Expensive Acoustics. A waste of money? Or not.

stickyfiddle

Timely video on Bourgeois from Guitar Village today. The real in-room sound and on-lap feel won't come across in a video, sadly. It's also a shame they don't have any dreads. But man you guys should try one if you ever get the chance.

bertie

and the end of the day,  if you don't want to spend more than £1k, £3k, £500  on a guitar............ then dont.   
Simple 
QED
move along

artiebear

bertie said:

and the end of the day,  if you don't want to spend more than £1k, £3k, £500  on a guitar............ then dont.   
Simple 
QED
move along

Well, that would have saved a lot of time   

Contrary to some opinion here, there is a definable gulf between a single maker shop ( just did a demo for one two hours ago ) and the big boys with huge prices ( who still employ some incredibly talented guys on the factory floor, with the capability and reputation for knocking out the odd self built piece of musical beauty, remember Ren Ferguson at Gibson ? ) because there are the guys in-between. Take Fylde as an example, headed up by Roger Bucknall MBE ( call him a luthier and run, but that's just Roger  ), he and two other guys producing 100 guitars a year, all to customer order are hardly a mass production factory, each guitar being to the customer's spec. Or maybe the aforementioned Bourgeois, a 'factory" with some staff and each guitar still being voiced by Dana Bourgeois. Mass produced ? I don't think so.

How about Yamaha. They have multiple factories, all brilliant at producing guitars at a price point. They have, however, until recently and maybe currently, kept open a custom shop in Hamamatsu, where a tiny percentage of guitars are made in spite of the global output of usable and beyond, reasonably priced Yamaha guitars we all know and love come which from other than Japan.  Then there is an entirely different level under the same brand name. I can testify to the difference, owning a single luthier ( yep used that word again, even got his name on it ), LJ56 which is a nothing like a line built guitar from the same company.

ICBM

malcolmkindness said:

"When it comes to acoustic guitars costing about £1,500 and upwards owners are definitely expecting a fully "hand built" guitar."

I really can't see how you can expect a "hand built" guitar for this price.
It is generally agreed that it takes an experienced builder about 100 hours to make a guitar, before you even consider the cost of the materials, then there is VAT and a case. In my experience a quality hand made guitar is impossible under £3000.

I certainly don’t think you could get a top-quality hand built guitar for anywhere close to £1500 these days. Even if that was necessarily desirable…

There’s a lot of rose-tinted vision about what ‘hand built’ means, and results in. To make a truly flawless guitar by hand is actually far harder, and more expensive, than doing a lot of the work by machine - to the point where it’s debatable as to whether it’s even the best method, let alone the most desirable.

artiebear

ICBM said:

malcolmkindness said:

"When it comes to acoustic guitars costing about £1,500 and upwards owners are definitely expecting a fully "hand built" guitar."

I really can't see how you can expect a "hand built" guitar for this price.
It is generally agreed that it takes an experienced builder about 100 hours to make a guitar, before you even consider the cost of the materials, then there is VAT and a case. In my experience a quality hand made guitar is impossible under £3000.

I certainly don’t think you could get a top-quality hand built guitar for anywhere close to £1500 these days. Even if that was necessarily desirable…

There’s a lot of rose-tinted vision about what ‘hand built’ means, and results in. To make a truly flawless guitar by hand is actually far harder, and more expensive, than doing a lot of the work by machine - to the point where it’s debatable as to whether it’s even the best method, let alone the most desirable.

Define flawless within the context of an acoustic guitar ?

Tannin

Pjon said:

bertie said:

Pjon said:

At what point do mass produced but well known brands use luthiers to build the guitars? Or are they actually mass produced? (I've played guitar for decades but only become interested in the ins and outs of guitar geekdom in the last few years, so I don't know this!) 

hard to say - but with the bigger brands,  "custom shop"  or words to that ilk  are usually an indication that a  "more highly skilled" craftsman is involved. 

Big brands are "massed produced" they have to be to be able to supply such volumes  - and I dont think it unreasonable to assume the lower the model / ££  the less skilled / less hands on - the work force is.

Pretty much what I guessed. So, next question, a luthier built guitar vs a mass produced guitar at the same price - generally the luthier built should be better than the other? (I know this isn't really quantifiable.)

Well, pretty much anywhere if the mass produced guitar was made in the USA. Gibson and Martin especially, but also Guild and Taylor charge like wounded bloody bulls for mass-produced standard products.

Their fanboys  bleat endlessly about "higher labour costs" (wrong - South Korea has a higher minimum wage than the USA - never mind expensive places like Japan, UK, Australia, Germany), "higher rents" (wrong), "higher skills and better workmanship" (wrong), "better health and safety regulations" (very wrong), "more responsibly sourced materials" (wrong), and "higher taxes" (still wrong). The reality is, the Americans are just expensive. They make lovely guitars, the big American factories, but there is no reason at all to suppose that they are any better than the products of factories in Europe, Ireland, Australia, Japan, or any of several other high-cost countries, all of which manage to make equally beautiful guitars and sell them for a lot less money - and with better quality control.

It is falling-off-a-log easy to find a luthier-made guitar here in Oz for the price of a Hummingbird or an F-55 or an HD-28, and I don't mean a no-reputation just-starting-out one. I'd be very surprised to find that it was any different in the UK Brooke, for example, hand-build and their prices seem very reasonable.

On the other hand, Trying to order a luthier-built guitar at the same price as a factory Lakewood or Furch or Maton or MIJ Takamine .... no. Not going to happen.

But what is "hand made" anyway?

* Does it mean one person operates the CNC machinery?
* Does it mean one person operates only semi-automated machinery?
* Does it mean one person operates noni-automated but made-for-purpose machinery?
* Does it mean that humans hand-assemble parts made by the CNC machines?
* Does it mean that one human hand-assembles parts made on the production line?
* Does it mean that the sides are bent by a human using a jig, and the bracing is hand-placed and glued, but the neck and other parts are CNC?
* Does it mean one person cuts out all the parts and glues them together but hands it over to the binding shop for that step and the paint shop for finishing and the final assembly shop for stringing and setup?
* Does it mean one person makes and finishes the whole guitar, drawing on all the resources of a well-equipped factory?
* Does it mean one person makes the whole guitar from start to finish?
* Does it mean one person makes the whole guitar from start to finish, including cutting down the tree and rough-sawing and seasoning the timber?
* Does it mean one person makes the whole guitar from start to finish without using machine tools?
* Does it mean one person makes the whole guitar using hand tools he or she made by hand?
* And so on .... 

Tannin

I have three "custom" guitars, and four "factory" guitars. 

The Guild CO-2 and the Tacoma Thunderhawk are straight factory instruments. (By not-quite-coincidence, from the same factory.) 

The Maton Messiah is also a factory guitar but from the top end of their standard production range and it doubtless got more careful timber selection and hand-tweaking than a S-60 at a third the price. 

And then you have the Cole Clark Angel 3, theoretically a factory guitar from a company which uses more CNC than most others, but actually a one-of-a-kind made from very rare timbers and finished beautifully. It is the only new guitar I've bought which has never been for a setup or adjustment of any kind; it was perfect ex-factory and three years later still plays better than any other acoustic I could name.  Obviously, the timbers for this one were hand-selected; my assumption is that they then went through the same factory CNC procedures as any other Cole Clark (e.g., the internal carving of the top and back) before being assembled, bound, finished, and setup by the senior luthier in person. 

The cedar-top Maton SRS-60C is a custom build - but a factory one! It was one of 25 made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of a Melbourne music shop. I've been told they were made by the Custom Shop; I've also been told they were straight standard factory guitars off the line only with a different top wood and fancy electronics. I don't know which is true. 

The WA May really is from Maton's custom shop, made by Andy Allen himself - but Andy gets a lot of help. For example, the paint shop people do the finishing, there is another chap who does any custom engraving, and so on. Andy builds about two guitars a week: my guess is that he selects the timbers, voices the top, hand-carves the braces, and does the glue-up, but has help for a lot of the rest of it. 

And then my Mineur was made by Paul Mineur. He buys in strings, tuners, maybe a truss rod, everything else from neck carve through engraving to the spraying and polishing he does himself, by hand. 

Seven guitars: six different levels of "hand-madeness". 

guitarjack66

Tannin said:

Pjon said:

bertie said:

Pjon said:

At what point do mass produced but well known brands use luthiers to build the guitars? Or are they actually mass produced? (I've played guitar for decades but only become interested in the ins and outs of guitar geekdom in the last few years, so I don't know this!) 

hard to say - but with the bigger brands,  "custom shop"  or words to that ilk  are usually an indication that a  "more highly skilled" craftsman is involved. 

Big brands are "massed produced" they have to be to be able to supply such volumes  - and I dont think it unreasonable to assume the lower the model / ££  the less skilled / less hands on - the work force is.

Pretty much what I guessed. So, next question, a luthier built guitar vs a mass produced guitar at the same price - generally the luthier built should be better than the other? (I know this isn't really quantifiable.)

Well, pretty much anywhere if the mass produced guitar was made in the USA. Gibson and Martin especially, but also Guild and Taylor charge like wounded bloody bulls for mass-produced standard products.

Their fanboys  bleat endlessly about "higher labour costs" (wrong - South Korea has a higher minimum wage than the USA - never mind expensive places like Japan, UK, Australia, Germany), "higher rents" (wrong), "higher skills and better workmanship" (wrong), "better health and safety regulations" (very wrong), "more responsibly sourced materials" (wrong), and "higher taxes" (still wrong). The reality is, the Americans are just expensive. They make lovely guitars, the big American factories, but there is no reason at all to suppose that they are any better than the products of factories in Europe, Ireland, Australia, Japan, or any of several other high-cost countries, all of which manage to make equally beautiful guitars and sell them for a lot less money - and with better quality control.

It is falling-off-a-log easy to find a luthier-made guitar here in Oz for the price of a Hummingbird or an F-55 or an HD-28, and I don't mean a no-reputation just-starting-out one. I'd be very surprised to find that it was any different in the UK Brooke, for example, hand-build and their prices seem very reasonable.

On the other hand, Trying to order a luthier-built guitar at the same price as a factory Lakewood or Furch or Maton or MIJ Takamine .... no. Not going to happen.

But what is "hand made" anyway?

* Does it mean one person operates the CNC machinery?
* Does it mean one person operates only semi-automated machinery?
* Does it mean one person operates noni-automated but made-for-purpose machinery?
* Does it mean that humans hand-assemble parts made by the CNC machines?
* Does it mean that one human hand-assembles parts made on the production line?
* Does it mean that the sides are bent by a human using a jig, and the bracing is hand-placed and glued, but the neck and other parts are CNC?
* Does it mean one person cuts out all the parts and glues them together but hands it over to the binding shop for that step and the paint shop for finishing and the final assembly shop for stringing and setup?
* Does it mean one person makes and finishes the whole guitar, drawing on all the resources of a well-equipped factory?
* Does it mean one person makes the whole guitar from start to finish?
* Does it mean one person makes the whole guitar from start to finish, including cutting down the tree and rough-sawing and seasoning the timber?
* Does it mean one person makes the whole guitar from start to finish without using machine tools?
* Does it mean one person makes the whole guitar using hand tools he or she made by hand?
* And so on .... 

Given your incredible knowledge of acoustic guitars,which brand(s) are the best value for money? Which brands are the most ethically sourced and built? Are there any overlaps as being somebody who very much cares about the ethical side of guitars but who operates in the 'lower budget' market I'd like my chance to play my part,if possible?

Mercedes300

You could say that a cheap digital watch tells the time just as well as a £10,000 plus Rolex. However there is still a waiting list for some Rolex watches. Like a quality acoustic, they are a handmade item that is a pleasure to own, A handmade acoustic is one of the few items you can still buy that uses the build techniques that were developed decades ago, and can be clearly be seen on close examination if the instrument. Signs of hand tools will be clearly seen in the construction (unless it is a Taylor!), and it is this hand made factor that is part of the appeal to me. The other item that is still available today, and is built with very old, labour intensive methods, is an English shotgun they are, and have always been, the best in the world. The price you would need to pay for one (or probably a pair, if they were from a top maker would almost make a high end acoustic seem cheap. However, a good shot with a £500 gun would probably hit just as many clays as a shooter with a made to measure shotgun. I for one, hope that there will always be manufacturers who build up to a standard, rather than down to a cost. Weather it is wrist watches, acoustic guitars, or shotguns. If you can't appreciate that approach, you would probably be much happier living in Russia or China!

Tannin

guitarjack66 said:

Given your incredible knowledge of acoustic guitars,which brand(s) are the best value for money? Which brands are the most ethically sourced and built? Are there any overlaps as being somebody who very much cares about the ethical side of guitars but who operates in the 'lower budget' market I'd like my chance to play my part,if possible?

Not very much knowledge compared to some here Jack, and I'm not just being modest when I say that! In particular, I know very, very little about guitars in the under-$1500 price bracket, or the over $10,000 bracket. Say under £1000 or over £7000 in the UK market. I'll limit my answer to that range.

I can tell you that the "right" answer to your question is different in different places. Here in Oz, Maton and Cole Clark offer an outstanding ethics - price - quality trifecta. Also consider Yamaha and Furch (if you can find one). After that, Taylor guitars are overpriced but not crazy-dear, are of excellent quality, and made ethically. (But the the Taylor sound may or may not be one you like. Come to that, the same applies to every other make!)

In the USA, the Aussie guitars are still good instruments but not bargains the way they are here. Gibson, Guild, and Martin are a lot cheaper than they are in Oz or UK, but still way too dear (and Gibson's ethics are poor). There are several smaller US makers which would be worth a look - Larivee is one. And the Americans all seem to like the Godin empire guitars (Godin, Seagull, S&P, etc.). They are very well-priced, generally well-regarded, and have excellent environmental ethics. @ICBM doesn't like them and he's no fool, but they would have to be a brand to try.

And in the UK ... well, I'm probably the worst-informed person here. I am the only member of my medium-large family who has never even visited the UK, let alone shopped for guitars in Bristol or Birmingham! I can only guess about what is good value in the UK market, and repeat things other members here say (which I do a lot). 

But there is one thing I can suggest. Look at the "for sale" section here on The Fretboard. A used guitar has next to no environmental impact (it is already built) and is usually better value for money than a new one. I bet there are a few corkers listed there right now.

stickyfiddle

I’m not sure watches are a great analogy because every great watch should be identical to any of the same model other than there serial number, while it’s inevitable that acoustic guitars have their own character even genuinely identical in physical dimensions, because they’re made of wood. 

I agree with @tannin on the Aussie thing though. Matons are a bloody bargain at local prices, but more expensive everywhere else. Likewise Atkin are amazing value in the UK but the yanks haven’t heard of them because they’d cost 1k more over there and then the economics don’t stack up in a market mostly obsessed with Martin & Gibson for those styles. 

guitarjack66

Mercedes300 said:

You could say that a cheap digital watch tells the time just as well as a £10,000 plus Rolex. However there is still a waiting list for some Rolex watches. Like a quality acoustic, they are a handmade item that is a pleasure to own, A handmade acoustic is one of the few items you can still buy that uses the build techniques that were developed decades ago, and can be clearly be seen on close examination if the instrument. Signs of hand tools will be clearly seen in the construction (unless it is a Taylor!), and it is this hand made factor that is part of the appeal to me. The other item that is still available today, and is built with very old, labour intensive methods, is an English shotgun they are, and have always been, the best in the world. The price you would need to pay for one (or probably a pair, if they were from a top maker would almost make a high end acoustic seem cheap. However, a good shot with a £500 gun would probably hit just as many clays as a shooter with a made to measure shotgun. I for one, hope that there will always be manufacturers who build up to a standard, rather than down to a cost. Weather it is wrist watches, acoustic guitars, or shotguns. If you can't appreciate that approach, you would probably be much happier living in Russia or China!

The same China that makesa large amount of the world's guitars and it's parts?  Arguably even some of the best! 

Supportact

Jez6345789 said:

... So in essence these days there are acoustics for all of us at whatever price you need these are some golden years for the acoustic guitar. 

I think this just about nails it. You can get some pretty decent acoustic guitars for your money at pretty much any level these days. Worth/value then tends to depend on budget and requirements. You don't have to spend tge earth. 

As far as the value of the high end stuff goes, it reminds me of a chat i had with a friend who makes dresses. Mostly fancy stuff for weddings and special occasions. One of her dresses would cost upwards of £2000. I said to her that that that seems like a lot of money for a dress.

 But she explained that it could take her over a month working long hours to make one. She did all the designs herself from scratch. She'll do a number of fitting sessions with her client to make sure it's perfect. The raw materials are the best and can be hard to find. She has overheads, and tax to pay. She's self employed so no paid holiday or sick pay. After she explained all this the dress seemed like a good deal.

We both know someone could pay a fifth of the price and get a great dress they would be totally happy with. But some people (enough people) want what she does. 

Dave_Mc

Mercedes300 said:

You could say that a cheap digital watch tells the time just as well as a £10,000 plus Rolex. 

That's not true, the cheap digital watch probably tells time better!

(Not saying almost all the other stuff in the watch isn't (much!) better with the Rolex, of course, but the actual main aim of the thing is actually worse! It'd be like buying a much more expensive guitar which sounded worse, but where everything else was nicer!)

bertie

Dave_Mc said:

That's not true, the cheap digital watch probably tells time better!

actually not so,   a good digital probably would.  But a cheapo is about as good as a sun dial

Dave_Mc

bertie said:

Dave_Mc said:

That's not true, the cheap digital watch probably tells time better!

actually not so,   a good digital probably would.  But a cheapo is about as good as a sun dial

Well, it depends on how cheap, I guess. You could argue that, compared to a Rolex, almost anything digital is cheap! I mean even with digitals at £100 (or quite a bit less) you're getting orders of magnitude more accuracy than most mechanical watches... the digitals are quoting second error rates per month, while most mechanicals are quoting per day, aren't they?

guitarjack66

I wear a £10 digital watch and it does all I need it to. I am guessing you could get a cheaper end acoustic that the same could also be said about. What does seem to happen though is that once you get some experience on acoustics you realise that your lower end guitar is not going to produce the same sound as your favourite acoustic songs done by professional musicians,regardless of how well you play it. At least this is how it appears to me.

MSedg

stickyfiddle said:

Likewise Atkin are amazing value in the UK but the yanks haven’t heard of them because they’d cost 1k more over there and then the economics don’t stack up in a market mostly obsessed with Martin & Gibson for those styles. 

Funny enough, I was in Coda the other day and was told by one of the sales guys that at least half of all their internet sales of Atkins head stateside - despite there now being a reasonably large selection of Atkins in stock at US retailers (e.g. CME). They’re catching on….

crunchman

guitarjack66 said:

I wear a £10 digital watch and it does all I need it to. I am guessing you could get a cheaper end acoustic that the same could also be said about. What does seem to happen though is that once you get some experience on acoustics you realise that your lower end guitar is not going to produce the same sound as your favourite acoustic songs done by professional musicians,regardless of how well you play it. At least this is how it appears to me.

I set my digital watch when the clocks changed in March.  It's lost 3 seconds since then.

bertie

Dave_Mc said:

bertie said:

Dave_Mc said:

That's not true, the cheap digital watch probably tells time better!

actually not so,   a good digital probably would.  But a cheapo is about as good as a sun dial

Well, it depends on how cheap, I guess. You could argue that, compared to a Rolex, almost anything digital is cheap! I mean even with digitals at £100 (or quite a bit less) you're getting orders of magnitude more accuracy than most mechanical watches... the digitals are quoting second error rates per month, while most mechanicals are quoting per day, aren't they?

just think of how many things in your house use digital "clocks"  - and how often you have to change/reset them

Personally Ive 4 or 5 things where I have to constantly reset the time (microwave, heating thermostat.......)  and some (Smeg cooker)  I dont touch

that's what I was getting at      some things more equal than others etc etc