Re: Hypothetical: Have Fender Custom Shop Build The Best HSS Strat with Duncan Zephyr
There have been a ton of threads about this lately and I wanted to gauge the opinion of the crowd.
If you had the kind of money to build a $9,000 dream guitar... would you?
Sure. I bet I'd be able to furnish a bare bones workshop for that, and build. Myself.
Because in my eyes, $9000 gets me three or four used Gibsons, two or three used Fenders, and probably a Rickenbacker or something like that... which, in my opinion, is way more useful than one custom shop Strat.
Yeah, so what? High-end products do not compete on a usability-for-money basis like cheaper stuff. Their value is often based mostly on limited availability and exclusive traits. Think of something carved from a single huge slab of brazilian rosewood, in zero gravity conditions. Think of having a celebrity draw a smiley face on top of the body. Think of custom engineering a piece of hardware... not! $9k could easily be not enough for that.
I am prepared to catch flak for this statement because I've got a Les Paul Custom and not three Les Paul Studios, but in my opinion that's a different part of the spectrum. The quality improvement from a $700 guitar to a $2000 guitar is substantial. But from $2000 to $9000?
How about rarity improvement? Say you want a 10th-dan master builder to forge a fiddle for you, you'll find out soon that there is only a handful of people in the world constituting that elite. Most probably, they don't work for $5 or $15 per hour. These guys have the luxury of choosing a price tag on their craft and know-how. Some of them might think they are worth $1500 an hour and actually make it happen. Mr Dumble is a living proof of that, and the fact he's known for building amps rather than guitars, is completely irrelevant. What is relevant, is that up there, on the very pinnacle of this trade pyramid, it might as well be the consumers competing with each other for a place in line, to have something made by the one and only Mister X.
Besides exotic woods, Zephyrs, or crazy ornate inlays, I can't think of a single reason for a non-vintage, non-collectible guitar to be anywhere near that price-range. Not to mention, my Les Paul Custom is valued the same today as it was when I bought it two years ago... you'd be lucky to get half of what you paid for a new, one-off Fender Custom Shop guitar on the used market.
Exotic woods and crazy inlays don't belong on a strat or tele. That's russian style a'la Shishkov. Moreover, once you change just two important design features, you might come up with a different guitar altogether, e.g. an otherwise normal strat with an all-access neck joint and a Schaller tremolo that does not sound like a "proper", "orthodox" Fender anymore. If in doubt, consult Eric Johnson.
Inlaying is hardly anything like the tedious handcraft it used to be. It is more about paying for a nice cnc mill, for the space it takes and electricity it uses, for its transport and service and spare parts, then paying a computer geek to program the machine and paying their boss for owning them both. And their boss. But it sells, so Paul Reed Smith does it.
A Les Paul Custom is valued so-and-so mostly because there is demand for them. Sorry, if I hurt anyone's feelings by saying that, but second-hand prices are driven by herd mentality. Does your LP Custom have acrylic inlays by any chance?
So what's the word? When does the law of diminishing returns take over? What's the most you would spend on the guitar of your dreams?
I don't like the idea of spending a fortune on a toy. But then, my idea of a fortune is another man's idea of pocket change.
