Has the boutique bubble burst??

ThorpyFX

ICBM said:

pluckbuddy said:

Fender have entered the boutique market again with their new 64 deluxe reverb.

But a Fender cannot be boutique no matter how well-made they are, because they are "corporate" "big business" and "mass-produced".



Which reminds me to ask - when people are talking about 'boutique' here or elsewhere, do they mean genuinely small companies like RiftAmps, MJW etc who are true one-man builders and still assemble more or less everything by hand, or do they mean the mass-produced amps and pedals which despite having dozens of different names on them, all come out of the same giant factory in (I think) California? Because those are not actually 'boutique' other than in marketing terms - they're at least as mass-produced as a Fender.

This, the one man band, small workshop style of builder is probably as close a description as you can get to describing boutique in the guitar sense. After you hit a certain size (who knows what that is) or output quantity, then you'd struggle to be described as boutique. 

guitarfishbay

People are less likely to post amps so this reduces the market size per item - which does have a larger knock on effect on all pricing it seems

Dominic

It's perhaps not so much that Boutique amp prices are generally depressed but just like fashion boutiques ;
Last year's style dates quickly in clothing terms and it's all about trend
" Boutique" Amps are fashion driven...........the latest wonderful new re-invention the wheel........as soon as the hype dies down so does the price.
............and then the latest "must-have" amp du jour comes along and for 12 months the secondhand prices stay very high
Lazy J anyone ?

midlifecrisis

personally im more confident dropping a few hundred on a guitar where it can be seen and most apparent faults show  whereas an amp might sound fine during the 20 minutes you play with it at the guys house but who knows what awaits when you plug it in later, and not being electronically wise it means a possible expensive trip to a tech.

Teetonetal

ICBM said:

pluckbuddy said:

Fender have entered the boutique market again with their new 64 deluxe reverb.

But a Fender cannot be boutique no matter how well-made they are, because they are "corporate" "big business" and "mass-produced".



Which reminds me to ask - when people are talking about 'boutique' here or elsewhere, do they mean genuinely small companies like RiftAmps, MJW etc who are true one-man builders and still assemble more or less everything by hand, or do they mean the mass-produced amps and pedals which despite having dozens of different names on them, all come out of the same giant factory in (I think) California? Because those are not actually 'boutique' other than in marketing terms - they're at least as mass-produced as a Fender.

Your problem there is, who knows what that factory produces.

I read some where that all Chase Bliss stuff is made out side now and only finished by CB. Seem to recall the same for wampler.

Also now complicated by how many pedals are actually the same box with a different algorithm on the SPIN chip...(keeley?)

I think for many boutique simply means expensive.

Modulus_Amps

If you can ask the builder to include an effects loop/extra feature and they can do it then it is probably boutique, this is why Fender have Custom shop, that is there boutique side really.

This is a USA "boutique" build for a brand already mentioned in this thread, don't buy this crap! most pro-builders can look at this layout and know what the amp is.

NPP

guitarfishbay said:

People are less likely to post amps so this reduces the market size per item - which does have a larger knock on effect on all pricing it seems

I was waiting for that point to come up. It has more or less made me give up on buying an amp on here. There have been lots of tasty things on offer, but usually far away, and as I have resolved to get rid of my Blues jr. before or at the same time as buying something else I'm more or less stuck. I realise I'm making things difficult for myself, but the physical difficulties of moving amps from seller to buyer play a large part here.  

vasselmeyer

@NPP Do you fancy an Egnater Rebel 30 212? I'm close enough to deliver 

NPP

vasselmeyer said:

@NPP Do you fancy an Egnater Rebel 30 212? I'm close enough to deliver 

not really, sorry. I was looking more for a Princeton or ideally Deluxe type thing - and a buyer for the Blues jr! I had the latter offered for trade in my sig for some years until Photobucket deleted the pics. You see the general level of urgency that matter has for me (i.e. I can't get off my arse) ...

ThePrettyDamned

Modulus_Amps said:

If you can ask the builder to include an effects loop/extra feature and they can do it then it is probably boutique, this is why Fender have Custom shop, that is there boutique side really.

This is a USA "boutique" build for a brand already mentioned in this thread, don't buy this crap! most pro-builders can look at this layout and know what the amp is.

Ooo intrigued. Spill!

I remember hearing that a couple of us boutique brands were just production line amps - they probably didn't start that way, but the business expands and they need more production. They share the same factory with loads of other companies. 

MartinB

Modulus_Amps said:

This is a USA "boutique" build for a brand already mentioned in this thread, don't buy this crap! most pro-builders can look at this layout and know what the amp is.

Hmm, looks like fairly straight Princeton Reverb copy, albeit in a tweed-style chassis with a load of inexplicable red paint on everything.  I don't want to know what that costs, do I? 

ruoma

Well I've been looking for a second amp to complement the j20 for ages now and got fed up with the search and curiously bought a kemper. And to be honest, I think I'm going to halt the search for now. It really is pretty darn good, and will help me find my tone and preferred style of amp in a much cheaper way. Perhaps later I'll buy the real thing for that last 15%. But I agree, buying boutique is just so darn expensive and tricky to get rid of these days. 

professorben

MartinB said:

Modulus_Amps said:

This is a USA "boutique" build for a brand already mentioned in this thread, don't buy this crap! most pro-builders can look at this layout and know what the amp is.

Hmm, looks like fairly straight Princeton Reverb copy, albeit in a tweed-style chassis with a load of inexplicable red paint on everything.  I don't want to know what that costs, do I? 

I'm not sure what that is, but has he painted all the components so you can't tell what the values are? 

Is this the amp equivalent of 'gooping'

ICBM

professorben said:

I'm not sure what that is, but has he painted all the components so you can't tell what the values are? 

Is this the amp equivalent of 'gooping'

Yes, and it's really beyond stupid. Not to mention adding a completely unnecessary extra cost to the amp, which the buyer ends up paying. As with most of these things it's more to disguise that the circuit is *not* original than that it is.

To be quite honest if someone brought me an amp like that for repair, I would be highly tempted to tell the owner to just send it back to the manufacturer because I can't be bothered working on it, even though I could make good guesses as to what all the values are and measure them if I needed to be sure.

MartinB

It's odd, as it's an amp design which is very well documented and understood, on which any number of techs should know exactly what to tweak to adjust it to taste.  I don't think the maker is so much attempting to protect a proprietary "magic" set of component values, as selling the idea that he has the magic formula for this amp. 

polotska

ICBM said:

Which reminds me to ask - when people are talking about 'boutique' here or elsewhere, do they mean genuinely small companies like RiftAmps, MJW etc who are true one-man builders and still assemble more or less everything by hand, or do they mean the mass-produced amps and pedals which despite having dozens of different names on them, all come out of the same giant factory in (I think) California? Because those are not actually 'boutique' other than in marketing terms - they're at least as mass-produced as a Fender.

I think the company you’re referring to is “Boutique Amps Distribution” in the Los Angeles area. There’s a tour of the facility on YouTube (beware: the host of the video is extremely annoying):

hotpickups

I think once you've settled with a sound after many trials with other amps s boutique is the best choice for future maintenance. I've had my lazy j now for 4 years and recently bought another boutique amp a Dualist and absolutely love then both for different reasons. As mentioned if you try and buy and sell on soon then boutique really isn't for you imo

ICBM

polotska said:

I think the company you’re referring to is “Boutique Amps Distribution” in the Los Angeles area. There’s a tour of the facility on YouTube (beware: the host of the video is extremely annoying):

Yes, that's it. Essentially all these "boutique" brands are just as mass-produced as the ones the "boutique" buyers like to deride for being so, except that with modern computer-controlled manufacturing it's possible to diversify the product range to the point they look like they come from different companies. They may well be high quality, but they are most certainly not hand-made in the way most of the snobs seem to think is desirable.

To be fair I don't actually find Henning *that* annoying, at least in small doses! Not as much as He Who Must Not Be Named anyway .

clarkefan

I admire the business model to be honest.  People good at designing amp models aren't necessarily any good at up-scaling to meet demand when it goes beyond one-per-week-in-the-garage level.  There have been some serious debacles in this area in the States with builders taking thousands off punters and then going under.

And everybody concerned gets confidence the thing is built properly by trained people who do what they do day in day out.  So everybody wins.

Don't like the high prices, don't pay them?

ICBM

clarkefan said:

I admire the business model to be honest.  People good at designing amp models aren't necessarily any good at up-scaling to meet demand when it goes beyond one-per-week-in-the-garage level.  There have been some serious debacles in this area in the States with builders taking thousands off punters and then going under.

And everybody concerned gets confidence the thing is built properly by trained people who do what they do day in day out.  So everybody wins.

Don't like the high prices, don't pay them?

I like the quality of manufacturing and the ability for small designers to get things made properly, but not the slightly dishonest marketing that goes with it. I would guess that quite a few boutique buyers wouldn't be too happy to know that their expensive amp or pedal wasn't actually made by the purported builder in a small workshop, but was done by CAD/CNC in an enormous factory just like if it was a Roland, Fender or whatever "mass produced" product they decided not to buy for less money.

Whether they're right to be concerned about how something is made is another issue, but it is definitely part of the way this sort of stuff is marketed.