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  #31  
Old 03-27-2015, 07:58 PM
Captaincranky Captaincranky is offline
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Originally Posted by mc1 View Post
well, there certainly are poorer countries than china, and how much labour, really, is required to build guitars?.
Have you ever tried, or succeeded, in building one? It may not be digging ditches, but it certainly is labor involved with respect the number of steps involved, and accuracy required.

And, "how much labor is involved", is a question you should really be directing at Gibson or Martin's executives. Have you seen their prices recently?

Last edited by Glennwillow; 03-29-2015 at 08:24 PM. Reason: no brand bashing
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  #32  
Old 03-27-2015, 08:50 PM
MBE MBE is offline
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Right now, I think it's a golden age for all budget levels of instruments. Sure, there are infinitely better budget guitars than in decades past, but the relative cost of a quality American guitar (relative to inflation and average salaries) is lower than ever, and the high-end of handbuilt guitars are achieving feats of construction, playability and tone that guitarists of 50 years ago could only dream of.
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  #33  
Old 03-27-2015, 08:56 PM
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Originally Posted by Fatstrat View Post
I agree to a point. And disagree with Captaincranky.
IMO a lot of the 1970's/80 Japanese builts were really good guitars. The only problem was that they were mostly if not all, all laminates. I think some of the old Alvarez, Ventura, Lawsuit Taks, and higher number Yamaha FG series would come close to standing pretty well against anything in the $300. range today. Laminate or solid. They were well made and played sounded good.
But there's no denying that a solid top guitar in general is a better deal. And some of the current offering are great guitars at that pricepoint.
The Alvarez guitars coming out of Japan at that time were being hand-built in Kani by Kazuo Yairi - it would be more honest to equate them with anything in the $2000 to $2500 range today rather than $300. K Yairi was a master and the exception to many rules. I know - I've owned one for over 36 years.
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  #34  
Old 03-27-2015, 08:56 PM
mc1 mc1 is offline
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Originally Posted by Captaincranky View Post
Have you ever tried, or succeeded, in building one? It may not be digging ditches, but it certainly is labor involved with respect the number of steps involved, and accuracy required.

And, "how much labor is involved", is a question you should really be directing at Gibson or Martin's executives. Have you seen their prices recently?
wha?......

Last edited by Glennwillow; 03-29-2015 at 08:25 PM. Reason: edited quote
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  #35  
Old 03-27-2015, 09:07 PM
Captaincranky Captaincranky is offline
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wha?......
You're questioning my concepts, or my heresy?
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  #36  
Old 03-27-2015, 09:11 PM
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Agreed! You do not have to spend thousands to get a phenomenal instrument these days.
Yeah, you do. What makes an instrument phenomenal can't be done by people paid very little and asked to build guitars very quickly.

You can get very good instruments for under $1000. I own two.

But phenomenal?

If a $350 Yamaha is phenomenal, what words do we have left for a Somogyi?
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  #37  
Old 03-27-2015, 09:11 PM
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I have 2 steel string guitars, the Gibson Hummingbird Pro (a specialty Gibson Songwriter made exclusively for GC) at $2200 and my Epiphone EJ-200 which was (and still is) $399. If I do not play guitar for a week (which is exceedingly rare friends) and go into my guitar room, I usually play the Epi first. Wow, it sounds good - It has a real deep, rich tone, especially with the EXP strings on her. I sit for 1/2 hour playing it and thinking "I don't need that darn Gibson - listen to how good this Indonesian thing sounds!" Yes, it's really quite good - deep basses, crisp highs, solid build, excellent action and playability.

But then I pull the Gibson out of the case, and with the first fingerpick and strum, the poor old Epi sinks back, humbly, into the corner of my mind. No matter how the Epi impresses me, the Gibson is soooooo superior -- resonant, deep lows, devastating mids, such a meal of sound.

I do that probably once every three months - play the Epi, let it impress me, and then switch to the Hummingbird and get blown to pieces by the quality of the sound. I fall for that all the time. I'm fortunate that I pick up the Gibson before I wander over to the computer and post on AGF: "WOW - The Epi EJ-200 is as good as the Gibson!!!" or some other such idiocy lol . . .

And let's not even talk about the Yairi - that one is on a completely different planet
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  #38  
Old 03-27-2015, 09:22 PM
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I offered a similar comment in a thread about two years ago that ended up with something like 1200 responses. It got quite heated.

I don't know what inexpensive guitars were like twenty years ago. I know what they were like forty-five or fifty years ago, though, and they did not compare favorably at all to the ones being built now. My dad still has a 1958 Sears Silvertone archtop. The best thing that happened to it was when I drank too much beer at age eighteen and sat on it. He glued it back together, and it sounded a little better after that.

I keep a Fender at my wife's apartment in Poland. It sounds fabulous for around 180 dollars.
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  #39  
Old 03-27-2015, 09:24 PM
Captaincranky Captaincranky is offline
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Originally Posted by rogthefrog View Post
...[ ]... If a $350 Yamaha is phenomenal, what words do we have left for a Somogyi?
With somewhere in the vicinity of 300,000 word in they English language, I sure there's few left if you put your mind to looking for them.
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  #40  
Old 03-27-2015, 09:36 PM
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Originally Posted by Captaincranky View Post
With somewhere in the vicinity of 300,000 word in they English language, I sure there's few left if you put your mind to looking for them.
I'd say the burden of vocabulary selection is on the person describing a RK Dirty Thirties or entry level Yamaha as phenomenal.
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  #41  
Old 03-27-2015, 09:42 PM
MBE MBE is offline
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Originally Posted by rogthefrog View Post
I'd say the burden of vocabulary selection is on the person describing a RK Dirty Thirties or entry level Yamaha as phenomenal.
I'm gonna have to side with Rog on this one. While I have played and enjoyed many a cheap-but-good guitar, "phenomenal" doesn't spring to mind unless the next word in my sentence is "value".
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  #42  
Old 03-27-2015, 10:03 PM
Captaincranky Captaincranky is offline
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Originally Posted by MBE View Post
I'm gonna have to side with Rog on this one. While I have played and enjoyed many a cheap-but-good guitar, "phenomenal" doesn't spring to mind unless the next word in my sentence is "value".
With modern advertising superlatives floating in all of our heads, all of the time, I propose that the traditional definition of "phenomenal", has been diluted to, "high quality", "above average", "what a bargain.

However, I don't think that gives anybody a reason to wave a white flag and call "bull".

Here, I'll show you how to play the uber superlative game:

"Phenomenal" is an adjective which has been used, abused, overused, to the point where it has become merely a pedestrian catchphrase, with little value left to describe the truly unique, to be able to separate the magnificent stallion from his herd of brood mares, or to identify the truly exceptional when confronted with it.

And so it is with the , "MyGuitar 9900 series". One strum, and you envision choirs of angels on your shoulders, singing. The sound and quality of this instrument leave the contemporary meaning of "phenominal", relegated to describing the vulgarity of cigar boxes strung with used strings.

To excel outside the boundaries of anything that has come before it, and to outstrip the now repetitive platitude of "phenominal", was our only motivation for creating this, MyGuitar 9900, for the one discerning musician in 10,000, who can truly appreciate its angelic voice.

How'd I do?

Last edited by M19; 03-28-2015 at 08:47 AM.
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  #43  
Old 03-27-2015, 10:11 PM
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There are phenomenal $300 guitars and there are phenomenal $10,000 guitars....but 99.9% of the time they absolutely are not "phenomenal" in the same way or to the same degree.
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  #44  
Old 03-28-2015, 06:16 AM
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In the 70s most everything was laminate, but I bought a Yamaha 12 string for about 400, played it mostly as a 6 string for 25 years, but in the nineties you started to be able to get some nice Solid tops. China, now thru Alvarez, Blueridge, Recording King, Yamaha and many others are putting out a real quality product for the money.
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  #45  
Old 03-28-2015, 07:04 AM
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Originally Posted by Mark Stone View Post
The Alvarez guitars coming out of Japan at that time were being hand-built in Kani by Kazuo Yairi - it would be more honest to equate them with anything in the $2000 to $2500 range today rather than $300. K Yairi was a master and the exception to many rules. I know - I've owned one for over 36 years.
I'm not sure all of them were hand built. There's a difference between the the store rack Alvarez 5022 and an Alvarez Yari. But even the average 5022 was a great guitar.
For our younger members, I think on this subject it's important to understand the history of what happened. And perhaps why. Beginning in the late 1950's the popularity of guitar literally exploded. Far outpacing the ability of the established manufacturers to keep up. Enter the Japanese who began to fill the gap with affordable mostly all laminate copies of popular American made designs. Like anything else, a few were pretty crappy. And some were good guitars that were precisely built with the principal difference in quality being the difference in being solid wood vs. laminate.
I agree that sometime in the late 1970's into the 1980's, about the time that manufacturing began to move and shift around to other Asian countries, that general overall quality across the board took a noticeable downward trend as the explosion in guitar sales continued. More and more brands, many now defunct, were introduced. In the case of Alvarez, this IMO is about the time that they changed the headstock logo design from an inlaid word "Alvarez" to the stylized A. But I attribute this to the same growing pains that even Martin and Gibson went through. Lots of competition in everything from getting raw materials, building factories to increase production etc. All meant a general trend in attempted streamlining of manufacturing methods. Which unfortunately caused cutting corners and resulting shoddy construction.
Most of which in the case of the now well known brands (Yamaha, Alvarez, Epiphone etc) has been worked through. While many other brands fell by the wayside and are now gone.
Then you factor in modern advances (CNC) in production & machining of parts vs. the old handmade methods. And that guitar popularity has now at least stabilized, if not dropped. Things have kind of leveled out.
I think most of todays guitars start with pretty standard quality parts. And the manufacturing processes are pretty well down to an assembly line science now. Not only in Asia, but also on American guitars. But still an occasional lemon is produced, by ALL of them. We've all heard the reports of new Martin's and Gibson's with major construction flaws.
IMO the trend towards using more solid woods in Asian guitars is the result of two factors. 1st. Guitars Forums such as this and increased knowledge & information. Honestly back in the 1970's, most of us had NO CLUE that there was a solid vs. laminate wood difference. We just had a very basic idea that the difference was in being "American made" vs. foreign. Which was enforced by the price. American made cost more and therefore had to be better. But we really didn't understand the reasons why. Until the advent of the internet and learned it on forums such as this. Actually in the 1970's, the Japanese were getting away with selling Laminate copies of the "fancy" American made guitars for about 2/3 the cost of the real deal. And the public bought them. But the bloom is off that rose now. We're much more educated about guitar construction, care, and quality now. We now KNOW the difference. Which has forced the Asian builders to step up their game and begin building more solid wood guitars. And be more careful in construction.
One lemon Epiphone as we saw on this forum recently, isn't just found out about by a small circle of word of mouth friends. Millions hear about it on guitar forums.
I do believe that we are in a "golden age" of budget guitars. IMO even the $100. Epiphone's are generally good quality guitars that as far as construction and playability surpass by far the quality and tones of the old Silvertones and Stella's of the past. But are not IMO as good as some the 1970's MIJ builts.
I know if I run across a 1970's Alvarez in good condition cheap at garage sale, I BUY IT. It's likely a GREAT guitar that will hold it's own with the $300. solid top models of today.
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