fretboard journal's take on death of electrics

[muscmp]

fretboard journal's take on the death of electric guitars.




Last week, the Washington Post penned one of the longer mainstream pieces on the guitar industry we've seen in recent memory, entited "The Slow Secret Death of the Electric Guitar" (link here). It went pretty viral, at least on our social media feeds. The piece used Guitar Center, Fender and Gibson sales figures (and some choice commentary from George Gruhn) to paint a pretty bleak picture of the industry's future: Fewer new guitarists taking up the hobby, no new guitar heroes and too many guitars available. Yes, we've heard this story before (and heard it disputed before, too).

But the reality isn't that simple.

It didn't take too long for many retailers (including Carter Vintage and Gruhn himself) to remind their followers that they're having some of their best years yet in terms of sales. Gruhn's exact statement said, "the guitar market is under stress from over-saturation [new manufacturers], but that by no means is the market for guitars simply dying." We tend to agree: I've seen numerous high-end and vintage shops flourish because they're selling instruments customers actually want. In our own backyard, a little shop called Mike & Mike's Guitar Bar just moved out of their garage and into a nice new brick & mortar shop; another Seattle shop (Thunder Road) just announced they're opening a new branch in Portland. This doesn't seem like a death knell... We also continue to see great new small-production electric and acoustic guitar makers (not to mention pedal builders, who are their own little universe) flourish. I just returned from the Vancouver International Guitar Festival, where the aisles were packed with customers of all ages.

[tadmania]

There we go!

[blue]

I can show similar obituaries for the acoustic from the 90's. First of all music had changed so sales were down, and we wouldn't be able to get ANY of the woods. I'm talking even spruce, maple, and walnut... So yeah... End of the acoustic...

[Steve DeRosa]

FYI there's also a whole bunch of new amp companies/designs out there - everything from two-tube single-ended class-A to cutting-edge modeling, in every price range - and last time I looked, you've got to plug in an electric guitar in order to make music...

Where I'm from a lot of us older guys are rediscovering the music of our youth - rockabilly, 50s-60s R&R/R&B, first-wave Brit Invasion, surf, et al. - and playing out with the instruments (or recent reissues) originally used to produce these tones; there's also a flourishing scene of amazing younger musicians - one junior-high-age hard-rock/metal outfit absolutely floored me when they appeared on local cable TV - so there's a legacy as well...

Don't sweat it, fellas and girls - electrics aren't going away anytime soon...

[1neeto]

The article pretty much mentioned that the electric guitar market is stagnant at best. It is not the 60's-80's where the cool thing to do was to buy an electric guitar and emulate the gods of the time. Back in the 60's and 70's we had Hendrix, Page, Blackmore, Gilmour, Iommi and just way too many more to mention. Then the 80's many of those who started to make a name for themselves in the late 70's pioneered a whole different level of technical playing. EVH, Vai, Rhoads, Malmsteem. Then in the 90's, technical playing started to fade and the guitar solo started to take a back seat. Thank you Kurt Cobain. After that, guitar music didn't evolve much at the turn of the century. We can recognize the style of a 60's 70's 80's, and 90's rock songs. But when we get towards the year 2000, then everything started to sound the same. Right now many early 2000's songs sound like they might have well been written this year. And I think that's because of the "death" of the guitar hero. There's nobody in the mainstream adding anything new with an electric guitar. I mean as far as the mainstream is concerned, Dave Growl is a modern day guitar hero, and Avenged Sevenfold is today's Metallica.

The article also mentioned that the acoustic is out-selling the electric. Makes sense since getting into electrics can be a very complicated thing.

Also the over-saturation has also led to the new guitar market to compete with the often more desirable used guitar market. You can buy a brand New Mexican strat for $600, or buy a 5 year old but hardly played Mexican strat for $300. Hell, I've seen American Standard strats go for less than 600 bucks!

Guitars are just too well-made, especially back in the day. Even the crappy ones made overseas in the 80's have passed the test of time. I know this because I do own two of those. A 1989 Squier and a '86 Kramer Aerostar. Two junk guitars with plywood bodies, but wow they have fantastic necks. Some good pickups, and hardware, and they sound and play much better than the low hanging fruit Jacksons and Squiers you see at guitar center for $300.

Anyway I went on a tangent here, but I agree with the article. Until there's a mainstream flood of new guitar gods, the electric guitar will die a very slow but painful death.

[Silly Moustache]

I was referred to that article, and read it.

I am convinced that the baby boomer generation comprise a significant part of the guitar buying market, and I can't help but feel that most of us have already acquired most of our collection and/or achieved our dream items.

The industry is obviously working very hard to find every trick (torrified, laquer, Authentics, replicas, annual models, distressed, limited or signature editions etc., to convince us to buy essentially the same product again. If and where this works, then we need to sell off yesterday's model so the used market is over saturated.

Electrics aren't my best suit, but I see Gibson churning out Les Pauls with silly gimmicks, as if everyone still wants half a dozen, and Fender offer the same Teles and Strats at (at least) three prices justified by manufacturing source.

Carefully sidestepping around world politics, I would suggest that in at least the UK, EU, and US, Joe Public feels uncertain about the immediate future and isn't spending money on guitars right now anyway.

Neither the Electric nor the Acoustic is "dying" - in fact I think we'll see them hanging about in sad gangs on street corners, as the industry keeps over producing and us old guys just hold on to what we've got.

[dkstott]

At the studio where I take lessons, there's only 2 acoustic guitar students
(myself and another gentleman).

All the rest are younger electric guitar players. They just want to ROCK!

[blue]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

Carefully sidestepping around world politics, I would suggest that in at least the UK, EU, and US, Joe Public feels uncertain about the immediate future and isn't spending money on guitars right now anyway.

Maybe where you are. But where I am, they repeat the doom and gloom mantras as fact, but the housing market is red hot, and good luck finding any of the skilled trades for renovations or repair. They are all booking 3 to 6 months out. New restaurants opening, storefronts stay vacant for weeks, not months...

Consumerism is alive and well in my neck of the woods. And we have 2 guitar centers within 20 minutes drive, and at least 4 within an hour and a half. And have for at least 2 decades. They just renovated one to have soundproof rooms for test driving.

[redir]

Yeah it's just like when they tell ya eggs are bad for you. Just give it some time and then all of a sudden wine is now good for you... See what I did there?

[Gmountain]

All I know is that I seriously want a Stratocaster in Autumn Blaze.

[DukeX]

The end of the world, as we know it.

[aknow]

Originally Posted by 1neeto

The article pretty much mentioned that the electric guitar market is stagnant at best. It is not the 60's-80's where the cool thing to do was to buy an electric guitar and emulate the gods of the time. Back in the 60's and 70's we had Hendrix, Page, Blackmore, Gilmour, Iommi and just way too many more to mention. Then the 80's many of those who started to make a name for themselves in the late 70's pioneered a whole different level of technical playing. EVH, Vai, Rhoads, Malmsteem. Then in the 90's, technical playing started to fade and the guitar solo started to take a back seat. Thank you Kurt Cobain. After that, guitar music didn't evolve much at the turn of the century. We can recognize the style of a 60's 70's 80's, and 90's rock songs. But when we get towards the year 2000, then everything started to sound the same. Right now many early 2000's songs sound like they might have well been written this year. And I think that's because of the "death" of the guitar hero. There's nobody in the mainstream adding anything new with an electric guitar. I mean as far as the mainstream is concerned, Dave Growl is a modern day guitar hero, and Avenged Sevenfold is today's Metallica.

The article also mentioned that the acoustic is out-selling the electric. Makes sense since getting into electrics can be a very complicated thing.

Also the over-saturation has also led to the new guitar market to compete with the often more desirable used guitar market. You can buy a brand New Mexican strat for $600, or buy a 5 year old but hardly played Mexican strat for $300. Hell, I've seen American Standard strats go for less than 600 bucks!

Guitars are just too well-made, especially back in the day. Even the crappy ones made overseas in the 80's have passed the test of time. I know this because I do own two of those. A 1989 Squier and a '86 Kramer Aerostar. Two junk guitars with plywood bodies, but wow they have fantastic necks. Some good pickups, and hardware, and they sound and play much better than the low hanging fruit Jacksons and Squiers you see at guitar center for $300.

Anyway I went on a tangent here, but I agree with the article. Until there's a mainstream flood of new guitar gods, the electric guitar will die a very slow but painful death.

I agree that I never hear the guitar oriented music I grew up with, but electric guitars aren't going away. Why do companies like PRS constantly make new models both in USA and overseas? Why are there over 100 different Strats and Les Pauls? Cause people buy them. I see more electric guitars on the market than when I got my first in 1968, and there was nothing complicated about it at all.

[1neeto]

Originally Posted by aknow

I agree that I never hear the guitar oriented music I grew up with, but electric guitars aren't going away. Why do companies like PRS constantly make new models both in USA and overseas? Why are there over 100 different Strats and Les Pauls? Cause people buy them. I see more electric guitars on the market than when I got my first in 1968, and there was nothing complicated about it at all.

Read the article, the numbers simply don't lie. Manufacturers are coming up with new models because they're trying to stimulate the market. Fender and Gibson are in huge debt, and Guitar Center has been holding on for dear life for years now.

There's too many guitar manufacturers, not enough new players, and way too many great guitars in the used market.

[printer2]

I had a book in the early eighties of 100 guitar amp schematics, was a goldmine pre-internet. My brother lent it to a guy and I never saw it again. In it the author said all this distortion thing, it is just a fad and it will die out.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by DukeX

The end of the world, as we know it.

How dare they use guitars in this