Re: A thank you to my American friends
The Epiphone Elitist line was essentially MIA-like specs made in Japan. Regardless of how people feel about the comparable quality, the fact was they cost twice as much as a standard Epiphone, and the line was almost entirely discontinued.
I think the take away is that having a guitar be made in America is a psychological prerequisite for most buyers who are looking to spend over $1,000. You see this same sort of rigorous consumer analysis with Scotch: the good ones are old, the bad ones are young. Almost no finer detail is able to transcend that prevailing assumption.
That Elitist branding thing was just weird. When Epiphone first launched the line, they called it "Elite". Possibly due to what, I suspect, was a run-in with Pioneer's Elite line of TVs and electronics, they soon changed it to Elitist, which I thought had a certain connotation, you might say. Odd. Who hears the word
elitist and automatically thinks of it as a good thing? I never saw one in a store, though, or else I would have checked it out; I was curious.
With today's prices, $1,000 doesn't go as far as it used to for those wanting an American-built guitar. Sure there are some options out there, but if you buy, say, a new $1,500 Jackson, you're getting an import. Might be a really good guitar, though, but the U.S. models are pretty much starting north of $2k. And people are paying $1,000 - $2,000+ for new Ibanez built all over the place.
When people buy a Fender, maybe, they're going to expect a US-made instrument for $1,000 and up. I think, apart from whatever patriotism or jingoism or whatever might be going on in a buyer's mind, there is probably often a thought process akin to: "Okay, I'm spending an amount that is a lot of money to me. I don't want to feel like I'm getting something that's been rigorously value-engineered down to every detail of the materials and building process to give me something that looks like the real thing but is a lot less expensive. I kinda want
the real thing, not the Fisher-Price version. I want a guitar that sits at the grownups' table, not the little card table they set up in the other room for the kids to sit at." However flawed or exploited by the industry this line of thinking might be, I think it's very common.
Personally, I think that MIJ Lite Ash Tele my friend has is pretty grown-up. And if someone approached me about an American-made Ibanez he wanted to sell, I'd be very suspicious.
And Scotch. As with anything else with substantial subjective qualities, neophytes tend to grasp onto anything that can be easily quantified or discussed in objective terms. It's easier to look at a number or a word on a spec sheet and figure out what you're supposed to think about it than it is to spend the time actually using and experiencing the product and developing your own honest perception. The same thing plays out with just about everything money can buy.
