How much would you pay for an "Made in China" guitar.

Nunogilberto

For me it depends how good the guitar is (to a point). On the whole, Chinese made stuff is relatively good these days, so a few hundred spent on a MIC guitar is not necessarily a bad thing.

That said, if we're venturing into the high hundreds/1k territory, I'd be looking at something from Gibson etc - for the same reason that if I had 30k to spend on a car, I wouldn't be looking at a Kia etc; more a Merc or a Jag.

Maybe that is slightly prejudiced, but I'm sure 99% of us would do the same.

richardhomer

Drew_fx;344610" said:

If the retail price is around 6 times the build price, doesn't that actually prove my point?

I think it proves - and I know you didn't like the word but it's too early for me to think of an alternative - our prejudices. A Chinese guitar 'must' be a lot cheaper than one from somewhere else.

I used the example of Apple as that is a brand which has completely transcended its country of origin, when it comes to perceived value. Whether you as an individual 'buy into' that particular brand doesn't really matter; vast amounts of people do. I suspect the manufacturing cost of an iPhone or an iPad is buttons. Yet they are widely considered to be a premium product which sell at a hefty premium....

My 'prejudice' comment acknowledges that guitarists - yourself included, from your comments about manufacturing costs and likely mark up - seem to 'judge' price (and quality to an extent) based on country of origin above pretty much any other factor. There's even snobbery about older Boss pedals - some claiming that the earlier Japanese ones were better, even though they were built from the same components when manufacture moved to Taiwan.

If it were possible to get a given design of guitar - say a Yamaha SG2000 - built in the best factories in Japan and China, my belief is that the Chinese version would be very close to the Japanese one in terms of build quality. Their 'intrinsic' values would be very similar.

As you point out, guitarists' perceptions are such that their extrinsic values are pole apart....

Gassage

I think the key is how good the guitar is.

I had one of those Gretsch Electromatics, MIC, and honestly, it was flawless. Amazing guitar. Worth the £400? You bet.

suspiciousminds

Times have changed - being near to 50 i can remember when products made in china,taiwan,even japan were considered low cheap quality.
But I couldnt fault the quality on my MIC MP jag (although it needed a full setup first) - the finish, especially the neck was superb - way above expectation.
S/H prices are now sub 200 quid yet for me it was easily better quality than any squier i've had (never had a JV though).

ICBM

Gassage said:

I had one of those Gretsch Electromatics, MIC, and honestly, it was flawless. Amazing guitar.

I had one of those too. I didn't sell it because it was poor quality or because it was made in China - quite the opposite, it was excellent and I liked the reverse-snobbery aspect of it! - but actually because it was too much like a Les Paul, not really like a Gretsch. If they'd made it more like a real Duo-Jet with a more chambered body and a higher neck joint I'd still have it.

Deijavoo

Had a Chinese Rasmus by Suhr last year. Was awesome. 

Alnico

ICBM said:

Gassage said:

I had one of those Gretsch Electromatics, MIC, and honestly, it was flawless. Amazing guitar.

I had one of those too. I didn't sell it because it was poor quality or because it was made in China - quite the opposite, it was excellent and I liked the reverse-snobbery aspect of it! - but actually because it was too much like a Les Paul, not really like a Gretsch. If they'd made it more like a real Duo-Jet with a more chambered body and a higher neck joint I'd still have it.

I still have one of those, a 'Jet Club'. It is one of favourite guitars of all time and why I like it is actually because of it's similarity to a Les Paul. Mine is the bolt on neck and still it doesn't matter, the tone cork smells just fine. It's laminated maple onto chambered basswood and it resonates like a bomb has gone off. The neck is fantastic, tall frets that you can really get stuck into and a really great sound. My only (Very small) criticism is the bridge feels a little cheap and will eventually get replaced with a better quality TOM unit. The tuners work brilliantly, pickups are standard Gretschbuckers and sounds bloody great through a decent amp and overall it's got such a classy look and appeal - for £240 !

We have my Son's Chinese Epiphone G400 here too, also MIC. It's a fantastic guitar, really nice piece of wood, well built and plays really well. The fit and finish are just brilliant and if you had something this good when I was growing up in the 70's / 80's, you would have had a very good guitar - I remember all to well what cheap crap was like then.

I am looking at getting the Epiphone G400 in Worn Cherry quite soon which I was actually looking at just yesterday and even played alongside the USA Gibson SGJ, it was bloody amazing. The satin finish was flawless, a properly fitted neck which feels well built and plays as good as any other guitar, regardless of it's pricetag - £229 ! Ok, so like the Gretsch will one day get, it would probably get better pickups and maybe higher quality pots and switch and maybe even a bone nut but even then each guitar is still very reasonably priced and at the point when it's been retrofitted with higher quality parts, it becomes an excellent guitar.

Higher priced guitars have their place and i'm not knocking that but *SOME* cheaper Chinese guitars are excellent prospects to own and have a place in any guitar market.

While i'm on this, the recent 'Squier's' are very quickly heading into a class of their own, as all of the recent buyers of the 'Joe Trohman' Telecaster will tell you. Again I was looking at these yesterday and while the Trohman isn't for me, it certainly is a very nice and VERY well built plank of wood. What turned my head on the Squier display was the 60th Anniversary Stratocaster in Vintage Blonde with Gold hardware. It's a shade over £300 and would easily be here at home right now if I had been able to spend that. Yes it's another one that would probably end up with a pickup upgrade but still the guitar is so well made and finished, it's headstock logo just doesn't matter anymore, it is a great guitar in it's own right.

57Deluxe

Remember too - you now have pay 20% import duty and VAT and a Parcel Force handling charge for anything over the value of £15 from China

daveyh

I have two Fernandes Ravelle's, both MIC in '03. I've yet to find a Les Paul that even comes close.

Gassage

57Deluxe said:

Remember too - you now have pay 20% import duty and VAT and a Parcel Force handling charge for anything over the value of £15 from China

Do you really?

Why?

57Deluxe

/\ why?? cos the bloody EU dictate it...

http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee301/snotmale/Webhosting/importnotice_zpsc7dfd2af.jpg

Drew_TNBD

richardhomer;344666" said:

My 'prejudice' comment acknowledges that guitarists - yourself included, from your comments about manufacturing costs and likely mark up - seem to 'judge' price (and quality to an extent) based on country of origin above pretty much any other factor. There's even snobbery about older Boss pedals - some claiming that the earlier Japanese ones were better, even though they were built from the same components when manufacture moved to Taiwan.

Dude... this is just abysmally incorrect. It's nothing to do with prejudice, it's to do with costs. It does cost less to make a guitar in China than it does in the UK, or Poland, or the USA. This is a fact. It's to do with wages, machining costs, land rental, warehousing, etc.. etc..

Make a guitar of the same quality in England and China, and put it out on the market for sale. The English one will cost more money, even when you include international shipping rates, customs charges, and the rest of it. This is just a fact, as evidenced by loads and loads of companies around the world moving their manufacturing to China. It's not prejudice at all.

I'm saying that the reason we expect Chinese made guitars to be cheaper is because for decades we've been reminded of these facts. Take an Apple product, manufacturer one in America and one in China to the same quality levels. The American made one will simply be more expensive.

I also agree that China makes good guitars. So do Korea and Indonesia. But the simple fact is, regardless of quality, it is currently cheaper to make a guitar there. So we as consumers expect to benefit from this fact. We do not expect a company to make an extra 40% profit just because the guitar was made in China, and as such we refuse to pay over the odds. We like a fair deal and don't like to feel like anyone is making profit on us.

In short I think the reason people wont pay £900+ for guitars built in China is not because they're built in China. It's because they cost significantly less than other £900 guitars built in other countries.

Drew_TNBD

PS: My Les Paul is Japanese. My Chapman ML-1 is Korean. My Fame bass is Polish. My Samick Vantage is Korean. My Scatterbrain SB7.2L is English. My Ibanez acoustic is Japanese. Most of my pedals are Chinese made too!

Drew_TNBD

Put it this way Richard; I'd rather pay £900 for a Chinese made guitar than I would £3000 for an American made Suhr guitar.

Alnico

After reading my post back through I have realised that I didn't actually answer the OP's question, rather went off on a tangent of "Are Chinese guitars any good?".

To answer the original question I have to agree with judging each guitar on it's own merits. If it were something special and was an absolutely stunning piece of craftsmanship then it's fair to say it's country of origin shouldn't matter. I personally haven't come across something in that price range yet but if I did I wouldn't dismiss it based on the country it was made in.

57Deluxe

is everyone equally prejudiced about their iPhone??

Fuzzdog

I tend to be the other way around these days, I think - I mean, it's getting increasingly hard to actually buy a bad guitar.  Some of the stuff in the 'low to medium' Chinese/Korean/Indonesian price bracket is now more than up to the quality of what the big US brands were putting out when I was learning.  You paid £150 for a new guitar back then and you'd be lucky to get something vaguely the right shape.

To me, it's now getting a lot harder to justify paying £1000+ just to get a 'Made in the US' sticker on something when the jump in quality from the Eastern stuff is either nowhere near what it used to be, or just plain absent.

Are the big names actually that much better to justify their price tags?  Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but mostly no, in my opinion.

Saying that, I have no issue with a small builder charging whatever the hell they want - that's a different kettle of proverbial fish entirely.

ADP

I don't think anyone has addressed the question of whether we should buy anything from China, so I will. In my opinion we should never have dealt with China. Big business has been far too happy to exploit the low wages in China to sell cheaper goods, be more competitive and make bigger profits to keep their shareholders happy. In the meantime, our own industry and local jobs have been sacrificed. What's the new economic model to follow? Oppress your people, keep them them poor and uneducated, encourage massive population growth, create nothing and wait for rich western countries to come and give you all their secrets, manufacturing and money. It stinks. I know the theory is that one day the Chinese will want to buy goods made in the west, but here's the thing: they will always buy goods made in China first and I'm sorry to say that there's precious little made anywhere else nowadays. I wish my phone wasn't made in China. I would gladly pay more and have fewer possessions to have nothing made in China. So to answer the original question... What would I pay for a guitar made in China? Not a penny.

daveyh

ADP said:

I don't think anyone has addressed the question of whether we should buy anything from China, so I will. In my opinion we should never have dealt with China. Big business has been far too happy to exploit the low wages in China to sell cheaper goods, be more competitive and make bigger profits to keep their shareholders happy. In the meantime, our own industry and local jobs have been sacrificed. What's the new economic model to follow? Oppress your people, keep them them poor and uneducated, encourage massive population growth, create nothing and wait for rich western countries to come and give you all their secrets, manufacturing and money. It stinks. I know the theory is that one day the Chinese will want to buy goods made in the west, but here's the thing: they will always buy goods made in China first and I'm sorry to say that there's precious little made anywhere else nowadays. I wish my phone wasn't made in China. I would gladly pay more and have fewer possessions to have nothing made in China. So to answer the original question... What would I pay for a guitar made in China? Not a penny.

Thus keeping the poor of China even poorer?

ADP

At the moment we are allowing the government of China to get richer and richer. Check out the average wealth of the party members. Also, as it is at the moment the rest of the world is suffering from a manufacturing decline. We have sold our own hard-won industry for a pile of plastic crap all in the name of creating a global economy. Is it our fault that China is over-populated? Are we to be expected to help them out of poverty? We can't even claim that it was the British empire's fault this time. It's all their own doing.