What's Cheap?

[gingataff]

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.

[headtheball]

An Eggle Wave for £400.
A Fender US Voodoo Strat for £350.

All my guitars have been "cheap". I reckon I'm just lucky.

[HTH AMPS]

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.

[MDV]

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.

[ToneMonkey]

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)

[Philly Q]

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?

[indysmith]

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.

[Philly Q]

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.   

[Kilby]

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

[AndyR]

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

[Twinfan]

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  ;)

[ToneMonkey]

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.

[dave_mc]

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.

[Kilby]

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.

[Ian Price]

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.