Cost of building a guitar

[MichYank]

Re: Cost of building a guitar

Don't forget, once you get good and people want to buy one you find you have to move to a shop. Now there's rent, utilities, etc. So, to recover that re-curring cost you need to sell more... enter the marketeer.

Somebody's going to need to start answering the phone and taking the orders, keeping the books, placing the material orders, receiving the materials, shipping the good stuff out the door.

Kinda takes all the fun away ! ! !

 

[sosomething]

Re: Cost of building a guitar

"Affordable" means different things to different people.

I consider $800 - $1500 for an American-made production model instrument to be very reasonable. There are a lot of Highway 1 Fenders, Gibson Fadeds, Carvins and Godins at the very bottom of that range.

I'll willingly pay that much for a guitar of superior North American quality (whether real or perceived) built by people paid a living wage.

 

[ImmortalSix]

Re: Cost of building a guitar

I'll willingly pay that much for a guitar of superior North American quality (whether real or perceived) built by people paid a living wage.

Awesome, I have a new line of guitars coming out that will have a huge focus on perceived value. I will put you down for two. They will be covered in gold and have switches all over them.

 

[Gearjoneser]

Re: Cost of building a guitar

Sometimes, I can't even fathom how China and Korea can build good guitars for the price of a set of pickups. Just the other day, someone posted a link to a really decent looking tele....and the price was $110!!!!

 

[Bones]

Re: Cost of building a guitar

Sometimes, I can't even fathom how China and Korea can build good guitars for the price of a set of pickups. Just the other day, someone posted a link to a really decent looking tele....and the price was $110!!!!

What you just said reminded me of Carl's Jr. commercials with a delicious looking burger on the TV. I would then go buy one and it looked like a 1/4 turd in a cardboard box.

 

[sosomething]

Re: Cost of building a guitar

Awesome, I have a new line of guitars coming out that will have a huge focus on perceived value. I will put you down for two. They will be covered in gold and have switches all over them.

Noooooo

Less is more

The more gunk you stick in there, the more it will look like a sad attempt to follow a "value added" model.

Give me a piece of timber with two strings bolted to it and a magnet for 3 thousand dollars.

I will be like

"OMG that is the boutiquest lumber like ever"

 

[ImmortalSix]

Re: Cost of building a guitar

Noooooo

Less is more

The more gunk you stick in there, the more it will look like a sad attempt to follow a "value added" model.

Give me a piece of timber with two strings bolted to it and a magnet for 3 thousand dollars.

I will be like

"OMG that is the boutiquest lumber like ever"

Awesome, I'm almost done then.

 

[drew_half_empty]

Re: Cost of building a guitar

Labor is always the most expensive thing, that's why technology is all about making current labor obsolete.

When you can CNC out 100 bodies in an hour or so the tools start to pay for themselves, but again you have to be moving a lot of products.


On the flipside though what's wrong with taking out a small business loan and doin it right? People's natural inclination always seems to be not to get TOO involved, skimp on tools, buy small quantities of parts, and charge a ton for labor. If you went the other route and got the best tools you could possibly afford to save you as much labor as possible and bought say 300 sets of tuners instead of 1-5, not to mention the potential to possibly machine some of the hardware in-house and save even more. Then building an affordable guitar seems like a feasible option because you know you'll sell more of them at the price you're asking.

As guitarists I think we can all also agree that some small hand-finished or slightly better than standard parts go a long ways. Even if you're CNC machining bodies and necks if you do an awesome fret job, roll the fretboard edges, throw on some extra heavy tuners and bridge, etc the guitar is probably gonna seem like more than it really is.


Even though it's a foreign company and i'm sure y'all are tired of hearing about em I would say Hagstrom is an excellent example of this. They make everything in house and the stuff they're selling for around $500 is phenominal.

 

[KeeperOS]

Re: Cost of building a guitar

I can't talk about others but I chose have a custom guitar built for me not to save money but to get exactly what I wanted with no shortcuts.

It cost me a tad more than going shop-bought but the fact that I had the very person building me the guitar answering my questions and helping me with decisions along the way was invaluable.

There definitely are reasons to choose the John Doe small-time builder over a multinational corporation...

 

[WhoFan]

Re: Cost of building a guitar

i have a hard time getting good guitar grade alder here and looking at website of pre machined body blanks it's getting to the point i'm willing to order a body already machined... when it's $70-$90 for an alder body blank and it's $140 for a strat/tele body before paint it makes ya wonder if it's worth it to work on a home made guitar that way...

Read a great story on Alder somewhere in a mag last week about Fender's vintage strats and some of the nicest sounding Alder bodies they claim come from trees that grew really high up the mountians... the higher up the mountian the lighter the weight of the alder wood... unlike ash where it's the lower in the swamp you go LOL

around here it's easier for me to get Mahogany and Basswood for bodies...

 

[ehdwuld]

Re: Cost of building a guitar

Read a great story on Alder somewhere in a mag last week about Fender's vintage strats and some of the nicest sounding Alder bodies they claim come from trees that grew really high up the mountians... the higher up the mountian the lighter the weight of the alder wood... unlike ash where it's the lower in the swamp you go LOL

Hmm heard something similar on the Stradivarius violins
slow growth due to colder global temperatures and such may have contributed
also grown in mountains I think

 

[KyleM]

Re: Cost of building a guitar

My first guitar build costed me around $30 to $40 give or take. But the neck was from a friend and the body was a first act piece of junk. Put ibanez neck on body, now we have a starting point. What I am currently doing is trying to build another guitar. So far, after all my materials and parts, around $93. That is, cheapish parts from amazon, and i'm using my own tools and paint. I'd say, if you have access or already own a shop with the tools. It's a cheap business.

 

[jeremy]

Re: Cost of building a guitar

building a guitar for fun is a great experience and if you are trying to do it cheaply, it can be done. if you are trying to make a good instrument then there is no reason to cheap out on anything since the amount of labor you put in will be significant. when i build a guitar from scratch, id guess it takes about 100 man hours