Gibson Custom Shop

[Prawnik]

Sorry to pimp my own point, but I want to see the Tennessee rednecks working the Gibson plant forced to dress up in elfsuits at pain of losing their jobs.  I want the video on YouTube.

The inevitable price increase, not so much.

[dave_mc]

I might be wrong on this, but if PRS can get punters to pay £300 quid for "Birds", fair play to them.

Oh yeah, I agree - I wouldn't pay for them, but people obviously will.

Like the £10,000 (or whatever) for a Private Stock guitar discussed earlier, there doesn't need to be a justification for the price, it's a simple matter of "how much are people prepared to pay?".

It's a bit like the well-worn debate over whether Premier League footballers "earn" £50K a week.  It's irrelevant whether they do or not, it's dictated by market forces - they're "worth" what their clubs are prepared to pay them.

I disagree. I might be willing (for sake of agument) to pay, say, £50 for the inlays, but not £300. The idiots inflating the prices are inflating the prices for everyone.

and it's not like the non-fancy-inlay PRSs are dirt cheap.

I guess i just disagree with the paradigm of capitalism which says you can charge what you can get away with... seems to be rewarding chancers to me.

i know (if i could make guitars lol) that i wouldn't have the neck on me to ask £300 for bird inlays, or £1000 for a fancier maple top when i know how much they're actually worth. i just don't see why we should be rewarding people who do have the audacity to do so.

[Philly Q]

I guess i just disagree with the paradigm of capitalism which says you can charge what you can get away with... seems to be rewarding chancers to me.

I agree, Dave.  I wasn't arguing the case in favour of over-inflated prices and over-inflated incomes.  

Just saying that's the way it is.

There are people in the world who will happily pay more for something as some kind of status symbol.  I remember watching a programme about "Britain's Richest People" (you know, one of those trashy ITV2 things).  There was some orange-skinned, steroid-abusing  tw@t who only dated glamour models, had the only Black American Express card in England (or something), had a watch identical to David Beckham's (or George Clooney's, or somebody's)... but with extra diamonds.  Etc, etc.

Anyway, at one point this clown went to his tailor's to get a suit made.  They had some material with pinstripes made of real gold, but when they told him the price he just looked dismayed asked if they had something more expensive!  :roll:

And that's the sort of person who pays £300 for his bird inlays and £1,000 for an extra "A" on the grade of his maple top.  Probably.

[Dakine]

Philly/Dave, although I wholeheartedly agree with you for the most part I would like to interject somthing else.

Being brought up in the family/family biz that I was I ALWAYS consider resale.

With this in mind, most people 'expect' a PRS to have birds (signature really). So this obviously helps resale. Also, although the MSRP is 300 sheckles that does not translate to price paid in my exp., just another take on what can be viewed as 'pricey and useless upgrades'.