Golden Age of Affordable Guitars? Agree?

[zombywoof]

Originally Posted by zhunter

I'm old. D18s are $500. 40s D18s are $1500, Les Pauls are $350, Super 400s are $1100 etc. OK, not true for a long time but it is hard to completely erase those memories.

You can't be that old as I recall in 1970 you could buy a brand spanking new D-18 for about $300.

[zhunter]

Originally Posted by zombywoof

You can't be that old as I recall in 1970 you could buy a brand spanking new D-18 for about $300.

I couldn't afford to shop for one in 1970.

hunter

[jazzd]

Originally Posted by Lacks Focus

I'm not sure where you get this idea you expressed here, and in your other thread, that unsold guitars (by the thousands, no less) get dumped to make way for the next year's models. At least among the major big names, I doubt that happens. I've known people who own guitar shops and older guitars aren't taken out and shot. They stay on the wall until they move - if that means a lower price to clear it out, then fine. But they don't go into a landfill. No one that sells Martins (for example) needs to get rid of their 2014s because they didn't sell before a carload of 2015s comes in. They order what they need to replace the stock they sold. The manufacturers adjust their production accordingly.

I'm not sure how the mass-produced pac-rim makers do it, but I'm sure there are no Martins or Taylors going into chippers because they were unsold.

Just what I learned from friends/fam who sell.

You're right I mostly am talking about the mega-mass-producers like Sammick, and big-box retailers like GC, Musiciansfriend, 123 etc.

They do indeed have thousands that go unsold every year, on top of a huge used supply, and while those are mostly the undesirables, they do also often include many that are just too expensive for players to spring for.

And b/c they have a contractual bottom limit on how low they're allowed to mark some primo ones down, many of those do go unsold forever.

My local GC has a Breedlove they're actually flat-out not allowed to sell, b/c they can't mark it down enough in proportion to how old it is.

They have to be honest about how old it is, but b/c no one will buy one that old at that high a price, (b/c it's too close to the price of new ones), HQ just told them to keep it off the rack to make room for newer ones. Shelved and wasted forever.

GC acoustic rep says this is not a super-rare occurrence. Meant to maintain a brand's perceived value. Can't have an $800 Masterclass out there, no matter what. Multiply that globally. Darn shame. Food for thought.

[jazzd]

Originally Posted by Grumbum

Maybe. I bought an all solid wood guitar with ebony fretboard and bridge for $300.

But as was stated, Martin's were a bit cheaper for some of their better guitars.

I think the cheapo guitars have gotten a lot better, but the really nice guitars have gotten much more expensive.

This. Perfectly said. ^

[wvblues]

Well I have never played a masterclass breedlove - but spent the whole day just driving around from town to town playing guitars and I just played Breedlove solo that just blew me away.
Breedlove is cranking out some great guitars at affordable prices.

[jazzd]

Originally Posted by Br1ck

Collectively, it is we who set prices, not the other way around. If we decided not to buy $5000 guitars, none would be made, or the same guitar would be sold for less, but in a society that measures success with money, it is just another product designed to measure your worth.

That it is a product that provides pleasure is really secondary to commerce.

I am in some way happy that the large manufacturers have inflated their profit margins on their high end products to a point where it makes a one man shop a viable alternative.

I also applaud Halcyon and Pono, just to name two, who have targeted a price range and endeavor to build a very good product for their target market, but in the end, they are commercial ventures, and we as consumers will dictate to some extent the pricing of such products in the future.

Yup. But the market is manipulated too much, w/ specs-jockeying being used to fool us into buying something that's only "worth" $5k b/c we are suckers.

Decent tone is well-affordable and that's awesome. But *great tone is now out of pretty much everyone's reach. That's horrible.

Again I say- the cheap guitars def way better, but the GREAT guitars are getting disproportionately and deceptively more expensive.

Part of this is due to dwindling premium wood, but you'd better believe that fact is overblown as an excuse to raise prices.

Perceived value based on a lie is a hallucination, and that's what crashes markets and eats the world's resources.

TG for Halcyon and the like.

[jazzd]

Originally Posted by wvblues

Well I have never played a masterclass breedlove - but spent the whole day just driving around from town to town playing guitars and I just played Breedlove solo that just blew me away.
Breedlove is cranking out some great guitars at affordable prices.

Heh, the solo is nice but the sound prob blew you away that soundhole is pointing right atcha

They're totally serviceable, lots of fun.

Hard call; on the one hand I'd say "Oh you've GOTTA hear the Masterclasses holy smokes."

But on the other hand once you do, cheaper guitars might just only break your heart.

My luthier buddy calls'm "Guitar-shaped-objects."

Once you hear what guitars can really be, and long ago pretty much ALL were; it's hard to get over.

[specialk55]

Originally Posted by wvblues

Well I have never played a masterclass breedlove - but spent the whole day just driving around from town to town playing guitars and I just played Breedlove solo that just blew me away.
Breedlove is cranking out some great guitars at affordable prices.

I don't need to be reading this.
I'm currently playing a Chinese Cort that was a lot of bang for the buck, and want a Breedlove Oregon Concert. But at 4x the price of the Cort, is the Breedlove 4x the guitar? I dunno.

[jazzd]

Originally Posted by zhunter

I'm old. D18s are $500. 40s D18s are $1500, Les Pauls are $350, Super 400s are $1100 etc. OK, not true for a long time but it is hard to completely erase those memories. I think I'd cap affordable below $1500. But that is not worth debating.

I agree that this is a golden age of affordable guitars...at todays prices. I'm talking $300-$800 buys a serviceable, playable, acceptable to decent to good sounding instrument. The comparable instrument available when the D18s were 5 bills was almost always none of those things.

hunter

Yes, but once upon a time if you could afford a guitar at all, you could probably afford something that would take your breath away.

Not so today. Paper specs and decent/serviceable guits are way better for the money now than ever, but the price for fantastic tone is more over-inflated than ever too.

To me that's a Golden Age, but of both Guitar Mediocrity and Unaffordable Greatness.

[jazzd]

Originally Posted by zombywoof

I would say we are living in a Golden Age of "cheap" guitars (less than $600) but not of Affordable guitars as set by the $1500 limit. Again, it is hard to say this is a Golden Age when a 15 Series Martin takes a bigger bite out of you budget than an 18 series guitar and as big a bite as some 28 series guitars once did.

EXACTLY... that's all I'm sayin...

[jazzd]

Originally Posted by jetcode

This is the age of guitar gluttony. At some point there will be more guitars than people.

Yeah, that to me is the heart of the prob; too many new ones being made, too many old ones never played = too much tonewood being used up = prices going too high for premium axes.

[terrapin]

Originally Posted by jazzd

Yeah, that to me is the heart of the prob; too many new ones being made, too many old ones never played = too much tonewood being used up = prices going too high for premium axes.

Excuse me, but this sounds like a comment my dad would make!

[rogthefrog]

Originally Posted by catdaddy

I think the quality "floor" has been raised considerably in the last couple of decades. The proliferation of "guitar shaped objects" that littered the sub $500 category when I was younger has been replaced by decent instruments that are actually playable and structurally sound.

I remember shopping for a gigging guitar back in the early 90's and being dismayed at the junk that was being sold. I routinely found new guitars for sale that had poor intonation, bulging bridges, neck angle anomalies, loose braces, buzzes, rattles, etc. Nothing under the $1000 level at my local guitar shops was worth considering. I ended up spending $1100 on a Simon and Patrick (a brand I'd never heard of at the time) Pro Rosewood that was clearly higher quality than anything else I auditioned. Today a comparable Simon and Patrick model would cost well under $1000 and would be as good or better in quality than my old Pro Rosewood. I think any of us who have reached their Golden Years and remember the bad old days would agree that this is the Golden Age Of Affordable Guitars.

This. I'm a generation younger and have no nostalgia for the cheaper stuff from just 25 years ago. The floor has been raised considerably.

And so has the ceiling. The past 25 years is when the most skilled builders of all time have really reached peak awesomeness through practice.

It's hard to find a guitar that's not at the very least properly intonated, adjustable to your specs, playable and decent-sounding.

[rogthefrog]

Originally Posted by redir

With the excretion of a few brands like Yamaha

Typo of the day.

[cyclistbrian]

Originally Posted by jazzd

Yeah, that to me is the heart of the prob; too many new ones being made, too many old ones never played = too much tonewood being used up = prices going too high for premium axes.

Seems to me that we are in a golden age of luthurie. There are a ton of small builders making hand crafted guitars, often at breathtaking prices. I had a chance to try a cedar over koa Froggy Bottom a while ago. It was the best sounding guitar I've ever tried by far. Are all of these artisan guitars magical? Probably not. Too expensive? I guess I would expect to pay a good crafts-person what they are worth.

Like I tell my customers. If you want a good safe electrical install or repair that is insured, guaranteed and meets code, call me. If you want to cheap out, take your chances, and play with fire, call Joe handyman.

Probably too many low end guitars being made. I agree that a lot of them sound like a box stuffed with socks solid tops not withstanding but at least they are playable boxes. Most get bought and stuffed in a closet and forgotten once the person who buys them figures out they don't play themselves.

Here's another mystery. Lets find all of the forgotten guitars. Somewhere locked in hundreds or thousands of closets or attics across this great land is someones holy grail from the seventies or eighties just waiting to be given away, possibly for free, or $50 a at garage sale. (that's jumble for our British members)