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A general rant about inexpensive guitars.
Not necessarily a question, but wanted to see how others feel about and deal with inexpensive instruments and customers. I’ve had to deal with my share of the “Costco special” acoustic guitars over the years where the bridges are glued right on top of thick epoxy finish and of course, peel up often ripping a few layers of the plywood laminate from the top. I try to talk people out of the repairs as the cost equals or exceeds the new purchase price. Despite that, there’s often folks that just want it fixed for “sentimental” reasons.
In addition to repairs, I also build acoustic guitars and mandolins. I had a customer in my shop yesterday that brings me lots of high end vintage guitars to work on. He bought one of my small body L-OO sized guitars this summer and loves it. A good guy and good customer. However, he’s always buying and selling guitars. He told me about a builder in China, Hsienmo Guitars. They are building vintage Martin style guitars with German spruce, and Red spruce tops, real pearl inlays etc. Their D18 style offering retails at $1099USD. My customer says he’s going to buy one to have a travel guitar for festivals, etc. My customer sent me this YouTube link of reviews of some of the guitars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSv8aCymmJM They seem to look and sound nice. It’s frustrating to me as I can barely buy the materials at the prices they are selling guitars at. This business is hard enough to make a living at. The exploitation of labor and people’s “Walmart” expectations of price are making it even harder.
Anyway, I just needed to vent. Thanks for reading if you got this far.
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4 Replies
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Hey Scott!
Man, I could talk to you all day about this subject!
When I was at the NAMM show Bob Taylor gave a talk at a young professionals meet up. Someone asked him about building Taylor’s in Asia to get them cheaper and his advice to anyone wanting to build their products there to visit the factories (which he did) and see the working conditions. It is hard to tell this to customers because you do not want them to feel like shit for what they bought but I have developed some diplomatic ways of getting the point across.
When it comes to repairing them I have a few scripts that help me. If its a family members old piece of junk that they are sentimental with I often tell them that the relative is looking down telling them to let it go and its not worth it. If its sentimental from childhood I just tell them the guitar loves you too and does not want to watch you do anything stupid. Sometimes this gets them to back off.
That being said I have had some satisfying repairs come out of junk. I reset the neck on a trashy archtop with a pearwood board. I really did not want to do it but gave a price and it was accepted. When I got it back to him he told me his dad won it in a card game during the Korean war and lugged it with him for a long time. Suddenly I thought the guitar was a lot cooler.
Lastly, I often run into push back from customers in regards to my labor costs in relation to the value of the instrument. One time a customer of mine (who repairs BMW’s at a dealer) was upset that his new PRS SE needed a fret level and that the cost was a lot considering how cheap the guitar was. I told him that the guitar market is currently in a situation of dysmorphia and it is similar to if BMW came out with a killer model that was the same as what they offer now but retailed for 10k. His customers would be upset about buying brakes, tires, labor etc considering how cheap they are. That story is really helpful for me to use with customers to get the point across.
I am not sure if that helps you with anything but it feels nice to vent about it!
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Hi Corey, I did find your reply useful. That’s a really good way to explain our pricing structure to customers. People that would buy a 10K BMW probably would complain about the cost of a proper brake job.
I wish more people could be aware of the sweatshop conditions those factory workers work in every day to bring us cheap goods. There are so many disposable instruments being made. If laborers were paid a fair wage, and the factories had to abide by everyone else’s regulations, the higher quality instruments many well known companies are now offering would have a lot higher price tag.
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I try to know about good alternatives. If there is a $200 functioning guitar they can buy, that’s two hours of my time. I can’t make an toy play in 2 hours.
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The cheaper the guitar the harder to repair…
I usually just bid them much higher than the value and that seems to make them go away.
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