[Goat Mick]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

I quite like Richard. He seems like the sort of chap that I'd buy from him.

Yes he rambled. I ramble on my videos too - perhaps it's just an old Englishman thing !? Funny thing is , people write and tell me that they enjoy listening to my rambles ... which is nice, but I try to keep my videos to around ten minutes now.

What he is saying is that Far Eastern made products are now as good as , shall we say, the budget end of American made products and far better value.

There are exceptions of course, and the Chinese made products are NOT made in "sweat shops" or by forced labour. Their current cost of living and standard of living makes them more competitive than the US equivalent.

This is what business competitiveness is all about.

The important message, is that Eastman generally make pretty good products.

I run an acoustic music club, and attend others, and I see a lot of people come to play with a large variety of guitars.

There are three or four regulars who are rabid budget guitar buyers who seem to be collecting guitars under a certain value.

With my knowledge of their playing it is very interesting to hear the quality of the various budget brands played by them.

One guy has two modern Gibsons, two Taylors, and two Eastmans, and a Yamaha with some awful "built in" reverb electrics.
The Eastman that he brings along mostly now is a small round bout jumbo with a cutaway that looks suspiciously like a Taylor - not my style of guitar at all, but, it is the best sounding guitar he owns in my opinion.

In a common duo - the lady plays a now pretty mature Blueridge Gibson Jumbo style guitar - which sounds beautiful.

Other makes that consistently impress are Faith and Ayers (Indonesia?)

Sigma, Recording King and "Vintage" guitars all tend to fall below the bar.

We also see higher range Martins and Taylors and they show their price levels as far as tonality and projection.

This is all just my opinion but based on some careful listening experiences.

I have three American Made guitars that I consider higher end instruments (Gibson J-45, Taylor 710, Martin 000-17) and they are all wonderful. However I find myself reaching for either my Ibanez AVC6 or my Farida OT-22 more often than not. They are just really good sounding and well built guitars. It is great to live in a time when there are so many quality guitars for all budgets.