The golden age of guitar making is over people!

[formula73]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

The problem with this is, TGWIF actually has the knowledge about of things, he's just a little too pushy about it sometimes. Jerry drinks too much and buys shipping containers.

Bwahahahahahaha! True on that.

For all I rag on TGWIF and Blueman, they DO know their **** and are more than free with their knowledge. Respect where respect is due.

 

[Mr 9finger]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

Hareek and Inkstained. Go back and reread .4 in my first post. Don't take something I posted 2 pages ago out of context and try to use it against me here. I said idiot that comment only pertaining to the use of new woods. No where have I said or will you ever hear me say or imply that someone is an idiot because they don't agree with my opinion. Just won't happen. However the use of new woods is a FACT. It's been slowly popping up here there in imports...Agathis anyone? Gibson started doing it and the fanboys had a freaking coronary. Bob Taylor has pretty much all but said it in his video about Ebony. Someone brought sustainable lumber sources. OK, I'll bite on that. Considering it takes decades to grow a tree to usable size for guitar woods, and the amount they cut down every year, I don't buy it. They might be keeping that species of wood from going extinct, but they aren't sustaining anything for the guitar industry.

Yep, some of the stuff I touched on could have very easily went down a political road. It wasn't biased. It's barely arguable, but I stated earlier I was leaving it alone to not go that route.

To quote Eddie Murphy "Stevie Wonder is a musical genius. That **** ain't funny mother ****er".

 

[Inkstained]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

9fingers, I don't have a problem w/ non-traditional woods or even with Gibby (although I think bridges pickups should work; I'm strange that way). I hope to own a good Gibson someday.

But if you want a professional-quality instrument, and if you're willing to look for a Japanese- or Mexican-made instrument, this really is a golden age. Even U.S. prices are comparable to the '50s and early '60s, adjusted for inflation.

 

[Mr 9finger]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

It actually ended up being the push pull pot for the volume on the bridge pickup. The pickup itself is fine. Sounds like ass lol, but works fine. I had some 500k long shaft pots around. It took longer for the iron to heat up than it did to put the new pot in.

Should it have happened. Probably not. But it's a pot. I've gotten bad pots new out of the box. CTS and Alpha brand. It did work intermittently, so it very well may have been fine when it went through QC. It went out on me, I played it again the next day and it worked, then went out again.

I can't be to mad at Gibson, had I lived closer to a repair center, it would have been done free of charge. I don't, so I was going to have to pay to ship it back to Gibson. I had the pot and the know how to change it, so at that point, it wasn't worth the money ship it back in. Especially when I knew at some point, it was going to get new pickups and pots anyway.

 

[rumblebox]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

It has been for a long time. The instrument industry is about 2 things now.

Production.

Money.

as with any successful business in the world?

If you want hand built quality, then go to a luthier or go to the custom shop of brand X. If it's a name brand custom shop, expect to pay name brand prices.

i'll trust a CNC machine to cut bodies, necks, inlays, etc more than i trust a human. as long as the QC inspectors catch the problems or deficiencies before they go out the door, i dont really care what method they use.

I'm sort of defending Gibson on this, but in most respects, I'm not. Every US manufacturer of PRODUCTION guitars is guilty of one thing or another.

gibson is actually the example i usually use to demonstrate atrocious business practice. charging $5000 for an LPC and hiring incompetent QC inspectors. over the last ~10 years, their prices have doubled(inflation hasnt), and their quality has been cut in half(at least).

1. Complaining about the cost of US made guitars is pointless. American labor costs is expensive and rising.

2. Face it. American workers as a whole, have become lazy and disenchanted. How many people do you know that actually take pride in their work? The American workforce has wanted more for less effort for years and it's not changing anytime soon. I don't see how it would be any different in a guitar factory.

when the last 2 generations have been raised with a sense of entitlement and excessive self-worth, what do you expect? people now days are SO sensitive, you can't even tell someone they suck and need to improve without immediately getting defensive and shutting down mentally.....

i generally preach this point all the time, but there are still high-end builders who dont tolerate apathetic or incompetent employees. PRS is a good example of extremely high volume while retaining top-notch QC.

3. How many of these guys do you think are actually guitar players that work at places like Fender, Gibson, PRS, etc...Probably more than the avg, but still a fraction compared to the rest of the workforce employed there. Those that don't play are just trying to make it through the day and collect their paycheck at the end of the week. They have no idea what a great guitar feels like.

the only parts of the manufacturing process that REALLY require true guitar players are things like final set-up and QC inspections. all the others are based on simply being great with wood working, finishing, and soldering.

4. New woods. If you honestly did not see this coming, you're an idiot. Plain and simple. Common sense says that if you've been raping the lands for certain species of woods for 60+ years along with production raising exponentially, those woods are going to become hard to get. If you can even get them at all. This has caused 2 things to happen. The price has gone up on these species and the quality available has went down. There is no such thing as cheap good wood within the industry standard woods. Gibson might have started doing it for the wrong reason, but you can count that other manufacturers will have to follow suit before long. I figured most of you would have figured this out after Bob Taylor made his little announcement about Ebony awhile back.

people farm trees for exotic wood...... they're not going extinct like rhinos.

5. Quality and mistakes. I can't really argue this too much. This also coincides with .2. Sure, you don't see the glaring mistakes on MIC, MIK, MIJ, etc... that you do on American made guitars. That's because Japan is still probably the proudest country in the world, and they still take pride in their work. The other places, well they have to do a good job or else. They don't have a welfare system to fall back on if they get fired. Pride in your work. Is it acceptable for Gibson, Fender, PRS? No, it shouldn't be, but our current society has made it that way. You can complain about this stuff all you want, but in reality, us people on the forums is actually a small percentage of the buying public.

i'll co-sign that one. my MADE IN CHINA LTD plays and sounds better than an embarrassing number of american-made guitars i've played over the past few years.

 

[Virtual Kevorkian]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

2. Face it. American workers as a whole, have become lazy and disenchanted. How many people do you know that actually take pride in their work? The American workforce has wanted more for less effort for years and it's not changing anytime soon. I don't see how it would be any different in a guitar factory.

Sorry, but this is absolute bull****. Worker productivity has done nothing but rise since the 70's while wages have been kept down and company/shareholder/CEO profits have skyrocketed. We don't want 'more for less' - we want exactly what is deserved and what would be fair in a non-rigged labor market.

 

[Virtual Kevorkian]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

when the last 2 generations have been raised with a sense of entitlement and excessive self-worth, what do you expect? people now days are SO sensitive, you can't even tell someone they suck and need to improve without immediately getting defensive and shutting down mentally.....

Also categorically false. The last two generations have been tasked with propping up the lifestyle of the remaining Boomers and their inability to maintain services and policies that they themselves benefitted from. If you want to talk about a sense of entitlement and excessive self-worth then let's talk about the people who are living off pensions they earned working union jobs in dirty energy fields who now want to strip retirement funding from current workers, break up unions, and prevent clean energy development

 

[rumblebox]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

Sorry, but this is absolute bull****. Worker productivity has done nothing but rise since the 70's while wages have been kept down and company/shareholder/CEO profits have skyrocketed. We don't want 'more for less' - we want exactly what is deserved and what would be fair in a non-rigged labor market.

Also categorically false. The last two generations have been tasked with propping up the lifestyle of the remaining Boomers and their inability to maintain services and policies that they themselves benefitted from. If you want to talk about a sense of entitlement and excessive self-worth then let's talk about the people who are living off pensions they earned working union jobs in dirty energy fields who now want to strip retirement funding from current workers, break up unions, and prevent clean energy development

without getting political, i agree with you that the "fat cats" are being allowed to destroy the middle class, and they're so good at brain-washing, their own victims are their biggest supporters.


the people I'M talking about are between the ages of 20-30 who have no college degree or real skills of any kind, but they STILL feel they can just pick and choose the job they want without getting dirty or having someone talk to them sternly or harshly without getting butt-hurt. they've been told their entire lives that everyone is a winner, and they deserve respect from everyone. THEN they get into the real world and do a ****ty job, because they feel they're too good for the job at hand....

that is not the same as saying qualified people aren't getting completely screwed and grossly underpaid... they absolutely are.

 

[JeffB]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

Why did anyone feel the need to bump this old thread?

PMSing and no one at home to ***** at?

 

[rumblebox]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

Why did anyone feel the need to bump this old thread?

PMSing and no one at home to ***** at?

hell i dont even know how it showed up on my feed.

 

[JeffB]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

hell i dont even know how it showed up on my feed.

Mmmhmmm....blame the computer. Same thing my wife does when she is PMsing

 

[rumblebox]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

Mmmhmmm....blame the computer. Same thing my wife does when she is PMsing

ya got me

 

[stevesmith1987]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

Honestly, I feel it's all semantics. I try all my instruments before I buy them. I own a $100 MIC instrument and I own a $2000 MIA instrument and about a dozen in between. I buy them because they feel good, not because of the name on the headstock. I just bought a MIC Les Paul that almost feels as good as my MIA LPs.

 

[Dr.K]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

I think a lot of American workers do still care about the quality of their work, I do. But, they've got a boss cracking the whip for them to get it out the door.

 

[James Nightshade]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

That's why the whole reissue thing is so big these days with guitar models from the late 50's through 60's being remade (although to cheaper standards, it's heresy really!!)...what people don't realize is this: those guitars were special not because of their design but because of the quality of the parts they were made from and the painstaking work ethic of the day. These reissue guitars never have the same pickups or high quality craftsmanship that produced those original instruments. Logically speaking, if a company had perfected their method at building an instrument 65 years ago shouldn't they be able to surpass that now and raise the bar for all guitar manufacturers these days? Sadly, it's just not so even with all the advancements in tech. These companies can create better products than they do but the fact is that most of their profits are from the beginners bargain market and that's all outsourced to Korea and China. The companies had their golden hour but they sold their souls to cheap labor. It must keep there pockets fat...I also hate how there's a billion different versions of the same guitar: the squire strat, the epi les paul ad infinitum...every guitar maker makes their own version of these guitars that have been around for aeons...The whole market is completely without innovation and I think the lack of creativity is bleeding over into popular music. When is the last time you've heard a piece of new music that was worth a tenth of it's weight in gold?

 

[Placemat Jackson]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

We're in the Golden Age right now.

Yes, companies like Gibson are gonna put out a turd here and there. But there's a lot of other companies out there competing for (Gibson's and Fender's, etc.) business and they have the skills and tools to do it.

John Suhr for example. Anything he makes is light years ahead of guitars they made back in the 50's and 60's... He hand selects the wood and has CNC equipment that can route a body with accuracy to thousandths of an inch. Same thing with necks... they can place the frets exactly where there supposed to be. No guesswork.

We have the capability to build guitars that are damn near perfect. Unfortunately a lot of companies rather take the shortcuts.

 

[jon the art guy]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

I love zombies, so I'll add my two cents!

High end guitar stickertogetherers may have problems with the rennAXEsance (yea, you can QUOTE ME) we're having today, but taste tests are showing that the low end of quality is getting better and better and luthiers are making really awesome instruments for less than they could be asking for. Axl, which was laughable a decade ago as a two-bit shipping container instrument company, has been slapping together award winners on a pretty consistent basis now, and there's waaaaay more out here doing the same thing in practically every niche of music.

pedals. How can we forget pedals. Mojo has been dissected and canned for >$100 now, and if you're willing to slum it, >$50. Is that a bad thing? Heck no. Klons are still selling, but a Danelectro Transparent Overdrive pedal sounds....really close.

It's an information age we're floating around in, and we can do practically anything the big music companies do for a pile of cash for cheaper. But...we don't. I think that's what's so great about now. There's room for someone who's laid down tens of thousands of buck each for amps, guitars and pedals, and there's room for the guy who bought knock-off versions of everything the first guy has for 1/50th the price who has 97% the same sound. They can hate each other, but they can both get gigs if they want and prove it to listeners.

 

[kilphody]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

We're in the Golden Age right now.

I wonder how many have ever seen, let alone played a Monteleone. He's the greatest maker alive, perhaps ever.
IMHO of course.

PC

 

[Robert Delahunt]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

Business is about money. Get over it. That money gets used to pay employees and health care insurance policies (or did until obamacare). The quest for money in part drives quality, to be better than their competition, hence to sell more than them.

As for the perceived difference hand-built versus mass-produced, you get what you pay for. However, the difference in quality hand-built to CNC needs to be quantified, as so far I've only seen anecdotal evidence for this. Comparing extremely cheap mass-produced to hand-built is not a fair comparison, and price tag should make that obvious.

As for "every manufacturer of production guitars is guilty of one thing or another", duh. No human being is perfect, as also no business (made up of human beings) is perfect. You should know this by now. Get over it.

1. As for the rising cost of American labor, maybe now's the time to lobby to prevent minimum wage from being raised. We should all know by now that most businesses raise almost everyone's wages by that ratio percentage. The minimum wage rising will only make American guitars cost even more. But inflation is also rising, in part due to minimum wage hikes, in part due to the other stupid things the Fed is doing. Audit the Fed.

2. If American workers have become lazy and disenchanted, businesses need to crack down on it, and Americans need to fix their culture to start taking pride in their work again. I know a few who take pride in their work, but I'm military and we sort of have to take pride in our work (aircraft maintenance). But yes, the American sense of entitlement is damaging the industry.

3. I don't know how many are actually guitar players. Go do the research. You can't say "still a fraction": where's your statistics? Have you polled their workers in person? Are you aware that Fender is employee-owned?

4. I agree with the woods thing but they're doing what they can to fix that. I do not, however, agree with how some purists are stuck on mahogany, ebony, and other woods that were once abundant but are now rare. Get over it. Try the new woods. If they sound good to you, buy them. If the previous ones sound good, use them. It should be about what sounds good, not worshiping a wood because all the older fanboys like it. It should be because you like it.

5. As for mistakes, it's called you inspect the guitar before you buy (if possible), and if there's a problem you turn it in and get a new one. I hate to say it, but maybe the way to fix the MIA versus MIK/MIJ is to start buying MIK/MIJ. So far, I have been simply because of the price tag on MIA. I live in Japan, and they take pride in everything. You could eat off the floors in McDonalds: it's that clean. It blows American military people's minds when they see it for the first time. Everyone there acts happy to be there. Don't like how American society is going? Vote.

I totally understand your frustrations, and I'm there with you, but there's only so much that can be done.

 

[marvelous_seven]

Re: The golden age of guitar making is over people!

the next time you go out to music store, always put your blindfolds on.