Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Guitars, Amps and Effects => Topic started by: MrBump on September 15, 2008, 02:20:42 PM
-
OK, sorry for bleating on about this, but this is another thread that related to the cost of guitars - bit more the perception of value than anything else.
How do you guys "rate" the price of a guitar? Or do you do that at all?
For example, I'd tend to rate anything sub £299 as "cheap". Anything £300-£700 as mid range, and anything +£700 as expensive.
Am I way out of line with reality?
Mark.
-
I think I'd go <£300 as cheap, £300-£700 as "affordable", £700-£1,000 as mid-range, and anything >£1,000 as expensive.
But there are many more levels after that - very expensive, incredibly expensive, astronomically expensive and EVH Brand Guitars, to name a few.
-
I think in a similar way about price.
Guitars sub £300 can be great but may need pimping (pups, hardware, fretwork.)
£300 to £600ish I'de say are mid priced because there are some really great guitars that you can get for £650-£800 then above that is expensive. I'de have pretty high expectations if i spent over £500 on a guitar (I have spent no more than £400 pounds on a guitar before, not including pimping)
I think acoustics are quite different. From what i know, which is little, you can get a nice acoustic for less than you'de pay for a good electric.
-
OK... maybe I'm not as out of date as I thought...
-
Cheap is entirely comparative. I would say a £1000 PRS Mira was cheap (for a PRS, for a US made guitar, compared to the equivalent quality Gibson etc).
But a £79 Chinese Tele copy is also cheap........
-
Under £150 - cheap because I can afford it. Over £150 - expensive because I can't afford it. And then there are guitars which I'll never be able to afford. I think that £130 is the most I've spent on an axe.
-
What's interesting is that prices have actually changed very little over the years - I got my first LP copy in 1980 for about £80, and now you can probably get a better guitar for the same money.
-
Cheap is entirely comparative. I would say a £1000 PRS Mira was cheap (for a PRS, for a US made guitar, compared to the equivalent quality Gibson etc).
But a £79 Chinese Tele copy is also cheap........
exactly. i prefer to talk about value. something at £250 isn't cheap if it's utter cr@p, while something at £350 might be if it's actually good. too many people seem to equate value with how cheap something is, and that's not right at all. if it's cheaper, but doesn't do the job, it's actually terrible value, as you'll have to fork out for something which will do the job later anyway. this probably explains why tesco etc. do so well... :(
generally speaking, if it's under £200, i'm willing to have fewer expectations (e.g. my valve junior) etc. but much more than that, and i want it to be perfect- if not, you've wasted quite a bit of money which you could have put towards something which was.
my price bands are, more or less:
<£200: cheap (willing to accept slightly lower quality, as long as it's decent and worthy of upgrades)
£200-~£600: Mid-price. I'd expect to get a good guitar for this, but would be willing to upgrade the electronics and pickups (not much else, though- upgrade much more than that and you could just get a better guitar)
>£600: expensive. Mainly because I know that, once I'd swapped the pickups, I'd be near enough within range of another custom legra. Basically anything much more than £600 would have to be spectacular for me even to consider it.
I guess I'd have a similar range with amps...
-
I wont comment on cheap as I too am out of touch
Your perspective on cheapness does change depending on what you have previously spent or what your aspirations are.
So instead I will quote my favourite Henry Rolls (Rolls Royce Cars) Quote
"The quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten."
-
Whats cheap, Jordan & Jade Goody are pretty cheap
Sorry !
So instead I will quote my favourite Henry Rolls (Rolls Royce Cars) Quote
"The quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten."
The Quakers (don't ask me how I know) have a sayinmg along the lines of :
If you intend to buy the cheapest then budget for the most expensive, as you will have to buy the item again
Basically I prefer to think about the term affordable rather than cheap or expensive.
-
I think £800 is expensive, while £1500 is affordable. Since the guitars I own worth closer to £1500 are guitars I doubt I'll ever replace, however, if I owned a guitar around £800, I'd want to get rid of it.
-
So instead I will quote my favourite Henry Rolls (Rolls Royce Cars) Quote
"The quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten."
The Quakers (don't ask me how I know) have a saying along the lines of :
"If you intend to buy the cheapest then budget for the most expensive, as you will have to buy the item again"
Thanks for that - that is pure gold as far as wisdom goes. Love It!
-
Your perspective on cheapness does change depending on what you have previously spent or what your aspirations are.
I agree with this very much.
I don't really think of guitars as being expensive 'till you're above a couple grand. Possibly because I have bought two guitars previously for that kind of money.
-
"If you intend to buy the cheapest then budget for the most expensive, as you will have to buy the item again"
The one I know is similar... Buy cheap and you'll buy twice.
My own price guide would be,
up to £300 cheap,
up to £700 value,
up to £1200 mid-range,
up to £2500 expensive.
However, you can get bargains at any price.
-
I have to agree with what the other guys say regarding value. A £1000 Custom ESP is damn cheap for what it is but while a £300 yamaha for example is good value. I usually find that anything between 700-1000 is great value in terms of quality and price. Cheap guitars, usually less than £250 is a total waste of money and a bad investment unless you are cornered and you desperately need to get one. Very expansive custom guitars are also not the greatest value you can get but such is the way the market works.
I have owned a cheapo BC Rich for 150 a yamaha for 300 an LTD for 700 and a custom ESP for £5k, all the guitars played just fine and were great value for what they were, obviously I wont say the custom was cheap or that it was great value but I will say that the BC Rich and the yamaha were absolute bargains for what they were while the LTD is my least favourite of all and it wasnt exactly a bargain.
-
I wont comment on cheap as I too am out of touch
Your perspective on cheapness does change depending on what you have previously spent or what your aspirations are.
So instead I will quote my favourite Henry Rolls (Rolls Royce Cars) Quote
"The quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten."
This is also the Gucci family slogan.
I agree that words like expensive and cheap are more relevant when compared to quality, or when comparing identical items from different suppliers whose prices vary.
-
An Eggle Wave for £400.
A Fender US Voodoo Strat for £350.
All my guitars have been "cheap". I reckon I'm just lucky.
-
I'd consider anything upto £350 cheap, £350 - £800 midrange, £800 - £1500 expensive, £1500+ custom-made territory (wouldn't entertain an off the shelf guitar for £1500 plus, might as well go bespoke for that kind of money).
Rundown of my guitar stash...
* Epi Explorer was £250 (used), was pre-pimped with gold Grovers and has since been been pimped by me with EMGs plus some other bits of hardware to get it looking the way I want, oh, and a setup. Probably got £375 in this one. It plays great, has a fast neck for metal and does everything I wanted it too.
* Epi Les Paul jr was £330 (used), and has been upgraded with CTS pots, a NOS Sprague tone cap and a BKP91 with AIV magnet. Probably got around £400 in that guitar and would consider it one of my cheapies despite it playing as well as anyof my guitars. It also gets played the most, it's my 'go to' guitar.
* MIM Fender '72 Tele Custom (new), upgraded with Fender USA steel bridge + brass saddles, Fender CS bridge pickup, original 70s Fender wide-range neck pickup, NOS Sprague tone caps. Sounds and plays like I always wanted a Tele to, a right beast of a guitar - at the snarlier end of the Tele spectrum (more of a 50s Tele tone) with more mids rather than the thinner Tele twang of the 60s Teles. Paid £550 but with upgrades I've got around £725 in it. I'd consider this one of my mid-priced guitars.
* Gibson Les Paul standard (used), various hardware upgrades/replacements over the years including D/W BKP Mules, got around £900 in this one and would consider it a fairly expensive purchase.
Have paid £1200 for a used Taylor 710 (around £1600 new) in the past and that was just a stupid purchase, I'd consider that now to be silly money for what it was. The £500 Martin D-15 that replaced it was a far better guitar for my purposes and got used extensively. I'd consider it a much better value guitar than the Taylor.
Anyway, there's my two penneth.
-
I stopped guessing how good a guitar is or what range its in a long time ago - after I figured out that the ONLY things that are important about a guitar are its acoustic tone, build quality (not entirely seperate things) and feel.
Everything can be changed/upgraded, whichever way you look at it.
I'll grudgingly admit that there is some positive correlation between price and acoustic tone, construction and feel, but theres a lot of chance to it - you can get very good guitars that are very cheap. There seems to be an awful lot of variation in wood and construction quality at both low and high prices. This is the reason that I never buy anything without playing it and the reason my Guitarmy varies massively price-wise.
-
An Eggle Wave for £400.
A Fender US Voodoo Strat for £350.
All my guitars have been "cheap". I reckon I'm just lucky.
Yeah man, like in my previous post I said that I've never spent more than £130 on an axe. For that I got an Eggle Berlin Vintage Classic (£130 with no hardware), Ibanez Mahogany Firebird from the lawsuit era (free but with no hardware), Tanglewood acoustic (£130 rrp around £300), Got a Fenix strat knocking about somewhere that I got free too (the owner hasn't actually given it to me, but I don't think he's going toget it back any time soon :P)
-
Yeah man, like in my previous post I said that I've never spent more than £130 on an axe. For that I got an Eggle Berlin Vintage Classic (£130 with no hardware), Ibanez Mahogany Firebird from the lawsuit era (free but with no hardware), Tanglewood acoustic (£130 rrp around £300), Got a Fenix strat knocking about somewhere that I got free too (the owner hasn't actually given it to me, but I don't think he's going toget it back any time soon :P)
It must have cost you something to get pickups and hardware for those guitars, though?
-
I think all guitars are expensive! Over £100 for a few bits of wood glued together!? It's ridiculous. There can't be THAT much difference between a £100 beginner guitar and a £10,000 uber-high end axe.
(slightly tongue-in-cheek)
However - I do think guitars are ridiculously overpriced, and parts for them even more so.
I don't understand how anyone can justify charging more than £200 for a fender telecaster for instance. Think about what it actually is and you'll realize that it simply CAN'T cost more than £200 to build even the top-of-the-line custom shop models. It's silly.
I also think guitar parts are overpriced. Over £100 for a pickup? Piss off! I grant you it's a hard thing to do right, but once you know how i don't imagine it can cost more than a tenner to create. I bet larger companies than BKP (dimarzio, SD etc.) can churn them out for less than a fiver a pop.
A Low Pro Floyd Rose can cost £200! £200 for a chunk of steel to make notes on a guitar make wobbly noises!?
I REALLY don't understand this industry and how the hell these companies manage to sell stuff to folk for such outrageous prices. The mark-ups must be insane.
Another thing I just don't get is how you pay a premium for a decent wood. i.e. Alder costs more than Agathis. FFS it all grows on trees! How about people stop planting Agathis trees and start planting more trees that are made of wood that folk actually want?!
I'm sure my views are extremely ignorant and short-sighted and I'm well up for being shot down off my high horse. Go for it.
-
Is that a serious post Indy?
Don't forget that companies aren't just covering the basic costs of materials - they have manufacuring facilities to build/rent and maintain, hugely expensive plant and machinery, R&D costs, general overheads like any other business... and above all else employees to pay!!
I don't know about the wood thing, but I imagine it has much to do with how long different species take to grow, how easy it is to grow them, what climates suit them, and what trees are already there. You can't plant an ash tree one spring and carve it up into one-piece bodies six months later... the guys who planted those trees 30,40, 50 years ago had no idea people would be making them into pointy little BC Rich guitars one day.
-
Is that a serious post Indy?
I don't think he much likes paying for music either as far as I can remember (ducks for cover)
Seriously though it's like saying that an effects pedal only costs 10 quid for parts therefore theyre a ripoff too.
By the time you pay for R&D, prototyping, setup costs, build costs , carrage, storage, packaging, warranty cover, staff wages, phone bills, advertising, sample models, taxes, accountants and 1001 other trivial things. It's not cheap
Thats why the homebrew fx pedal folks frown on cloning pedals by small companys such as Z-Vex, they simply recognise that there isn't a huge profit on a £100 pedal if you are doing the job properly.
There is a profit if you are knocking out copies of old designs cheaply, provided you don't actually want a robust pedal that sounds good.
Anybody who has tried to startup a business can reel off the horror stories regarding costs before you even ship your 1st unit
-
Yeah Indy, come on!! :lol:
Taking the tele as an example, I agree, it's a plank of wood with some metal bits on it.
But someone has to build the thing.
How many teles do you think you could knock out in an hour, sorry, wrong way round - how many hours would it take you to knock one out?
I assume you'd want to get paid for those hours, so how much do you want to be paid an hour? (I assume it's your main source of income, you want to eat, pay your bills, wear clothes, etc).
Multiply those hours by the hourly rate you want, then factor in the taxman, costs (materials, parts, tools, electricity, rent, and so on).
That's what you want to charge me for knocking out that plank with bits of metal on.
Now - would I want to buy that tele that you knocked out for that price? (compared to the going standards and prices out there in the marketplace now)
Or are you going to do me a good deal based on my perception of a plank and some bits of metal?
I put it that way, because I'm roughly the same as you (I guess we all are to some extent), and that's how I figured it out myself... :D
-
I don't understand how anyone can justify charging more than £200 for a fender telecaster for instance. Think about what it actually is and you'll realize that it simply CAN'T cost more than £200 to build even the top-of-the-line custom shop models. It's silly.
Come round to my place and play mine. Then tell me you wouldn't pay more than £200 for it ;)
-
Yeah man, like in my previous post I said that I've never spent more than £130 on an axe. For that I got an Eggle Berlin Vintage Classic (£130 with no hardware), Ibanez Mahogany Firebird from the lawsuit era (free but with no hardware), Tanglewood acoustic (£130 rrp around £300), Got a Fenix strat knocking about somewhere that I got free too (the owner hasn't actually given it to me, but I don't think he's going toget it back any time soon :P)
It must have cost you something to get pickups and hardware for those guitars, though?
Yeah but not a lot and that's been spread out over a good time. All in all, I think the Eggle will have cost me around £200, although it won't have the best pups on until I find or trade some. As for the firebird, I think I spent £50 on some Steinberger gearless tuners. Bridge and pups were given to me for services rendered (as was the guitar funnily enough). Other than those, then it's just £20 or so for each to finish it off (wiring and hardware).
Nowadays my guitar fiddling is very much 'as and when' and I have a few bits and pieces laying around, as well as buying the odd bit I see when the price is right, so I can do most of it on the cheap.
-
Is that a serious post Indy?
I don't think he much likes paying for music either as far as I can remember (ducks for cover)
Seriously though it's like saying that an effects pedal only costs 10 quid for parts therefore theyre a ripoff too.
By the time you pay for R&D, prototyping, setup costs, build costs , carrage, storage, packaging, warranty cover, staff wages, phone bills, advertising, sample models, taxes, accountants and 1001 other trivial things. It's not cheap
Thats why the homebrew fx pedal folks frown on cloning pedals by small companys such as Z-Vex, they simply recognise that there isn't a huge profit on a £100 pedal if you are doing the job properly.
There is a profit if you are knocking out copies of old designs cheaply, provided you don't actually want a robust pedal that sounds good.
Anybody who has tried to startup a business can reel off the horror stories regarding costs before you even ship your 1st unit
+1
we get ripped off for stuff something rotten in the UK, but certainly there are a lot more costs involved in building things than indy has been suggesting.
-
That's only build cost BTW there's the distri uter and retailer markups and transport costs <sigh>
That's why I have an employer as I don't have the money to setup a business (never mind feeding the family till it starts making a profit)
Apparently it was Billy Gibbons buying a dozen or so FX pedals to give as Xmas presents that stopped Z-Vex from going under so things are really that tight.
-
I think 'cheap' guitars are a bit of a false economy really. You know you're more than likely to sell them on one day so you can get a more expensive guitar. This will keep happening until you get a really well made, quality guitar that you know you won't sell on. More often than not you would have lost more money on trading than you pay for a top notch guitar. Just my opinion.
-
That's only build cost BTW there's the distri uter and retailer markups and transport costs <sigh>
yeah, that's what really hits us hard here. there's something wrong when you can import something from its country of origin more cheaply than you can buy one in the shops...
-
I don't understand how anyone can justify charging more than £200 for a fender telecaster for instance. Think about what it actually is and you'll realize that it simply CAN'T cost more than £200 to build even the top-of-the-line custom shop models. It's silly.
Come round to my place and play mine. Then tell me you wouldn't pay more than £200 for it ;)
I can tell you now that, even after playing it, I certainly wouldn't give you 200 quid for your tele :)
-
I don't understand how anyone can justify charging more than £200 for a fender telecaster for instance. Think about what it actually is and you'll realize that it simply CAN'T cost more than £200 to build even the top-of-the-line custom shop models. It's silly.
Come round to my place and play mine. Then tell me you wouldn't pay more than £200 for it ;)
I can tell you now that, even after playing it, I certainly wouldn't give you 200 quid for your tele :)
Roo, you DO suprise me!
-
I guess that value is in the eye of the beholder...
Does it make you feel good when you play it?
My 89 Les Paul cost me £700 - my Jap Epi Junior cost me £70 - is the Gibbo worth 10x the Epi? They are both value for money in their own way.
Now for my 'broken-record plug' - best VFM Strat IMHO is an E-Series Jap Squier - you get excellent build quality for not a lot of money - if you can live with the vintage trem and only 21 vintage frets - under £200 if you are lucky.
Mike
PS - What is a Telecaster? :lol:
-
I think 'cheap' guitars are a bit of a false economy really. You know you're more than likely to sell them on one day so you can get a more expensive guitar. This will keep happening until you get a really well made, quality guitar that you know you won't sell on. More often than not you would have lost more money on trading than you pay for a top notch guitar. Just my opinion.
That's really quite interesting, I don't think like that. Thing is, I never sell anything. I might have to soon, the rate I'm acquiring since January, but that's another matter!
I tend to buy guitars based on what they're worth to me, what I can afford, and whether I justify owning it at the moment.
Eg I bought a Dano recently, and at £165 (I think that's what I paid, might be £175, I've seen them at £150 on the web), once I'd found one that actually played ok in the shop, I regard it as well cheap. The ones that didn't play were also ok for the small amount of DIY setup that would have been required, but I passed on them a week or two earlier.
The Dano was so cheap that I regard it as: "OK if I get a couple of years' good fun out of it, it's paid for itself in my book..." It can then fall apart, hide in the attic, get given to a nephew, whatever it feels like doing... (unless of course I fall utterly in love and I never stop playing it!)
I tend to regard all my guitars as possessions/friends that are "working off" what I put into them cash-wise, rather than as "capital".
My £550 strat (+ BKPs & scratchplate) has to work a little harder than the Dano, but that's no problem, just watching her across the room makes me happy!
But my £950 Explorer (plus BKPs) has to work her @rse off!! (which is why I was so keen to get the right pickups into her a few weeks back so that I could fall in love)
Whereas my Epi SG, which I bought second hand at least 10 years ago for £110, has gigged, been recorded, done a load of really hard work, and she's really earned her £110... she's been rewarded with Riff Raffs, but I'm not too attached, sooner or later I predict she'll be back in the attic and a better guitar I haven't met yet might have the Riff Raffs (and her Tonepros machineheads!!).
My Epi LP has a similar tale to tell, except she's already been stripped of her Mules (got the Explorer's 500T's) and her Tonepros (got the Tokai Love Rock's machineheads), and she's in a gigbag waiting until the attic opens its gaping maw...
I've got a couple of Variax's gathering dust - somewhat more expensive than I feel they're worth now - but they started me playing guitar again, and they taught me what guitars I actually want, so I'm quite grateful to them.
I dunno, what is "cheap" really?
We pay for what we get, and our enjoyment and satisfaction is, to some extent, based on our expectations, and on our perceptions of how others might judge us...
The expectations are shaped by what we intend to do with it - use it, resell it, etc...
The perceptions bit, well, it's really weird - I claim it doesn't affect me, but it does... eg I felt a bit of a knob admitting above that I paid £175 for a Dano when I know I could possibly have found one for £150. I felt really embarrassed a few months back when everyone was raving about their Bajas, and I thought mine was not much to write home about (but now she's the guitar I play most, and I'm about to put her in for a fret dress or whatever it takes to realise her full potential).
I'd love to play an expensive guitar that feels "worth" it's price to me personally, but I've yet to meet one... I suppose, given the Explorer, that "expensive" to me is over a grand, but "cheap"? Like someone else said earlier - it means I can afford it (and want to pay for it)! :lol:
EDIT: mikeluke posted while I was writing - "value is in the eye of the beholder" - yeah... :D
-
Excellent views and opinions, chaps. Andy, I think that I agree with pretty much everything you said.
Poor old Indy got a bit of a pasting for his post, but there are elements that I think resonate. I don't think that guitars are necessarily over priced, but I DO think that there's a disparity between manufactures that are better or worse at marketing, and those with more kudos than others.
I mean, if you take a factory built guitar, materials should only account for a percentage of the costs, right? Once the process and plant are in place, you're paying for labour and parts. Higher end guitars aren't going to cost massively more than mid range guitars in terms of wood. Someone mentioned R&D cost. Come on! Seriously? The same old designs for the last 50 years, give or take some tweaking...
I'm not talking about handmade stuff. I would pay good money for a decent bespoke Les Paul. I've seen some of Jonathans work up close, and it's truely superb. What I'm talking about is chunks of wood and metal, sourced in the same way, processed in the same way, with the end results being vastly different. That makes me think that I'm being ripped off in some way.
But something only has value if you ascribe value to it. I think that £1500 is steep for factory made Les Paul. But if someone takes it down from the wall and instantly falls in love with it, what does 1500 quid matter? It's made an impact on them, so it's as valuable as they want it to be.
I think.
:D
-
To put it another way
Westfield strat knockoff, second hand - 50 quid
Ubersinner - 70 quid
Watching peoples eyes widen when you hit a few palm mutes - priceless.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, fuck the cost of a guitar. Fuck it right in the ear.
-
I mentioned R&D
That also covers not bust the basic design, it also all the processes involved in having an affordable, consistant & reliable product ? It's not simple
However I do find it difficult to accept the price of some of the Mass produced (via CNC machines) guitars. Especially with the repued prices the likes of Gibson pay for wood compared to what the likes of Jonathon has to pay for the same quality piece.
It's not the price that defines value for money it's what you get out of it that counts
-
I also find it extremely hard to believe that R&D has to be done on 1930s technology.
-
I also find it extremely hard to believe that R&D has to be done on 1930s technology.
Now that I'm not using a touch screen device (that has a fetich for deleting the majority of whats been typed)
Originally I mentioned R&D in relation to Fx pedals (another item where people complain that the materials cost next to nothing) and are not cheap items.
Assuming you had built a few guitars yourself, would that knowledge be relevant to fairly large scale production. How much would it cost to make it relevant.
Let me ask this question, how much time has Mr Feline or Wez put into learning to build, improving and refining a 1930s designs.
Me I'd say a hell of a fecking lot of time and time costs money
Now think if Jonathan (pardon me using you as an example) wanted to go into mass production. That would mean new production methods CNC kit, in house paint shop, more cost and time efficient methods of chambering or adding nice maple tops to Lions and the like.
How much would that lovely all access neck joint change when it's not cost effective to have somebody make sure it's perfect and to make those adjustments by hand ? It has to be repeatable by CNC (and the machines minder) with varying wood quality.
Lets add finding enough quality wood (my mates dad is an exotic timbers importer and he has a hard time sourcing quality wood at anything like a decent and consistant price)
By the time you get standard production kit to do what it's supposed to do (the never work as the sales people claim), you are into huge amounts of expense. Thats before staff (& their training), stock and premesis are figured in.
You may not be carrying out R&D on the basic design, but it is R&D for production.
Thats one of the reasons Patrick Eggle left his (original) company.
Of course you could just get everything built on the far East and not give a sh1t what it's made from (in this case no matter what the price is it's expensive).
I'm justsaying it's a bigger picture than buying the production equipment and a few templates, and it all costs a lot of money that you have to earn back before you can feed your family.
-
On the other hand you would be spreading those costs across a large number of instruments, rather than the very small numbers turned out by bespoke manufacturers (e.g. Jonathan) - I'd argue that the small, independents are operating in almost a completely different market segment. Players who really understand what they want from a guitar and are prepared/able to pay to get that precise detail.
The more mass market companies have to try to appeal across the board or get back their investment by marketing 'high-end' instruments made by effectively mass market techniques. Take PRS - is this a cheap brand? No way! Do they use essentially mass-market production techniques to keep costs down and get economies of scale? Absolutely!
-
Heh I know a custom build v standard production is like comparing real food against Findus crispy pancakes.
Indeed it would be spread across more instruments, though in reality that would only happen after you had some amount of sales success. The inital runs have a very high production cost, and that needs to be recouped ASAP if you want to stay in business.
I was just trying to say that theres a lot of costs involved that folks don't on the whole think about.
Back to the original topic:
TBH I don't understand the pricing of many (in particular US based) manufacturers especially when you look at the numbers they sell these days. To me Fender prices are more realistic than certain companys.
My Ric 12 string cost me a lot of money (well a lot to me) but value for money stakes it was a far far better purchase than the £350 Mexican strat I had for 3 years (and played that one a lot too).
-
There's some good points here. It's true, exactly how much R+D do guitar companies REALLY do? surely the R+D departments for even the biggest brands are less than 20 guys, and for most it must be 2 or 3. Spread over the number of instruments that they produce this cost is negligible. Then if you look at gibson's R+D, their big changes this year are largely a load of fairly common aftermarket mods. How much time and money did that take them to come up with? And that's the best R+D decision they've made in years!!
Also, much of the R+D carried out by the big names takes place in the their Custom and artist departments, which pay for themselves, and it then filters down to mainstream production.
Interestingly, the operators of well regarded budget brands such as Agile and Dillion spend half their R+D time on forums such as this asking people what they actually want, which has got to be a sound strategy (don't mention the Homer car).
Perhaps the big problem here is that you can buy great guitars for £200 and complete dogs for £800. There's no real rhyme or reason to it.
-
Under £300 is cheap, £300-600 is about right for me, maybe add another £100ish for a good fret dress/setup. Anything more seems like a bit of a waste to me.
-
R&D is a massive cost. Imagine how many different necks Gibson would have gone through to get to the new spec Standard? How many hours of labour? How many different types of fret wire? It soon escalates to big bucks.
-
Under £300 is cheap, £300-600 is about right for me, maybe add another £100ish for a good fret dress/setup. Anything more seems like a bit of a waste to me.
You're lucky matey. I've developed expensive tastes :(
-
R&D is a massive cost. Imagine how many different necks Gibson would have gone through to get to the new spec Standard? How many hours of labour? How many different types of fret wire? It soon escalates to big bucks.
But it was probably only a handful of guys, and they probably just fed CAD designs into a small CNC machine. It's self limiting, and spread over the cost of the tens of thousands of les Paul Standards they'll sell this year alone, it's pretty small potatoes.
-
R&D is a massive cost. Imagine how many different necks Gibson would have gone through to get to the new spec Standard? How many hours of labour? How many different types of fret wire? It soon escalates to big bucks.
I was thinking more along the lines of the number of necks that they screw up when it goes into production and they havn't noticed some obvious fault or another.
Therefore having to bin some of their production and the associated costs (and the cover up)
Oops it's Gibson they would ship them anyway.
Actually gibson is one of the companys that confuses me regarding the cost of their products pricing
-
I think we're getting a bit bogged down here - we don't know what Gibson's R&D costs are and it's pretty difficult to guess.
But I think it's safe to assume they're not just pulling out some old wooden jigs that have been used to make every Les Paul since 1954 "because they're all the same innit". :roll:
It's funny that we're getting sarky comments about 50 year old designs and 1930s technology from a bunch of people who play instruments that are ALL based on those 50 year old designs. Through valve amps no less.
-
just thinking my favourite guitars are all made in the far east and would probably be condsidered as cheap.
now, almost all of this is down to sentimental reasons - some old stories, the look of them etc etc. no amount of money can pay for sentiment. on the other hand, if these guitars were bad instruments i'd never have played them enough to get that sentimental attachment.
i don't think i'll ever be snobbish about the instruments i play, if its reliable, stays in tune, sounds decent and doesn't tear my fingers to shreds this is everything you /need/. on the other hand, i appriciate the craftsmanship of something like my Feline.. some instruments seem to play themselves.. but somethings its nice to have a little fight in the instrument, or have something you won't feel guilty about throwing round.
-
somethings its nice to have a little fight in the instrument, or have something you won't feel guilty about throwing round.
+1, I like guitars that fight back a little and think that it alters your style. I like agression in my playing and guitars that play like buttah just don't allow me to translate that since they're SO easy to play.
-
"Gibson does not release financial, production or employment figures. Comparing production and/or revenue figures of U.S.-based musical instrument manufacturers is an apples-and-oranges situation, due to the differences in product lines and the variety of foreign manufacturing and branding arrangements. Gibson is one of the largest and best-known guitar makers."
Impossible to tell since it is a privately owned company.
Back to the question - what is cheap? For me:
Under £200 - Cheap
Between £200 and 500 - tough price point - not THAT much better than £200...
£500-1000 - can get some very nice guitars if you shop around and ignore the brand name on the headstock
£1000 + - something that you buy and hide the receipt from the wife....
-
Given that I'm a one-guitar man, I'd be happy to pay over a grand for a custom job that I want. Nothing else will do, because I've got the Ibanez at the moment, and frankly what's the point in having another guitar? I'll only play one of them anyway! If and when I do go custom, the Ibby will be my backup instrument for gigs, and that's it.
So 200 quid would be a complete waste of money for me, because it would relegate either that new guitar, or my current guitar, to the status of never being played. Unless, of course, I can get the perfect guitar for 200 quid, which somehow I doubt!!
I choose my purchases exceedingly carefully :)
Roo
-
i have to say i'm with kilby in regards to the r&d and setting up the business costs. and i hate the big companies- but to argue they're spending no money on r&d etc.? :?
-
I don't think anyone's arguing that, the question is does the amount they're spending justify the cost of the end product?
-
I don't think anyone's arguing that, the question is does the amount they're spending justify the cost of the end product?
The problem that I have is that (some companys) even if they spent nothing on R&D would still be charging the high prices.
Hence my snipe @ Gibson earlier,
As for old designs, well for the most part many different designs have been rolled out and none of them have particularly caught on. Even the PRS models are basically a small bodied carved top Strat. Super strats are simply pointier (and slimmer) versions of a regular strat
The newest really popular design I can think of is the bloody SG and that was over 45 years ago.
Perhaps we get what we deserve ?
I agree with Roo (for the most part) I certainly have no use for more than the 2 guitars that I play. They cover all my (realistic) needs. If I only needed a 6 string then I could live with my Berlin, (and you would have to be totally mad to try and live with only a 12 string)
Any additional kit would be a luxury purchase and I have too many real things to take care of these days.
Rob...
BTW for those who know mw, my old SG dosn't count (as far as I'm concerned) as rebuilding it was the last thing that my father and I ever really did together. It comes out when I need a reminder of simpler times
-
I also find it extremely hard to believe that R&D has to be done on 1930s technology.
Now that I'm not using a touch screen device (that has a fetich for deleting the majority of whats been typed)
Originally I mentioned R&D in relation to Fx pedals (another item where people complain that the materials cost next to nothing) and are not cheap items.
Assuming you had built a few guitars yourself, would that knowledge be relevant to fairly large scale production. How much would it cost to make it relevant.
Let me ask this question, how much time has Mr Feline or Wez put into learning to build, improving and refining a 1930s designs.
Me I'd say a hell of a fecking lot of time and time costs money
Now think if Jonathan (pardon me using you as an example) wanted to go into mass production. That would mean new production methods CNC kit, in house paint shop, more cost and time efficient methods of chambering or adding nice maple tops to Lions and the like.
How much would that lovely all access neck joint change when it's not cost effective to have somebody make sure it's perfect and to make those adjustments by hand ? It has to be repeatable by CNC (and the machines minder) with varying wood quality.
Lets add finding enough quality wood (my mates dad is an exotic timbers importer and he has a hard time sourcing quality wood at anything like a decent and consistant price)
By the time you get standard production kit to do what it's supposed to do (the never work as the sales people claim), you are into huge amounts of expense. Thats before staff (& their training), stock and premesis are figured in.
You may not be carrying out R&D on the basic design, but it is R&D for production.
Thats one of the reasons Patrick Eggle left his (original) company.
Of course you could just get everything built on the far East and not give a sh1t what it's made from (in this case no matter what the price is it's expensive).
I'm justsaying it's a bigger picture than buying the production equipment and a few templates, and it all costs a lot of money that you have to earn back before you can feed your family.
Youre overstating the cost of 'refinement R&D'
Developing basic technologies and methods is expensive. Ground up research for new designs of electronics and mechanics with existing technology is expensive, but much less so.
Refining the basic designs for a one-man-led, couple of employees/partners/whatever operation like Feline or Legra or Blackmachine or Wez is hard because the manhours cant be spread and the costs fall on few people to one person.
However, the fact that guys like Bob an Johnathon can do it at all should tell you that gibson, fender, ibanez and so on can do it with great ease. We're talking about multi-million pound companies here doing multi-thousand pound development projects. Its nothing. Its a drop in the ocean. ESP want to make a new line of LTDs, and the R&D is utterly neglegable. The materials are insignificant compared to what they are already buying to produce with, the wages for a small team of luthiers are nothing compared to the cost of running their factories, and the cost of developing the basic tech is zero - at most with something a little ambitious like a Variax it may be a couple of hundred of thousand, tops.
The cost of devlopment of FX and modellers and what have you is higher, by far. The time required to refine a circuit is greater, and the more complex the circuit, the more time. But agian, once the basic tech is laid down refinement is easy. Individuals can build effects and pickups with an outlay that, foir an idividual, is most certainly significant, but not crippling. I can see why BKs cost so much - very simple tech, but it takes a lot of Tims time and effort to develop the pickups (and he always seems to have ideas being developed in the background) plus, time someone like Tim or Johnathon is taking to develop a new idea is time they arent making pickups or guitars, so theres that 'cost' too.
But big manufacturers? Its a drop in the ocean.
Lets put it in perspective - a good guitar costs about 1/20th as much new as a good car, about the same as a very good PC, about 1/5th of a motorbike, about the same as a very good (push) bike, as much as a pretty bloody respectable HiFi, or a plasma screen TV.
Do you really think that the R&D and cost of manufacture of these things is as comparable as the price we pay?
The cost of custom/handmade/one-man/small team stuff seems fair to me.
The cost of 'high end' off the shelf stuff is far, far higher than it should be. I havent exactly audited PRS or anything (but then I very much doubt anyone expressing their strng opinions in this thread has) but I can accept a mass produced guitar costing perhaps £200 easily, mainly because cutting down trees, shipping wood and then making anything out of it is relatively expensive in our era of metal, plastics and semiconductors. But £2000? No chance. Theres a factor drving the price up there thats subjective value - people just assume that more expensive things are better, so the higher your price, the better its percieved to be. We should all know in here that even very high end guitars are far from uniformly superbly made (gibson comes to mind immediately, and I've seen mediocre to dreadfull examples from other brands, like Jackson, fender, Ibanez and the most suprising and dissapointing to me - a caparison that I wouldnt have paid £300 for). Theres a factor holding the price down that not that many people can justify spending £2000 on a guitar. Theres another driving it back up that there are many, many people that would like to, and so at some point may well indulge.
The psychoeconomics of it are very important. There are a lot of rationalisations in this thread for why an expensive guitar is expensive, but the reasons we pay so much for them havent really been mentioned, and thats the key, really - the answer to "Why do they cost so much" cant be answered without asking "Why are we prepared to pay so much".
Its completely erroneous to assume that a market value of something is a direct reflection of the cost to make it. Its not. It never has been. Economics is, at its simplest, supply and demand, and the prices we see on guitars are a reflection of our willingness to pay that much for something we enjoy. (One way or another - beit a superb guitar that you fell in love with or prestige or having something similar to musicians you like or whatever - they're all subjective values that determine the height a price can reach).
-
Back to touch screen again
For a startup it is a high cost to go from 1 or 2 people to quantity production especially learning from mistakes which is what happens in the real world.
I'm not justifying the (to me) exploitive prices associated to certain brands (especially in the UK) but was trying to say that there are many many expenses that most people don't think about, contributing to costs.
Alongside PRS prices I don't understand Korean. Built Ibanez models costing over £900 when they are knocked out on CNC and painted by robots (in poly)
You seldom get a good product cheaply (or feck all as I would phrase it) but you should be able to get something really special sub £900. Anything more expensive than that should be custom or specialist as far as I am concerned.
-
I'd say much lower than 900.
I've played gutars, with my best objective head on, that cost over a thousand that were complete rubbish and under 300 that were great.
I dont think that price is a very good guide to guitar quality in the least. Perhaps at 900 you should get something really special, but in practice it doesnt give any certainty, and really-specia can be found much cheaper than that. Its not like, say, PCs where performance correlates very strongly with price. Guitars are too variabe, their value and performance too subjective and too wrapped in the mystique of musical heritage and brand image (signature lines are a perfect illustration of this - and the watered down version of imitating musicians you admire more generally: how many people here have wanted a thing or percieved it to be better because _insert guitarist here_ uses it?). What makes a good guitar is also a matter or preference - to me a £1500 les paul standard is less of a guitar than a £400 Ibanez RG, on paper. Were the LP unchanged but the same price as an RG1570, I'd still choose the 1570. Just preference. So how can you make an objective measure of the vaue if whats good and what isnt is subjective?
-
Well done! I've NEVER seen the word "psychoeconomics" written down in a forum!!!
-
I'd say much lower than 900.
I've played gutars, with my best objective head on, that cost over a thousand that were complete rubbish and under 300 that were great.
But as you say yourself personal preference is a huge part of how we identify guitars as "good", which makes even your "best objective head" irrelevant, no?
In other words, your second paragraph seems to cancel out your first.
-
TBH 900 was chosen simply to allow for dealer markup, bit of figured wood (if that floats your boat) and some luxuries.
If a large scale mfgr can't manage that, then they ain't going to manage it at 1600 either. And indeed price is no guarentee of quality just the same as buying to a lower budget isnt a guarantee of cr@ppiness. It's always a case of buyer beware.
If I was buying a LP style guitar it's unlikely to be a Gibson, in the case of an SG then a faded model would be a potential purchase. Simply down to my perceived value of the instrument
However we almost all have our illogical love affairs, for some it's fancy tops, inlays, custom paint jobs or whatever. For some a AAAAA top is worth 10K I don't understand it but it's their choice
I actually think we are saying the same thing, but we are aimply haggling over price.
But as I said near the start, if you buy something cos it's cheap then it will usually work out a lot more expensive, cos the odds are that you will have wasted your money. Set a sensible budget at the start, don't increase the budget if you see a shiney thing and be wary of absolute bargins. Most of know this but seldom pull it off successfully :(
-
I'd say much lower than 900.
I've played gutars, with my best objective head on, that cost over a thousand that were complete rubbish and under 300 that were great.
But as you say yourself personal preference is a huge part of how we identify guitars as "good", which makes even your "best objective head" irrelevant, no?
In other words, your second paragraph seems to cancel out your first.
By 'objective' I meant 'within the realms of what I think is good and not' referenced against what the guitar is claimed to be for/supposed to do, and of course genuinely objective things like build quality.
So in this sense everyones 'objective head' is different, and it was teh wrong term, but the point was that it was ignoring price/hype/reputation/artist ascociation and so on. Just the guitar in your hands as you find it.
-
I don't think anyone's arguing that, the question is does the amount they're spending justify the cost of the end product?
depends on the company, i think.
i'd also like to agree with mark's excellent post on the previous page (especially about economics) :drink: ; i wasn't arguing with the fact that things were too dear- i was arguing with indy's point that no guitar should cost more than £200 (or something like that, anyway).
-
And cheers Dave and Mark!
-
By 'objective' I meant 'within the realms of what I think is good and not' referenced against what the guitar is claimed to be for/supposed to do, and of course genuinely objective things like build quality.
So in this sense everyones 'objective head' is different, and it was teh wrong term, but the point was that it was ignoring price/hype/reputation/artist ascociation and so on. Just the guitar in your hands as you find it.
Yeah I know where you're coming from, although I disagree slightly with a couple of the finer details. :wink: :)
-
The £200 business is where it all started (and the reason I responded) but from there it broke.
-
And cheers Dave and Mark!
:drink: