Expensive Acoustics. A waste of money? Or not.

DavidR

Having just been perusing a review of a very nice new acoustic in this months Guitarist magazine, I was left wondering whether, with the market as it is, these expensive instruments are really worth it.

OK, they're extremely desirable and nice objects and maybe everybody's journey towards finding the acoustic right for them individually has to include owning one or two of them over the years, as funds allow. But your'e now looking at £3 to £4 K for a top mid-range instrument. If for example you ultimately decide that the instrument you need is e.g. a spruce top, rosewood back and sides OM the market is absolutely crammed with that format of instruments. And most other formats too. Exactly what more are you getting for £4K that you wouldn't get for, say, £800? OK, different, but better? Not really imho. With good builds, computer aided mass production, and a multitude of really top manufacturers around the world, it's at least a theory that you're just paying for bling, a name and the kudos of owning a Martin or Taylor or Lowden or Atkin etc.

In most of our hands, with a good setup, much of which you can learn to do yourself, you're really not going to get a radically better tone or enjoy playing more by virtue of having an expensive instrument. Even though you might choose to own one.

Even instruments in the £2-400 range are pretty darn good. Not all of them but lots. 

These days, how good does good enough have to be?

VimFuego

as with all things, it's in the ear of the beholder. However, IME, there is an immediacy when you play a really well made acoustic, a sense that's there's a lot of tonal options available to you. How you pick, where you pick, the angle you pick at and so on. There is an intrinsic pleasure that comes from playing a really nice instrument, the way you can feel it vibrate against your body, it's almost (at the risk of sounding hippy) an organic experience.

malcolmkindness

This is a complex and interesting question, and as has been said, it's largely in the ear of the beholder and of course,  the size of your wallet.
I have a couple of guitars costing over €4,000 each and they are lovely instruments there's no doubt, but I also have two Recording King guitars costing only a few hundred each. The expensive ones I just play at home and the RK's I use for travel and gigging and they work fine.
Personally I don't like "bling" on a guitar so I can't see any point in paying thousands extra for it, but a high quality instrument kept for a few years will always sell for a good price, often increasing in value, if the maker is in demand.
On the other hand, if you can't hear any difference between a £400 guitar and a £4000 one, you might as well save your money.

BillDL

With a solidbody electric guitar there is only so far a manufacturer can go in price before everything above that is for adornment, impeccable fit and finish, and prestige of ownership.  The limitations are the solid wood (cue "tonewood" debate), hardware, and pickups.

On an acoustic guitar a luthier can, and usually needs to, go many steps beyond that in terms of tweaking the tone.  For example the shape, thickness and positioning of the bracing, the choice and thickness of woods used, the choice of material and size of the bridge plate, the size of the soundhole, etc, etc.  A skilled luthier can "sound" the wood for resonance by tapping it and can balance the expected response against the other wood choices and carving braces thinner in places.

Given that you can see right inside the body of most acoustic guitars and that the majority are clear-coated to show off the natural wood grain rather than being of an opaque or tinted/dyed finishes found on most electric guitars, an absolutely perfect fit and finish both inside and out is obviously expected on very high end expensive acoustic guitars.  Most electric guitars use plastic binding and even on ones with wood binding there is often an opaque finish on the sides up to the binding that can be used to disguise slight flaws with the binding.  That kind of exacting workmanship that is usually also coupled with real wood binding and intricate inlaid rosettes all comes with a price.

Do all the fine details and attention to those details involved in building an expensive acoustic guitar justify some of the prices and make the very well built ones sound as many times better than the difference in price from lower cost ones?

DavidR said:

Exactly what more are you getting for £4K that you wouldn't get for, say, £800?.........
In most of our hands, with a good setup, much of which you can learn to do yourself, you're really not going to get a radically better tone or enjoy playing more by virtue of having an expensive instrument.

Your key word is "radically".  Like everything else, whether it's a racing bicycle, a prestige car, or even a sofa, there comes a point when the differences between budget and premium converge and anything costing more than that point of convergance is aesthetic or prestige.  I am not going to name names, but I watched a video of an upcoming new female luthier where she painstakingly used a vernier caliper and an online fret spacing calculator to mark out the fret slots on a fingerboard and cut them with a very expensive Japanese saw.  Given that for now she is only making one model of guitar apparently all with the same very standard 25" scale length, wouldn't it have taken much less time and effort to print off a scale template or buy a metal fret scale ruler to mark out the increments?  Would it make a guitar less "artisan" if the fret slots were all cut on a CNC machine?  No, but I suppose in this case you aren't actually paying the luthier by the hour so it doesn't matter how the results were achieved.  If you were it would form good grounds to complain about overcharging for a process that can be done far more quickly and for less cost.

When it comes to acoustic guitars costing about £1,500 and upwards owners are definitely expecting a fully "hand built" guitar.  In reality, and by necessity due to the nature of the instrument, an awful lot of time spent building an acoustic guitar needs to be hands-on anyway (certainly in comparison with a solidbody electric), even if machine cut parts are used and it is more "assembly" in a factory using mechanised jigs than "building".   An expensive acoustic guitar that is hand-made from blank wood, bone, abalone and lengths of fretwire using hand tools goes through much the same stages of assembly and eventually reaches the same stage as an acoustic guitar comprising machine-cut parts (top, sides, back, neck, inlays, bridge, nut, saddle, fretboard, kerfing, etc all pre-cut and shaped), that is being assembled and finished by a skilled technician.

There is obviously a point where a factory assembled guitar made from pre-cut parts and hand finished is as good as it can get and there will be a very distinct overlap in quality and sound with many "hand-made" much more expensive guitars.

From a personal perspective if I was ever able to afford and could justify £4,000 for an acoustic guitar I would probably want to see some evidence of it having been hand made from scratch, but how do you really tell if all the internal glue squeeze-out has been cleaned and there are no stray wood fibres left where the braces slot into the kerfing?

stickyfiddle

I’m not going to sit and tell anyone it’s always worth the money, and that every expensive guitar is better than every cheap one. 

But.. my Bourgeois is the best dread I’ve ever played and by quite a long way.

I would agree that Recording Kings are some of the absolute best cheap guitars I’ve played

malcolmkindness

"When it comes to acoustic guitars costing about £1,500 and upwards owners are definitely expecting a fully "hand built" guitar."

I really can't see how you can expect a "hand built" guitar for this price.
It is generally agreed that it takes an experienced builder about 100 hours to make a guitar, before you even consider the cost of the materials, then there is VAT and a case. In my experience a quality hand made guitar is impossible under £3000.

Danny1969

I'm fine with cheap electrics, there's not a huge difference to me between a £250 electric and a 2K one. With acoustics though I can hear the difference. A friend of mine has a large collection of Martins, Taylors, Emeralds and similar and they sound so much better than anything I can afford. I actually sound a better guitarist on them which doesn't happen with electrics. 

Mellish

There's no answer to "How good does good enough have to be?", at least not that suits everyone.

If I'm going in a guitar store with buying one in mind, I'm not interested in brand. I'll look at the price tag, sure, cos I want to know if I can afford it if I like it. 

But it's tone I'm after. I can put up with bling if it sounds great, and bad action won't put me off cos that can be fixed. 

Right now I have a Dove, but I've had a Seagull S6 I was happy with and before that a GS Mini  

earwighoney

malcolmkindness said:

This is a complex and interesting question, and as has been said, it's largely in the ear of the beholder and of course,  the size of your wallet.
I have a couple of guitars costing over €4,000 each and they are lovely instruments there's no doubt, but I also have two Recording King guitars costing only a few hundred each. The expensive ones I just play at home and the RK's I use for travel and gigging and they work fine.
Personally I don't like "bling" on a guitar so I can't see any point in paying thousands extra for it, but a high quality instrument kept for a few years will always sell for a good price, often increasing in value, if the maker is in demand.
On the other hand, if you can't hear any difference between a £400 guitar and a £4000 one, you might as well save your money.

I'm into a similar situation as yourself.  I've recently been playing my Marklund 00-21S repro (not Red Spruce/Brazilian but Moon Spruce/Amazon Rosewood), which has a deep beautiful tone, lots of sustain.  The whole guitar resonates with the slightest touch.

For some of the songs I have written, the deep basses and sustain of the Marklund 00-21S can be a bit too much, for some songs some of my other guitars which are Sitka/Mahogany work a lot better.  Some of my songs that I play with a slide, they work the best with my cheap 0 sized Recording King which has the least amount of sustain of all my guitars, but works beautifully for certain things, eg playing with fingerpicks.

My Marklund and my nice flamenco guitar (also made with the same woods) are incredibly reactive to humidity as well. I'd never gig either of those guitars! 

I really enjoy having different types of guitars at different budgets, I believe they satisfy different needs and functions.  Ultimately I could play all my songs on one guitar if needs be, but it's nice to have some variety.

So, I could never answer the question for anyone else.  I've enjoyed my journey and all the guitars I have bought at different points of the market, I'd recommend others find their own paths as well.

BillDL

malcolmkindness said:

"When it comes to acoustic guitars costing about £1,500 and upwards owners are definitely expecting a fully "hand built" guitar."

I really can't see how you can expect a "hand built" guitar for this price.
It is generally agreed that it takes an experienced builder about 100 hours to make a guitar, before you even consider the cost of the materials, then there is VAT and a case. In my experience a quality hand made guitar is impossible under £3000.

I wasn't talking about me and my expectations.  Allow me to rephrase that sentence so that it makes a lot more sense in context with what I was trying to say both before and after it:

"When it comes to acoustic guitars costing about £1,500 and upwards many prospective purchasers will definitely have an expectation of getting a fully hand-built guitar".

I was also trying to make a point that a lot of the time taken by luthiers could easily be reduced by automation/mechanisation without the build quality being reduced, but because luthiers don't actually charge against the clock it doesn't really matter in the end.  I wonder how much of the 100 hours is taken up by the glue drying, whereas in a mass production environment where parts are already rough sawn or shaped the builder/assembler can be doing other tasks on other guitars.

I regularly see adverts by even quite reputable guitar stores in which they refer to £450 to £600 acoustic guitars as being hand built.  Less informed people selling through classifieds continually and mistakenly refer to factory made guitars lying between budget and premium grade as being hand made.  Those are the prospective buyers I was referring to.  There's a fine line between building and assembly at some prices.

TheMadMick

Two things about an expensive acoustic:

1. You should be assured of good quality and longevity

2. You should get a very even balance across the strings and it should be easy to play

I'm fortunate that I can afford such guitars but I wouldn't write off cheaper stuff. I have 2 Chinese built instruments and they sound superb. But with cheaper stuff, it tends to be more luck of the draw wherether or not you get a good 'un.

Is the more expensive instrument worth it? Who knows. Value is in the mind of the buyer,

darthed1981

stickyfiddle said:

But.. my Bourgeois is the best dread I’ve ever played and by quite a long way.

There is a brand of expensive guitar called a "bourgeois"?

That's brilliant - do they do a cheap range called a "prole"...? (Or do HB do a copy called a "prole").

The adverts would be great ("hope lies in the proles..." etc. etc.)

stickyfiddle

darthed1981 said:

stickyfiddle said:

But.. my Bourgeois is the best dread I’ve ever played and by quite a long way.

There is a brand of expensive guitar called a "bourgeois"?

That's brilliant - do they do a cheap range called a "prole"...? (Or do HB do a copy called a "prole").

The adverts would be great ("hope lies in the proles..." etc. etc.)

It's actually the builder's name - Dana Bourgeois. He was basically born to sell high end something  

But they're genuinely awesome guitars. There was talk of a tie-up with Eastman for some more affordable models but I'm not sure if it came to anything. 

https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/228328/ngd-bourgeois-aged-tone-d

darthed1981

stickyfiddle said:

darthed1981 said:

stickyfiddle said:

But.. my Bourgeois is the best dread I’ve ever played and by quite a long way.

There is a brand of expensive guitar called a "bourgeois"?

That's brilliant - do they do a cheap range called a "prole"...? (Or do HB do a copy called a "prole").

The adverts would be great ("hope lies in the proles..." etc. etc.)

It's actually the builder's name - Dana Bourgeois. He was basically born to sell high end something

Crikey - he was wasn't he!

earwighoney

@stickyfiddle the Collab with Eastman are out there. AFAIK there is one with a new name on the headstock, they have the Bourgeois bracing. Also there are a number of Eastman models that have their double bolt neck joint. I think these are gradually drifting out.

https://www.maksguitars.co.uk/collections/acoustic-guitars/products/eastman-e40d-tc-thermo-cured-adirondack-rosewood-7374

VimFuego

earwighoney said:

@stickyfiddle the Collab with Eastman are out there. AFAIK there is one with a new name on the headstock, they have the Bourgeois bracing. Also there are a number of Eastman models that have their double bolt neck joint. I think these are gradually drifting out.

https://www.maksguitars.co.uk/collections/acoustic-guitars/products/eastman-e40d-tc-thermo-cured-adirondack-rosewood-7374

ooooh would love to try one of them.

stickyfiddle

Ooh, a bit more money than I expected but I'll bet those are fabulous instruments and likely at least on par with a similarly-priced Martin

I would also add that Bourgeois are utterly loony money new if you're outside the USA. The closest Coda have in stock is this Aged Tone Country Boy D which is over £6k. I paid about half that for mine (used!) in the US, which still took a good couple of days umming and aching over!

jellyroll

It’s the same as the Ford vs Mercedes argument.  They do the same thing…is the Merc worth 4 times as much as the Ford? To some yes, to others no. 

It largely come down personal finances. To some, the £4k+ that a high end guitar costs is months or years worth of discretionary spending. Others earn that in an afternoon. The latter group don’t need to agonise so much over whether “it’s worth it.”  

bertie

with acoustics,  99% of the time,  you most definitely get what you pay for

you dont "need" to spend north of £3k  -  something eastern European or Eastman will easily get you into "yes I can really notice the difference"  land

Jimbro66

I think the OP's post could fairly be summed up as "I can't see the point in paying for an expensive acoustic"

It's a valid stance. If a cheaper guitar does all you need there is little incentive to pay more.

As others have said above those upper-range acoustics do have qualities that the lower ranges don't but if you can't hear them or don't need them then don't pay for them.

I use two acoustics, an Atkin OM and a £550 Chinese built OM. I use the latter when traveling and when playing at venues where I'd worry about the Atkin. For the price it's a perfectly acceptable and playable guitar but, side by side, the Atkin knocks spots off it in just about every quality. They are chalk and cheese.

In the past I've played Bougeois, Santa Cruz and Collins acoustics. All have been superb. Are they worth the price tag? It depends on your needs and your available budget.

Anyone believing a mass produced acoustic costing a few hundred pounds is the equal of the boutique guitars is kidding themselves (like those who claim their HB is equal to a Gibson CS LP) BUT if the cheaper guitar does all you need then don't pay more!

DavidR

Interesting stuff and I accept the point that if you can't differentiate between acoustics then there's little point in forking out megadosh.

I think the point I am making though is that, although there used to be quite a big gap between the average and the superb, now, in 2022, that gap has narrowed, because of competition upping commercial standards. Everywhere.

Blindfold me and play me a Guild D140 (£594), a Yamaha FG5 (£1,149) and a Martin D18 (£2,499) and ask me to pick out the Martin and I would struggle. Ask me to pick out the Guild and I would struggle too I suspect. These 3 just given as a 'for example'.

We're spoilt for choice. That's great. I just wonder how many players are paying over the odds for an instrument not hugely different to one they could find at a more budget price point.