How is the conservatism of guitarists limiting the innovation within the market?

jellyroll

People seem to like tangible, mechanical analogue stuff. With film cameras and vinyl records, that analogue-ness has practical disadvantages, so digital technology has moved in and largely obliterated what came before. With guitars, there is no real downside to analogue-ness for many, so there's less demand for a switchover to digital.

Bellycaster

I love things like:

This



and This



as opposed to...

This



or this



Each to their own though and that said, I do like some of the EBMM Guitars and The Wolfgang Range.


This programme was on TV in the 80's, but I still agree with what the guy is saying from 7:24 onwards.



Someone mentioned Les Paul neck breaks, yes, it is a constant worry. Maybe they could adopt the methods of Juha Ruokangas.

Jez6345789

I think innovation is largely stifled by the big two Fender and Gibson, who are really operating a sophisticated brand strategy based on nostalgia and monopolistic practices.

if you look at their best and most expensive products they are all reproductions that attempt to slowly mimic things they made 50 or 60 years ago. All the rest are deliberately dumbed down in terms of specification with a certain part or combination of features missing to cash in on the most authentic version.

i think of the others PRS have tried to innovate and build a better mouse trap as they have no heritage. Others such ibanez et al have at times tried.

As as already well said CNC and improved quality in the lower priced lines has improved quality  of guitars.

there is much I think that could be done to innovate with lower tech costs these days and in ways that improve on what we have rather than wholesale change to designs people love.

where there has been innovation people are slow to adopt new things because innovative companies can't get artists to use their products because of the monopoly of the larger companies. Also it's very expensive to invest in up and coming players in the hope their career will bloom along with your product.

take Fishman fluence pickups if John Mayer insisted they were in his next guitar there value would quadruple over night.

Neil

Do guitarists really want innovation?

Seems to me that most people want fifty odd year old guitar designs and amps ........with valves!

Jez6345789

I think guitarists do well some of us but it needs to be thoughtful and enhance but more important it needs a decent endorser these days and with duopoly of Fender and Gibson I think that makes it harder. R&D is not a big line on their balance sheets. Lol

p90fool

Jez6345789 said:

I think guitarists do well some of us but it needs to be thoughtful and enhance but more important it needs a decent endorser these days and with duopoly of Fender and Gibson I think that makes it harder. R&D is not a big line on their balance sheets. Lol

Yes it is, they're constantly dipping their toes around the edges of innovation but as soon as they wade in they get thrown back out by us, their customers.

Fender and Gibson know full well they're being forced to disappear up their own arses but would like nothing better than a big-selling new product which opens up the market outside their core of heritage models.

Blaming them for the stagnation is inaccurate and very unfair IMO.

Cols

Jez6345789 said:

I think innovation is largely stifled by the big two Fender and Gibson, who are really operating a sophisticated brand strategy based on nostalgia and monopolistic practices.

I think it's unfair to blame Gibson and Fender for this; they're responding to what the market demands.  Gibson tried to mandate innovations in 2015 and got killed on sales as a result.

Fender had innovative guitars in the past; I loved the Strat Plus with its roller nut and noiseless Lace Sensor pickups.
If it had sold well, it would still be in production.

koneguitarist

Just remember it's us who are at fault if guitar technology stagnates as well for not embracing new products. Sure companies have to come up with good ideas as well. 
Fender have always tried their hardest in every era. 
Take Leo himself, the strat tele precision amps lap steels electric mandolins. 
But also CBS and Fender inc have not stood still. 
Changes from valve to solid state and to digital as well as keeping all the flagship models going is not an easy task in this day and age. If they had been allowed to protect their image rights for guitars etc they would have earned a lot more allowing them to invest more in new products. 
The Exclusitivity would have been kept for Fender models then instead of Chinese, Indonesian, Korean,Mexican and Japan models for every price. 
I went to London with a pile of mates on a boys day out at Denmark St about 10 PR more years back. Was looking at buying a small 1x12 all valve simple boutique combo, like a Fargen etc. After trying a tweed twin for £2.500 or thereabouts I thought I would try one of these Cyber twins for a laugh. It was superb, I could not believe how good it was doing a side by side comparison and I ended up buying it. Used it for a while then swapped it for a tweed bassman.
the Cyber twin was heavy but easy to control and sounds were amazing, so why did I sell it? 
Because I like the old stuff, both sound wise and visually. 
My fault, certainly not Fenders. 

Rocker

guitarfishbay said:

Rocker said:

Another thing that is daft.  The use of digital pedals to modify an analogue signal.  Think about it.  Analogue in, convert to digital, process signal, convert to analogue, analogue out.  A process that is repeated if the next pedal happens to be digital. The obvious solution is to include a digital output on guitars with a digital input and output on pedals and have a decent digital to analogue converter at the end of the digital chain.  The lack of collective thinking by the guitar/music industry is nothing short of astonishing.

I don't know any people who even claim they can hear a difference in this scenario through a typical guitar cabinet. 

Probably not but it is the sheer craziness of the procedures that I am trying to highlight. If I were a betting man, the chances of the output signal matching the input signal of a digital FX pedal, assuming no modulation applied, is close to zero. If two digital pedals are in the chain...... It would be better IMHO if there was a decent quality FX sized ADC and DAC in the same box. Analogue in, digital out to all the digital pedals, back to the DAC and the to the amp or to an analogue pedal. This might be the case in big rack systems but our ultra conservativism and wanting a setup that costs <£100 means the existing practices remain. In other words, we are the reason that we are stuck in a time warp of sorts. Traditional kit works for traditional sounds like blues rock etc. We need to embrace and encourage development in technology if we want to break free of the standard 12 bar blues....

p90fool

You've just described pretty well every digital multi-FX unit, ie, Guitar > ADC > a million effects > DAC > amp.

HAL9000

Not against inovation but if it ain't broken, don't fix it. 

Give most guitarists a Telecaster and a Blues Junior and you'll have them grinning like a Cheshire cat. There's something about the simplicity and the tactile-ness of a guitar that's already pretty much perfect.

Teyeplayer

Surely though the reason for both our conservatism (on the whole) and the fluctuation between digital fx fads, racks and every tangible in between is that visceral thrill of plugging a guitar into an amp.

It's been there since we were kids and it is still the same, click, click, 'oh my god that's good'. Now from a psychological perspective as most of us started on a strat or les Paul copy, it would seem logical that sub-consciously we return to that same point albeit with an escalating price point when we want to experience the same kick we did as a child or teen. Just think about the excitement of a ngd, it never changes.

I think this is what holds us back, along with a certain reluctance to change, just look at the whole 2015 Gibson debacle. Maybe we are scared of anything that differs too widely than the logo to what we originally aspired to?

It is a weird one, I can totally see @Fiftyshadesofjay point about how we respond to amps with multiple gain stages, we get really funny about them -do I have one, no, I use a single channel amp; do I have two OD's a fuzz and a boost on my pedal board doing exactly the same thing, yes I do -and I'm not a metal player, this is just alt-country! :-)

So I wonder is it a price thing, I am relluctant to buy a mesa, it's a lot to spend out. But is it really that I get a fraction of the ngd kick with every new pedal at a fraction of the price, collectively I spend as much, but I get my hit more regularly?

Just talking ideas out loud, so feel free to disregard.

jeztone2

I think the key is if the product is useful.

The Line 6 DL4 is the first classic piece of modelling technology. The fact that the original design is still in production after 17 years. 

But its success was down to simplicity, a great user interface & great sounds. 

I embrace new technology, but a lot of it is badly designed & in Gibson's case, a series of solutions to problems that don't really exist. 

Also fashion plays a part, now that people are running lots of pedals intona clean amp. The market is changing. So we are seeing things like JFET distortion pedals re emerge. As people are realising how good they can sound etc etc. 

Penn

I've had 10 years away from playing.

It think there's loads of innovation. I bought a cheap little orange mircro terror a few months back. I couldn't believe how good it was for the money. When I started playing 15-20 years ago for £150 you couldn't buy anything near it. You were looking at 15 watt solid state marshalls or peavys which sound dire. 

I can't get over some of the pedals you can get now like the ehx mel9 and the ones tc electronics make that you can program with a phone. I've got a hof and it amazes me. 

Sure the guitar itself doesn't change but that's sort of the DNA of playing guitar. The stuff that goes around it has changed a lot the last few years. 

Loving an old strat or les paul doesn't make you conservative if the things it's attached to are different. 

vale

the question is leading. 'the conservatism of guitarists' is more assertion than enquiry. your tutor might pull you up on that unless you have proven guitarists are conservative elsewhere.

as to an answer, money is a big factor. older people (own houses and have secure jobs) have more money to throw at gear than young, so the middle & top end market indulges their desires & their guitar heroes will often be from the old days. that's guitars and amps.
but analog is easier too. which everyone likes. i'm lazy so i do. everyone knows what analog is and how it works.
and speaking personally, i can't be bothered to read a manual as fat as a victorian novel about how to program a bit of gear then sit at a pc screen for days scrolling through menus & submenus & dowloading updates & patches & dealing with incompatibilty issues etc etc etc just to make a fucking flanging noise. just buy a joyo flanger for £30 and play. life is seriously too short. i know some people like computers but i actually don't. they are like work.
so not so much conservatism as i have better things to do with my time and computer-anything i associate with work.

and those things interrelate.
for example that matt bellamy guitar with an x&y kaoss panel looks interesting & makes some mad sounds, but by the time you put that into production the young can't afford it, the old don't want it & lazy bitches like me can't be bothered if it means learning coding to use it.

sweepy

I have always bought and played so called "innovative" guitars, Roland GR505', Casio MG510, Steinberger, Variax and Parker Fly along with jumping on the Modelling amp scene from day 1 with the Line 6 Pod and now all the the way to the Axe-Fx via the Helix. Annoyingly, both tech and traditional approaches have their merits and uses, all we can hope is that people continue to innovate and give us guitarists an even broader palate to experiment with

Teyeplayer

@vale you are correct, the question is leading, but let us accept that the thread was started as research for an a-level piece, if it was a degree level response then I think we could got to town on it. At that level -it usually will be leading. 

Your comments regarding where the money for instruments exists in the economy (older buyers) and our taste for less technology has a degree of truth in it. It certainly explains how Gibson year on year are able to market more and more expensive 'more faithful reproductions' of their old guitars. However, it doesn't explain the continued developments that do occur within this industry. Certainly the younger guitarists do seem to pick up on these features, designs and technologies and just as iTunes and Spotify have allowed them to cherry pick across genres of music and time in their listening, so too they seem to be able to pick, choose and experiment with a wider era of technology and open mindedness than many of us did. I find that quite exciting to observe tbh (whether I get the outcomes or not) and that makes me wonder if it is just guitarists of a specific age demographic that can be called 'conservative' (myself amongst them)?

LoFi

fretmeister said:

guitars4you said:

UnclePsychosis said:

@fretmeister a metal clarinet would probably still sound like a clarinet. The thing that makes a clarinet sound like a clarinet is the internal bore profile and the single reed mouthpiece. 

For most woodwind (and brass) instruments material is a secondary effect at best. 

Just spoke to my Dad about this - Ex pro muso - both Clarinet and Sax - lifetime in the business etc - They still tell the story of a wood clarinet sounding warmer to a plastic/carbon based clarinet - play both, listen to both and the difference is audible - some more subtle than others better nevertheless still audible

We've got a wood and plastic clarinet in the house as my daughter plays.

I can hear the difference - particularly in the initial attack of the note. But plastic clarinets were made to try and sound like wooden ones. That's why I was curious about a very different material.

Would a brass one sound like a soprano sax?

I think it'd sound closer to a normal clari than a sax - a clari has a constant bore, whereas a sax has an expanding bore, and I understand the difference in harmonics produced as a result is greater than that produced by the materials. 

(A friend has a metal contrabass clari, and it still spunds like a clari)

fretmeister

Cool. It's an interesting subject.

Penn

vale said:

the question is leading. 'the conservatism of guitarists' is more assertion than enquiry. your tutor might pull you up on that unless you have proven guitarists are conservative elsewhere.

as to an answer, money is a big factor. older people (own houses and have secure jobs) have more money to throw at gear than young, so the middle & top end market indulges their desires & their guitar heroes will often be from the old days. that's guitars and amps.
but analog is easier too. which everyone likes. i'm lazy so i do. everyone knows what analog is and how it works.
and speaking personally, i can't be bothered to read a manual as fat as a victorian novel about how to program a bit of gear then sit at a pc screen for days scrolling through menus & submenus & dowloading updates & patches & dealing with incompatibilty issues etc etc etc just to make a fucking flanging noise. just buy a joyo flanger for £30 and play. life is seriously too short. i know some people like computers but i actually don't. they are like work.
so not so much conservatism as i have better things to do with my time and computer-anything i associate with work.

and those things interrelate.
for example that matt bellamy guitar with an x&y kaoss panel looks interesting & makes some mad sounds, but by the time you put that into production the young can't afford it, the old don't want it & lazy bitches like me can't be bothered if it means learning coding to use it.

I reckon there's some innovation to be had in those pedals. I mean really a flanger you just plug in and works is pretty cool. Anything you get that isn't plug and play isn't an innovation. I mean would people use a 1980 is computer complete with cassette memory everyday? Nope. You use a easy to use tablet/smartphone laptop etc. 

Every time I use something that isn't just plug in and go it feels really digital in a bad old fashioned way.