Gibson Korina V and Explorer clones with Braz boards, $50k and all sold out?

manwithaplan · July 2021

Well I couldn't be more thrilled with my Sonicguitars Explorer from Paolo

Sulcini in Italy which I've had for a year or so now and hasn't been back in the case since.

Solid korina / limba, and tone in spades - a unique and inspiring voice. Totally convincingly aged too.

I can't recommend it enough (he does Vs too!).

edit PS I was going to post a pic - but ran out of patience with the Dropbox method...maybe later...grrrr...

ICBM · July 2021

Kittyfrisk said:

Clones my arse.

'Clone' is rapidly becoming the most overused and inaccurate word in the guitar universe. Much more and it will overtake 'vintage'...

BloodEagle · July 2021

Not strictly relevant but I was in Brighton for a few days earlier this week and popped into GAK - I dont know whether it was a 'murphy labs' one or whatever, but they had a Gibson Custom Shop Jimi Hendrix V hanging on the wall for just shy of 9k. The aging/relicing was appalling - the laquer checking looked ludicrous, and the hardware looked like an amateur had given it a go with some sandpaper - it couldnt have looked furtther away from an actual old guitar if it had tried. Ive got nothing against tastefully aged finishes etc, but how anyone would pay that amount of dough for something so transparently shit is bewildering. That is all, thanks for listening.

Kittyfrisk · July 2021

ICBM said:

Kittyfrisk said:

Clones my arse.

'Clone' is rapidly becoming the most overused and inaccurate word in the guitar universe. Much more and it will overtake 'vintage'...

Absolutely

Be cool if they could actually clone a vintage guitar... but you would have to be careful with it's previous owners DNA :-D
https://youtu.be/s5hF80s1Qgs?t=72

Philly_Q · August 2021

Trogly has reviewed the Flying V... and is underwhelmed.

He has two of them at various parts of the video but doesn't explain why (unless I missed something), surely he didn't actually buy two at this price?

RaymondLin · August 2021

I suspect he knew they are going to be sold out and the price goes up. If he waits long enough he might end up buy one get one free (to keep).

Philly_Q · August 2021

He's got the Explorer as well but hasn't reviewed it yet. He seems to have enormous amounts of ready cash... or a generous overdraft facility. Maybe just a very big credit card limit.

earwighoney · August 2021

Philly_Q said:

He's got the Explorer as well but hasn't reviewed it yet. He seems to have enormous amounts of ready cash... or a generous overdraft facility. Maybe just a very big credit card limit.

It's his job! I imagine he takes his acquisitions seriously on how many hits he can generate.

YT reviewers seem to be quite commonplace now.

Philly_Q · August 2021

earwighoney said:

Philly_Q said:

He's got the Explorer as well but hasn't reviewed it yet. He seems to have enormous amounts of ready cash... or a generous overdraft facility. Maybe just a very big credit card limit.

It's his job! I imagine he takes his acquisitions seriously on how many hits he can generate.

YT reviewers seem to be quite commonplace now.

Yeah, I guess I just don't have much concept of how much people make from YouTube, what the cashflows are, etc...

He did a video recently about his house move, and he was wandering around the basement trying to work out where he was going to film, saying here's this tiny room, here's another tiny room... just the basement seemed about three times the size of my flat! He's even got an indoor school gym/basketball court. The garden outside looks big too.

Going back to the guitars, he does some sponsored reviews but most of the time he's still buying stuff himself to "document", then selling it on. And a lot of it's new, so unless Sweetwater give him big discounts it's losing value immediately. If that was me, I'd be losing money on every single sale, it just doesn't seem sustainable - but I guess it must be.

earwighoney · August 2021

Philly_Q said:

Going back to the guitars, he does some sponsored reviews but most of the time he's still buying stuff himself to "document", then selling it on. And a lot of it's new, so unless Sweetwater give him big discounts it's losing value immediately. If that was me, I'd be losing money on every single sale, it just doesn't seem sustainable - but I guess it must be.

I've got no idea how much he might be paid, but in an era where Instagram influencers get paid tidy sums for posting up a picture of a product, Trogly goes to a lot of effort to document Gibson guitars (mainly). With conventional advertising arms no longer as significant as they once were, maybe Gibson etc are using these reviewers as a means to advertise/review their products in addition to possibly being allowed to buy some of their products at cost price? Who knows for sure. I actually quite like some of his reviews, he seems to be one of the reviewers who gets the calipers out to provide accurate measurements of things like neck depth and string spacing!

Philly_Q · August 2021

earwighoney said:

Philly_Q said:

Going back to the guitars, he does some sponsored reviews but most of the time he's still buying stuff himself to "document", then selling it on. And a lot of it's new, so unless Sweetwater give him big discounts it's losing value immediately. If that was me, I'd be losing money on every single sale, it just doesn't seem sustainable - but I guess it must be.

I've got no idea how much he might be paid, but in an era where Instagram influencers get paid tidy sums for posting up a picture of a product, Trogly goes to a lot of effort to document Gibson guitars (mainly). With conventional advertising arms no longer as significant as they once were, maybe Gibson etc are using these reviewers as a means to advertise/review their products in addition to possibly being allowed to buy some of their products at cost price? Who knows for sure. I actually quite like some of his reviews, he seems to be one of the reviewers who gets the calipers out to provide accurate measurements of things like neck depth and string spacing!

Yeah, I like his show, and his reviews, for that very reason. I'm interested in all that techy stuff, it's often hard to find that information anywhere else. When he dismantled a couple of PRS Silver Sky models, they suddenly appealed to me because I could see the build quality and all the little details PRS have tweaked.

I'm also interested in all the rare Gibson models he goes on about, although I have no intention of collecting any of them. I tend to skip his playing demos though, I've got bored with those bits.

RaymondLin · August 2021

Philly_Q said:

He's got the Explorer as well but hasn't reviewed it yet. He seems to have enormous amounts of ready cash... or a generous overdraft facility. Maybe just a very big credit card limit.

Well, generally Youtubers makes money from

1 - views / ads
2 - sponsors
3 - merchandise
4 - affiliated links

And to make a video generally there are expenses, from the sets, the travelling, the filming equipment, running cost, staff like editors. Take cooking videos, they have to buy all the ingredients. For travelling they have to buy the tickets/hotels. Some videos have much lower expenses like financial advice video where it is mostly time to research and it can generate the most lucrative ads which pays more, like financial institutions ads.

For Trogly, he has the expense of buying guitars, however, unlike travelling or cooking videos, he get to sell the guitars for profit. Even if he loses 10% from the guitar sale, he would still have the income from the video itself. His content is low risk for demonisation unless he plays music that is copyrighted so it's all under his control.

He can easily make 6 mid to high 6 figures annually through YouTube with his numbers + profit from his guitar turnover sales. The rough rule of thumb is for every million views you get £1,000 from ads (give and take a few hundred either side depending on the content). So these guitars, even if he is making 500k a year, would be quite an outlaid for him. They can make a LOT of money, Linus Tech Tips fork out about $80k to buy and make a SOLID 24 carat gold Xbox Controller and made 3 videos out of it to expense it.

earwighoney · August 2021

Philly_Q said:

Yeah, I like his show, and his reviews, for that very reason. I'm interested in all that techy stuff, it's often hard to find that information anywhere else. When he dismantled a couple of PRS Silver Sky models, they suddenly appealed to me because I could see the build quality and all the little details PRS have tweaked.

I'm also interested in all the rare Gibson models he goes on about, although I have no intention of collecting any of them. I tend to skip his playing demos though, I've got bored with those bits.

Agree with the above, but I don't mind a quick listen to a bit of his playing, as IMO he's a pretty 'average' guitar player and it's probably a realistic representation of how the guitar might sound.

The worst guy for demos is Andy of Reverb etc, as he's such a fine guitar player, I doubt many would get a sound that good from the gear he uses!

Philly_Q · August 2021

earwighoney said:

Philly_Q said:

Yeah, I like his show, and his reviews, for that very reason. I'm interested in all that techy stuff, it's often hard to find that information anywhere else. When he dismantled a couple of PRS Silver Sky models, they suddenly appealed to me because I could see the build quality and all the little details PRS have tweaked.

I'm also interested in all the rare Gibson models he goes on about, although I have no intention of collecting any of them. I tend to skip his playing demos though, I've got bored with those bits.

Agree with the above, but I don't mind a quick listen to a bit of his playing, as IMO he's a pretty 'average' guitar player and it's probably a realistic representation of how the guitar might sound.

The worst guy for demos is Andy of Reverb etc, as he's such a fine guitar player, I doubt many would get a sound that good from the gear he uses!

Yeah, I'm not slagging his playing - I agree that "average" is absolutely fine in this context. And he's certainly a better player than me, or at the very least he knows a hell of a lot more riffs than I do! It's just that I've watched so many of his videos, I know exactly what he's going to do and I don't think a YT demo conveys any fine nuances of the sound of guitar gear.

I didn't know who Andy of Reverb was, just Googled and yes I have seen a couple of his videos before. Jack at Peach is great, but again no matter how good the demos are I don't think you can really tell that guitar A sounds better than guitar B, or amp C than amp D. They just all sound good.

earwighoney · August 2021

Philly_Q said:

I didn't know who Andy of Reverb was, just Googled and yes I have seen a couple of his videos before. Jack at Peach is great, but again no matter how good the demos are I don't think you can really tell that guitar A sounds better than guitar B, or amp C than amp D. They just all sound good.

Andy is a riff encyclopedia! He used to be on Pro Guitar Shop channel before as well.

There are a few good channels that always seem to produce videos that are a delight to watch.