Quote:
Originally Posted by gfirob
I thought about this in a long-long term sense, on a broader scale. Anybody who has been playing attention has seen Chinese guitar quality get better and better. Many of them have more actual hand work in them than the increasingly CNC ‘d American guitars do. Their wood sourcing is good, and better and better things are made there?
Every time a western company brings its design and quality control skill to a Chinese outfit, their stuff gets better. At some point the competition in the market place will get painful, particularly as younger players have less stereotypical problems with Chinese instruments and American instruments are increasingly out of reach.
So I worry about the American manufacturers. Brand loyalty, sentimental association, and the mystical cords memory are only going to last so long.
I don’t blame Bourgeois for doing this, it sounds like good business sense, and I’ll bet these hybrid guitars from China are going to be very good. I don’t think its very good for the larger American guitar industry, but that is what capitalism and market competition is all about.
There used to be 10 little factories in our Vermont valley, making things out of wood—plywood, tool handles, wooden bowls. They are all gone. The jobs are gone, the schools are shrinking, the towns are fading. Look out, Nazareth, Pennsylvania.
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With the increasingly high quality from overseas production you mention, I’ve noticed a marked shift in attitude online over the past 10 years by North Americans who used to insist “buy domestic, our products are better quality” to “I work hard for my money and insist on the best value, no matter the origin of production”.
Personally, I think Dana’s approach is a more sophisticated solution of “if we can’t beat them, best to work with them”.