Starting to look very overpriced.

Dan_Halen

Some of you buy guitars like you're accountants!

Yes, they're ultimately just tools but is it not ok to want nice tools?

RonnieHotdogs

Tools, but also functional modern art, that then creates art.

skunkwerx

I do it all with my heart. I try to bring my head along but it often doesnt work. 

At the moment the pricing between the Professional, American Original and Ultra is negligible (if I was spending £1500) then £200 bucks isnt that much more.. at all, considering the range goes: 

Performer- Professional - AO - Ultra?

The void between Performer and Professional is £500 huge. 

And chances are if you are looking at sub £1000 for a Performer, you’re not gonna be too up for spending 50% more to get to the next model up. 

Musicman20

I bought a few basses in/around 2010/2011. American Standard Jazz and Precision. They were under a £1000. In fact the P bass was £750 in a PMT sale, brand new, and it is my favourite P bass. 

I don't see how the prices can rise as much as they have. 

stickyfiddle

Dan_Halen said:

Some of you buy guitars like you're accountants!

Yes, they're ultimately just tools but is it not ok to want nice tools?

Yep. Folks should see what a full Snap-On kit costs...

Tenebrous

It's bound to look that way when the price of the higher end stuff doubles & the quality of the lower end stuff just skyrockets. You can get 90% of the way there for a quarter of the price.

BlueStrat

crunchman said:

Your analogy might work when comparing a £2k guitar with a £4k guitar, but corners have to be cut to reach a £1k price point.

At £1k, the dealer will probably be buying it in for £600 to £700.  They normally buy it from a distributor or some kind of middle man, who also has to make a profit, plus there are transport costs and import duty to think about.  The factory gate price on that £1k guitar is probably going to be around £400, and the manufacturer has to make a profit on that, so they have to be able to make for for somewhere around £350.

It's hard to make a decent guitar for £350.  There is an awful lot labour involved.  I built a guitar at Crimson last year.  I didn't quite finish while I was there, and did the wiring at home, but I put around 60 hours into that build.  With the tools I have in my shed at home, it would be 80 hours.

Someone who is doing that on a regular basis in a production line environment would be a lot quicker than me, but no-one is going to make a guitar with a nice finish and a really good fret job without a significant amount of work being done by hand.

You can cut the amount of hand work down, but that requires very expensive machinery.  I've seen 6 figure sums bandied around as the cost of a plek machine for instance.  That's not a one of cost either.  There are ongoing maintenance costs with it.  The blades go blunt etc.

You are either going to be doing a significant amount of hand work, or buying millions of pounds worth of expensive machinery.  Even with CNC, you would need multiple machines to get maximum efficiency.  You don't want to have to keep changing the cutting bit and loading new programmes.  Again, they will require maintenance, and cutting bits will wear out etc.

Let's say you spend £2m on expensive equipment to automate things, and make 100,000 guitars with it, that's still £20 per guitar just on the capital costs.  You still have to maintain that equipment on top of that, and there is still labour involved as somebody has to put the guitar onto the CNC/plek machine, and take it off, and transfer it to the next machine.

If you get that £2m of machinery, then you need a significant floor space that you have to rent and heat.  You have a lot of other overheads as well.

Then you start looking at the cost of parts and hardware.   I've been looking at online prices for wood for a build.  It's not cheap to get good quality wood.  To buy decent wood to make a guitar, it's likely to cost me around £100 - even without going for something exotic.  Big manufacturers can buy in bulk, but it's still a significant cost.

Decent hardware costs as well.  I put a nice set on Gotoh tuners on the guitar I built, but they cost about £70.  They are much better than the tuners on my Mexican Fender.   That Fender is built to a price, so it gets Fender's generic own brand tuners.

The pickups aren't great on that Mexican Fender either, but to get nice hand wound pickups, or to programme a sophisticated machine to do scatter wound pickups, would cost a lot more.

Likewise the pots.  The more expensive pots on my US Fender feel much nicer, and will probably last longer as well, but they don't fit into the budget of the Mexican guitar. 

Cheaper guitars tend to have cheap fretwire that is soft and easy to work, but doesn't last nearly as long.  I think that's partly for labour saving doing the frets as much as saving on the fretwire itself.

Individually, buying better fretwire, or better tuners, or better pots, or better pickups, or a better quality jack socket might not seem a lot, but add them together, and it takes you well over the £350 or so that you need to be able to build a guitar at to sell in a shop at £1k.

Interesting post. 

Remember that £1000 will have 20% VAT so right away you’re down to £800. 

Plus maybe import duties etc?

Corners have to get cut somewhere and soft fret wire, cheaper components Etc are those corners

Tenebrous

Out of interest, where are the cut corners on the Yamaha 611 range?

https://www.andertons.co.uk/guitar-dept/electric-guitars/modern-body-guitars/yamaha-pacifica-611vfm-electric-guitar-in-root-beer

I've had a few of these, & the attention to detail on the fretwork is better than any Fender I've owned, the hardware is solid, rosewood neck, great SD pickups, etc. No case I guess compared to a USA Fender, but at 30-40% of the price, I think that's alright.

Barnezy

TINMAN82 said:

@crunchman that’s an interesting post. No idea how accurate your figures are but it does sound plausible. Building to £350 for profit on a £1k guitar (if that’s correct) does indeed sound like a tough ask. It’s possible our expectations are slightly high these days.

That said, £1600 still seems a bit high for this family of Fenders, but my only reference is recent price points and a gut feeling!

It's a bit like the ecconomics of wine. Alot of the fixed costs in building a guitar will be same for a £1000 or a £3000 guitar. However the increase in final cost, allows more money to be spent on the actual product, such as its materials, components and production methods.

Some people like £5 bottles of wine, some don't, so the market caters for all tastes and budgets. But buying a £20 bottle of wine when you can get one for £5 is neither materialistic or being flashy. 

carlos

Tenebrous said:

Out of interest, where are the cut corners on the Yamaha 611 range?

https://www.andertons.co.uk/guitar-dept/electric-guitars/modern-body-guitars/yamaha-pacifica-611vfm-electric-guitar-in-root-beer

I've had a few of these, & the attention to detail on the fretwork is better than any Fender I've owned, the hardware is solid, rosewood neck, great SD pickups, etc. No case I guess compared to a USA Fender, but at 30-40% of the price, I think that's alright.

Corners are cut on the headstock which isn't the right shape and having a sticker that doesn't say fender

RustySpanner

Recently bought a 2019 Japanese Limited Collection Strat - nitro, Custom Shop '69 pickups, £1199.

I thought it was expensive at the time, but it's increasingly looking like a serious bargain. 

chrisj1602

I have had a few custom shop guitars over the years but I can’t afford the prices anymore.

By the time I save up for a £4,000 Les Paul they will be £6,000.

Devil#20

The only defence for paying well over the odds for these Fenders and Gibsons is they don't appear to devalue particularly quickly and in some cases not at all. Therefore, you could consider them as on hire until you move them on. If you lose a couple of hundred quid on a 5 year old guitar it's not too bad a hire charge. It's a moot point though because they are still overpriced.

I'll give my analogy. A house is overpriced. Depending where it's made will dictate its sale price which will typically be several hundred thousand pounds. But when it comes down to it, it's the same as any other house insofar as it's several tons of bricks arranged in various different configurations, some wood, some nails and a few bits of copper wiring thrown in for good measure.  

maltingsaudio

Just a comment from outside the electric debate, but my Fylde Alchemist acoustic cost me £1500 in 2004, to buy it new now would be £4500

Devil#20

maltingsaudio said:

Just a comment from outside the electric debate, but my Fylde Alchemist acoustic cost me £1500 in 2004, to buy it new now would be £4500

They used to be made by Roger Bucknall on the Fylde but he moved his business up to Penrith. Eddie Green who worked with him is a good luthier obviously and I take my guitars to him if they need sorting out. Fylde make guitars for some big names. Ritchie Blackmore gets a lot of his guitars and other stringed instruments made by them I believe. 

GoldenEraGuitars

Personally, I love when fender put their prices up

RaymondLin

RustySpanner said:

Recently bought a 2019 Japanese Limited Collection Strat - nitro, Custom Shop '69 pickups, £1199.

I thought it was expensive at the time, but it's increasingly looking like a serious bargain. 

Linky?! 

thegummy

TINMAN82 said:

The “tangible benefits” depend on the player who has it in their hands. That player will have a reference point based on experience of other instruments. 

Of course intangible, subjective factors also contribute to value, mojo and desirability as with most consumables. These things won't necessarily make a guitar sound better.

That's just the point I was making - that above about a grand, any extras that people pay more for aren't things that make it a more practical tool, it's other things that make it more appealing to some people.

There is also a grey area where someone's preference (e.g. specific neck shape) isn't available on an instrument under a grand but is available on one that costs 2 grand. It's not that it couldn't be on the cheaper one, sometimes it just isn't. That's when it gets to paying a lot more for something purely because it has your preferred spec, even though it's not objectively any better than a spec you don't prefer that's available on a cheaper one. I've done this before and it irked me to pay so much extra when I would have been completely happy with the quality of a cheaper instrument if they just happened to have a particular spec. But then it comes down to begrudgingly paying more and having what I want or settling for something different to my preference.

I think a lot of it is caused by companies creating artificial price points; i.e. they often reserve desirable features for more expensive models, not because adding them would increase the price by much at all, but just to create more demand for the higher priced models.

thegummy

crunchman said:

Not the cheap soft fretwire.  A refret by someone decent will set you back over £200.  Closer to £300 in London where I live.

By the time you do that, and replace all the hardware, you are up to the £1k mark, and maybe beyond if you go for high end hardware.

Then you still have a guitar that's probably made from cheap wood and got a horrible thick gloopy plastic finish.  I seem to remember you being from the wood doesn't affect the tone camp, so their may be some logic to your view that you can buy a cheapy and upgrade the hardware, but in reality wood does affect the tone.  A lot of knowledgeable people are also of the view that thickness of finish has an effect as well.

Re: the "cheap wood" thing - do you know from a reliable source that there are different qualities of wood used for different price point guitars or is it possibly along the lines of the "there must be reasons for the increased price" thing where it's more of an assumption?

I know that at the very high level they go to "wood libraries" and hand pick pieces of wood that they believe will be good for guitars, I'm talking more at the £500 - £1000 - £2000 levels where it's mass produced.

P.S. I'm not in the "wood doesn't affect tone" camp. I'm in the "without real evidence, both sides are guessing camp" with my own guess being that it does affect tone.

Whitecat

thegummy said:

crunchman said:

Not the cheap soft fretwire.  A refret by someone decent will set you back over £200.  Closer to £300 in London where I live.

By the time you do that, and replace all the hardware, you are up to the £1k mark, and maybe beyond if you go for high end hardware.

Then you still have a guitar that's probably made from cheap wood and got a horrible thick gloopy plastic finish.  I seem to remember you being from the wood doesn't affect the tone camp, so their may be some logic to your view that you can buy a cheapy and upgrade the hardware, but in reality wood does affect the tone.  A lot of knowledgeable people are also of the view that thickness of finish has an effect as well.

Re: the "cheap wood" thing - do you know from a reliable source that there are different qualities of wood used for different price point guitars or is it possibly along the lines of the "there must be reasons for the increased price" thing where it's more of an assumption?

I know that at the very high level they go to "wood libraries" and hand pick pieces of wood that they believe will be good for guitars, I'm talking more at the £500 - £1000 - £2000 levels where it's mass produced.

P.S. I'm not in the "wood doesn't affect tone" camp. I'm in the "without real evidence, both sides are guessing camp" with my own guess being that it does affect tone.

I know for sure that most companies sort wood by weight. Not necessarily tone, obvs - but with Gibson, for example, R9/0s get the lightest mahogany blanks, R8 second lightest and downward etc... each shelf has an “up to” limit. With Fender, it’s pretty obvious that the Custom Shop gets the lightest alder (and formerly ash, but I guess nowadays they just get all the ash). PRS is an outlier in that for the non PS/wood library stuff I think the mahogany backs are all off the same pile no matter what the guitar, but they are concerned more with the grade of the maple top and that’s where the focus/price lies...