (and I can, actually :o) on a £400 Yamaha one, then it's all just so much wasted money. And that's a precision instrument where a millimetre mistake in the rods or pads can render the thing unplayable!

As someone who deals with expensive guitars day-in-day-out, I can see why Light disagrees. I certainly have benefitted from the expertise he's passed on through this forum. I just don't think you have to spend a lot of money to get a great one, or that the great ones are objectively actually better!!! (I usually prefer them, of course ;))
 
I've always thought guitars were pretty cheap. Check out prices of other types of instruments. Hell, check out the prices of simple furniture, and that's easier to make than guitars. :D

Whatever guitar, the good thing is that the sound you get is 90% playing skill anyway. My opinion anyway.

Tim
 
If someone was in the market for a bolt on neck guitar such as a fender, then I don't know why they wouldn't build one from Warmoth. The possibilities are emense and the finished product would be tailored to suit your taste, and needs, and not cost more than a U.S.A strat. Even Carvin offers way more choices than fender or gibson, But it's like the kid that has to have nike shoes, he's gotta have that name.
 
capnkid said:
If someone was in the market for a bolt on neck guitar such as a fender, then I don't know why they wouldn't build one from Warmoth. The possibilities are emense and the finished product would be tailored to suit your taste, and needs, and not cost more than a U.S.A strat. Even Carvin offers way more choices than fender or gibson, But it's like the kid that has to have nike shoes, he's gotta have that name.
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Well, with Fenders you do have one fairly major advantage. A Fender will hold a much higher resale value than a Warmoth instrument, by a lot. I frequently see people selling Warmoth instruments for less than the cost of the parts (in fact, I've seen people who make money by parting out Warmoth guitars on eBay, making more money selling the components individulally that they could for the completed guitar). Fenders will have some initial depreciation (particularly on the imports), but much less than a parts guitar, and the parts guitar will never appreciate. USA Fenders usually do, and some of the imports will do so as well (look at the popularity of the late eighties Jap Strats these days). If you think you might end up selling your guitar, a Fender makes a lot of sense from a finacial point of view.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Not an easy issue . Too complex for any easy answer. I know a couple of luthiers and a couple of guitar fix-it guys. They are worlds apart in their approach to the instrument. The luthier types build guitars because they love the act of creating a thing of beauty, and they love that part of themselves that gives them the sense of atistry . They have the gifts, in varying degrees, to be sure, but they all share those qualities. The fix-it guys , and I include myself in this group, tend to more task-oriented in their approach. By that I mean that they begin by defining what is wrong with the guitar, and then set about to make it right. By contrast, the luthier guys are "process-oriented". They become immersed in the process, for example , they will spend hours in a glassy eyed Zen like state with fine sandpaper held between carefully arched fingers working a surface to perfection. Not me man, I'm way to ADD /ADHD for that. Gimme a screwdriver,man and I'll fix it for you in a jiffy. It'll be done right, for sure, but quickly so I can get to the next task . I love the luthier guys, no doubt, and I love the instruments they create, but the guys I work for have a gig tonight and gotta have their favorite guitar set up now. I hope that I havent pissed off all the fixit guys out there. I don't mean to minimize the work they do in any way. Just wanted to draw a contrast to help some of you to understand IMHO


chazba
 
noisedude said:
Just out of interest in whether my argument was even slightly true or not I took a random kid who was hanging around in the shop yesterday and got him to stone, re-profile and dress a Squier Strat I had lying around. I told him how to do it at each stage but I didn't supervise him doing it. Half an hour later I had a fingerboard and set of frets that looked like new. Yeah, he might have taken a slither more off the middle of each fret that the sides with the camber of the board, but for a first try without help I thought it was pretty damn good ... so good in fact that I took the neck straight off and bolted it to a Strat body I've been working on for myself. It has no buzzes and plays great and will go nicely with this bit of swamp ash with Kinman and Duncan pickups in it. Can't say fairer than that!!!
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I can't believe that. It takes at least a hundred of these to get to the point where you feel comfortable enough to do a consistant job. He may have done a passable job, but I know he did not do a great job. Doing it right takes a lot of experience. I mean, I've known people who made passable vilolins their on their first try, but that doesn't mean the are great violin makers, you know?


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
I think the concieved price of a truely great "fiddle" is waaay underestimated by many. Ask the 1st chair fiddle player in a decent orchestra what their axe is worth, and I am sure it will make many of you change your shorts. Could easily rival the going price of a 59 V, if not much more. But I think a large part of that is the age of the instrument too... the supply and demand thing in some sort of tangent relation.
 
mixmkr said:
I think the concieved price of a truely great "fiddle" is waaay underestimated by many. Ask the 1st chair fiddle player in a decent orchestra what their axe is worth, and I am sure it will make many of you change your shorts. Could easily rival the going price of a 59 V, if not much more. But I think a large part of that is the age of the instrument too... the supply and demand thing in some sort of tangent relation.
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This is another thing I already mentioned - the guitar as we have it now is a very young instrument (no matter how much 'vintage' this or 'relic' that gets chucked around).
 
Light said:
I can't believe that. It takes at least a hundred of these to get to the point where you feel comfortable enough to do a consistant job. He may have done a passable job, but I know he did not do a great job. Doing it right takes a lot of experience. I mean, I've known people who made passable vilolins their on their first try, but that doesn't mean the are great violin makers, you know?


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
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Dude, I am being really honest here. Maybe it was a fluke (it certainly surprised my colleague who was of the opinion I'd be writing off a perfectly good guitar neck) ... but I just explained ... don't press down, let the weight of the tool take away the metal, right now re-profile them all with this side of the Stew Mac file (that shop is awesome) ... right now get the oil stone and work through the papers, make sure you get each part of each fret ... and 30 mins later it was done.

I'm sure it's not the best fret dress ever, but there are no buzzes, chokes or dead frets and it plays great. I have the thing sat here at home, as I mentioned!!

But don't think for a minute I'd have let him fiddle with anything of value! ;)

Nik
 
chazba said:
Not an easy issue . Too complex for any easy answer. I know a couple of luthiers and a couple of guitar fix-it guys. They are worlds apart in their approach to the instrument. The luthier types build guitars because they love the act of creating a thing of beauty, and they love that part of themselves that gives them the sense of atistry . They have the gifts, in varying degrees, to be sure, but they all share those qualities. The fix-it guys , and I include myself in this group, tend to more task-oriented in their approach. By that I mean that they begin by defining what is wrong with the guitar, and then set about to make it right. By contrast, the luthier guys are "process-oriented". They become immersed in the process, for example , they will spend hours in a glassy eyed Zen like state with fine sandpaper held between carefully arched fingers working a surface to perfection. Not me man, I'm way to ADD /ADHD for that. Gimme a screwdriver,man and I'll fix it for you in a jiffy. It'll be done right, for sure, but quickly so I can get to the next task . I love the luthier guys, no doubt, and I love the instruments they create, but the guys I work for have a gig tonight and gotta have their favorite guitar set up now. I hope that I havent pissed off all the fixit guys out there. I don't mean to minimize the work they do in any way. Just wanted to draw a contrast to help some of you to understand IMHO


chazba
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There's not much here I disagree with ... and you can guess which side I fall into!!!
 
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