I like sausage rolls, this got me thinking.
Guitar prices, lets look at Fender and Gibson, both have been making guitars for ages. Both are very good at it. Production costs are probably nailed by now. So, why does one model cost stupid money compared to another? Gibson especially, they are all made out of mahogony, so finish is different, pick ups different, but the cost difference between poly and nitro in a production environment cant be that much, the cost to wind two different types of pickup cant be that much. So what is it?
Sausage rolls, I like sausage rolls, the difference between a decent top quality pack of sausage rolls and a cheapo pack is about 99p.
A Deuce , a Tele and a cup of tea.
Comments
It's nothing to do with manufacturing cost plus a bit of profit equals selling price.
It's about pitching your price to balance supply and demand, to maximise profit.
Prices are set according to what the customer will pay.
I have a cheap Fazley Midas guitar, which is a Gold Top clone. It looks fab, plays great and sounds great; it cost me 123 quid, delivered, in less than four days. It's just as good if not better than some of my Gibsons. But what it does not have, is a Gibson logo on the end of it. I could not care less about that which is why I bought it; none of my Gibsons and Fenders sound better or play better for having that logo on the end of them, but fortunately for Gibson and Fender, lots of people think that does make them sound better and it certainly makes them feel better about it to suppose that is the case.
That Fazley has a Mahogany neck and body, so it's definitely not the cost of the wood. The price difference between a cheap pot and a decent one is buttons for a large manufacturer, so that's not it either and even if it was you could switch them out for peanuts yourself. Pretty much every guitar these days is made on the same CNC cutting machines, so it's not that either and that of course means Gibson, Fender, Epiphone, Squier, Jet, Fazley, Donner, Glarry and Harley Benton guitars are all cut to exactly the same tolerances and fit together just as well as one another.
The most obvious sign that is the case is how you can get a one hundred quid guitar with a set neck these days, whereas thirty-five years ago, a cheap Les Paul copy with a set neck was just not a thing; they all had screw on necks because the tolerances can be much slacker on that construction method (Leo Fender knew that back in 1947); that's what CNC has done for us. It's why you don't have to 'run in' a car engine these days, the parts all fit together nicely. A global market helps too of course.
I look forward to the instalment of the Terminator movie series where someone from the Gibson marketing department goes back in time to kill the designer of the CNC machine.
Paint is paint, it used to be used to cover a multitude of loose tolerance sins on cheap copies, but these days that's not necessary, so it isn't that either. Abalone versus mother-of-toilet-seat fretboard inlays will be a difference in cost, but it's only going to make a huge difference on something with a lot of blingy inlaying going on, so that's not it either.
One thing which is a difference though, is machine heads. Precision-made machine heads as opposed to the commonplace die-cast ones you find on cheap copies do cost quite a bit more to make. However, even that's probably only a fifty quid (tops) difference for a manufacturer. Also true for bridges. So what does that leave?
A large part of it is market placement, and some of it is logistics. The Gibson Les Paul Standard and the American-made Stratocaster are 'dad's dream guitar', played by his heroes, aimed squarely at his equity release disposable income, for what will most likely spend the majority of its time as a man cave wall-hanger/occasional pub rocker.
But even if none of that was true, though produced in some volume, something like that fancy Gibson still can't be churned out and exported in the kind of volumes that a 200 quid Chinese clone is, whereby hundreds of them get knocked up for probably less than fifty quid in total, then get jammed into a shipping container by the thousand and shipped over to Europe where the transport cost per unit ends up being a couple of quid and they then fly off the Ebay, Bax, Thomann etc, warehouse shelves rapidly, where even they are the bargain basement version of that same dream.
Back with your sausages, in marketing there is a saying - 'sell the sizzle, not the sausage', and that's precisely what Gibson and Fender do. It's exactly what all that 'signature model' bollocks is about.
https://cziltangbrone.bandcamp.com/album/null-hypothesis-5-ep
https://cziltangbrone.bandcamp.com/album/machine-space-2
Cost of sale has nothing to do with selling price. The Corporation’s goals are maximise value. Two ways to achieve this - minimise CoS and maximise sale price.
But if a product is ostensibly the same as another, the challenge becomes how do we maximise sale price? Here’s where things have become very sophisticated.
As stated already, when we buy certain brands we are buying a dream, fulfilling an aspiration blah blah. This aspiration however was largely placed in our minds by said business..
I’m obviously not referring to sausage rolls here
How many people are actually that bothered by that difference aesthetically as opposed to from a snobbery stand point?
Don't get me wrong, there are some three a side headstock shapes which I think are feck ugly - Harvey Benton and Vintage for example - but when it comes to Gibson and Epiphone, I like both of them just as much as much as one another and couldn't give a crap about what Gibson or anyone else would prefer me to favour.
My wife makes her own sausage rolls and adds a bit of sage and onion stuffing to the sausage meat. Very nice they are too.
The sausage roll equivalent of putting new pickups in a Harley Benton.
I bought a few during lockdown.
The way some brands price things is amazing to watch: look at Louis Vuitton handbags for £1400. That company is mssive now, the owner is currently the richest person in the world Bernard Arnault - Wikipedia
I remember 10 years ago, and old friend came round, his 11-12 year old son was learning guitar, I showed them my single-cut, a David Thomas McNaught (they are $4500+ new), similar to this one. He's a one-man band rival to PRS I think. AN amazing instrument
First question I was asked was "Is it a Gibson?" That was a lesson in the power of branding.