I am a firm believer in everybody being paid for their time doing any kind of role in society,from a skilled artisan to the humble street or office cleaner therefore I understand the time and labour part of my question. But where does the rest come from? I mean in essence it's made of wood and wood surrounds us,both scrap and fresh blooming trees and plants. Can't we make more use of these things( replant afterwards of course ) and work with nature rather than against?
Don't shoot the messenger here as I'm just looking to be educated rather than being deliberately argumentative.
Comments
Often its the time they take finishing methods and attention to detail and better parts/cuts of wood.
I think one of the more subtle factors to consider is the huge variation in actual hands-on time per instrument, or to put it the other way about, the big differences in the number of guitars produced per year per worker.
High quality acoustic guitars result from highly skilled people taking as much time as they need to get things exactly right.
Note that once you step into the higher end of acoustics, the "manufacturing rules" change. If you are running a guitar factory - let's say you are Martin or Taylor - you work out what thickness an average Sitka Spruce top needs to be to be strong enough to last for 30 years. Let's say that's 3mm. Then you add a bit to that because some individual bits of spruce are going to be weaker than average, so we say 4mm. (Numbers are purely for example, not intended to be actual thicknesses.) So now you run all your spruce through the thicknesser and it all ends up exactly 4mm thick. It's a cheap way to do things and reasonably effective.
Now suppose you are aiming higher, and prepared to accept that you'll be making fewer guitars per worker-year. You don't plane to a thickness, you plane to a certain measured rigidity. (Or you might do it the old-fashioned way by tapping and listening.) Either way, every top you make is different. Each one is hand-finished to suit the characteristics of the particular piece of wood. You are probably more ruthless about throwing out discards too, ones that don't quite cut the mustard. Result: you are now spending probably 10 times more on labour to make the same number of tops.
---- Back later. Mrs Tannin and I are about to watch the last episode of Ghosts. Great show, we love it.
……Let people have nice things….
We have some French friends in Laval. He works in the French car industry teaching CAD design skills. He's very experienced in what he does and actually sets the postgraduate exams for the whole of France. We once drove over there and I was showing off our new 3 Series and he said, "I don't really know about cars like that". I was bemused and he explained that, generally, the French car industry concentrated on the mass production of low and mid range vehicles, because the Germans had the executive and luxury end sown up.
And it's true. The French tend to drive French cars and there's far fewer BMs, Mercs, Audis etc on their roads. Are they any less happy? No; they're very happy with their cheaper French cars and take a pride in them. And they're good cars.
I think it's the same with guitars now. There's some fantastic instruments at the low to mid range and this comes over in tFB threads all the time. But there are also fantastic expensive instruments, and, if it's your thing, go for them and good luck to you. I have also lusted after and bought £3-4K instruments in the past and love owning them. It's just that my view has changed.
I now think I can lust after, seek out, buy and own acoustics in the £500 - £1K range and get just as much good tone and good fun. There are some truly great guitar manufacturers out there from all over the world. We are even being blessed with cracking products in the £2-500 range now. The days of buying 'something-which-only-looks-like-a-guitar' are, with a bit of care, over.
So it's a personal choice. If you want a very decent cheaper instrument go for that. If you want a branded, Spruce/Mahogany/Rosewood/Ebony not-made-in-China instrument which costs thousands go for that.
It's up to you. The world is your lobster.
:-)
And the suspension's better!
:-)
Advice to future thread contributors. Let's not get too bogged down in car analogies (or metaphors, or similes, or whatever) shall we? Yes, I know I brought it up, and I know this exhortation will almost certainly result in lots of car stuff cos' I know what your'e like but it's a GUITAR chatroom.
:-)
:-)
:-)
https://www.thomann.de/gb/martin_guitars_d_200_deluxe.htm
I have to say personally I find it gross. Too much bling for me, I don't care how well it plays or sounds.
# quality and skill level of the constructor(s)
# add or remove any labour saving/automation re #2
# quality of finish product
# desirability of finish product
# potential re-sale value
just because you do, doesn't mean you should.
I always used to love reading CAR magazine. I don't know why, perhaps because I was young and stupid in the 1980s. Anyway, the best bit was the fine print at the end where they used to list every new car you could buy in the UK with the price, a short description, and brief PROs and CONs. My all time favourite was ... er .. it might have been one of those V6 Alphas. PRO: Italian engineering. CON: Italian engineering.
I still chuckle over that one.,
But that isn't the actual question, which is why are American guitars so much more expensive than guitars made in every other First World nation, even though American wages are no higher, and very often lower than wages in Germany, Japan, Australia, the UK, Canada, and other places? Hell, the minimum wage in Korea is higher than the minimum wage in most US states. And the US prides itself (mostly incorrectly) as having lower taxes than anywhere "foreign".
So why are American guitars so expensive? It's not wages. It's not taxes. It's not expenses (running a business in Germany or Australia or the UK costs big money too). And it's certainly not quality - at any given price point, guitars made in the UK, Japan, Australia, Germany, and several other places are of at least equal and usually even higher quality.
Is it massive profit margins? Maybe, I don't have the numbers on that. Or is it simply inefficient, bloated production techniques long past due for reassessment? Having seen American cars, that's where I'd put my money. But it's only a guess, of course. I don't know the real reason.
IMHO, a skilled luthier, particularly a maker of acoustic guitars, is a more skilled job, with a lot more time invested in building the necessary experience, than a plumber. So, fair rate for the luthier should be way more than a plumber.
But let's a fair rate would be £100/hr.
Maybe 100hrs go into building an acoustic.
Cost of materials is hugely variable. You could probably source the woods for £100, or you could pay £5000, depending on what you want (rarity, quality).
Add in the overheads of running any business and consider that the output of a skilled acoustic luthier is not going to be high (so the overheads cost per unit will be high).
Add that lot up and I wonder how some of them make a sensible living ...
(The answer being that they don't )
The other side of that question is how can some manufacturers produce the quality that they do, at the price that they do.
Good extract here from an early chapter - https://timharford.com/2005/10/go-figure-an-extract-from-the-undercover-economist-2/
And an excellent summary here: https://www.zenflowchart.com/blog/the-undercover-economist-tim-harford-book-summary