Guitar prices, sausage rolls.

richardhomer

Perhaps there’s a correlation between health impact of pastries and the environmental impact of a guitar? Very high fat = Brazilian rosewood, vegan sausage roll = bowl-back Ovation? 

BluesLover

Forgot to say earlier, if you are going to make your own sausage rolls, add some grated apple and onion to the sausage mix. Taste fantastic!

carlos

The biggest cost of a sausage roll is to one's conscience by participating in one of humanity's cruelest endeavours.
As for guitars, they're all the same. Like comparing forks or pens.

Christeafur

Greg’s sausage rolls just don’t age well. The patina on a quality roll with proper egg wash finish…

jasonbone75

Musical_Mystery_Tour said:

grappagreen said:

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 companies

Whilst that is true, it is also perpetuated by peer groups. A case in point would be when people on guitar forums support such notions, for example when people go on about the headstock end shape on Gibsons versus Epiphones.

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.

Well they are both dysfunctional and should be consigned to museums because the strings aren't straight! I've got all the popular views me

Flanging_Fred

I had a sausage roll from the local farmers market on Christmas Eve and promptly got a very nasty dose of food poisoning.

I have never contracted campylobacter poisoning from my Gibson Les Paul or Fender Strat, so I guess that is why they are much more expensive than sausage rolls. Better QA and hygiene standards.

carlos

Flanging_Fred said:

I had a sausage roll from the local farmers market on Christmas Eve and promptly got a very nasty dose of food poisoning.

I have never contracted campylobacter poisoning from my Gibson Les Paul or Fender Strat, so I guess that is why they are much more expensive than sausage rolls. Better QA and hygiene standards.

Fender guitars come with cancer warnings lol Although that's just Americans being super careful of litigation.

RaymondLin

Nothing wrong with Gregg's Sausage Rolls, it hits a spot when it is fresh and warm.

carlos

ToneControl said:

Musical_Mystery_Tour said:

Anyone who thinks Gibson and Fender sell guitars, is entirely mistaken; what they do, is sell dreams.

(...)

This is mostly true, except that the £100 Thomanns aren't quite a match for Gibson. However the £300-£400 ones are.
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.

Lovely guitar! I had a kid come over recently who was getting into guitar. He played through my Vigier Excalibur (~3k new?) and he thought it was... okay, but barely. Then his parents got him the cheapest Squier strat there is, I think it's called Sonic or something, and he was beaming! Why? Because it looked like David Gilmour's strat.  

breakstuff

BluesLover said:

Forgot to say earlier, if you are going to make your own sausage rolls, add some grated apple and onion to the sausage mix. Taste fantastic!

Ah, the sausage roll equivalent of putting a Bigsby on a Les Paul.

hollywoodrox

thecolourbox said:

I dunno, we bought some sausage rolls from M&S at Christmas and whilst they were nice (i'm not normally a fan), they were about £7 for a packet, whereas a similar sized pack in Sainsburys seems to be £2. I guess I bought the murphy labs sosig rolls

I bought mum some from M& S another year and the meat tasted smoked which ruined them 

Greatape

thecolourbox said:

I dunno, we bought some sausage rolls from M&S at Christmas and whilst they were nice (i'm not normally a fan), they were about £7 for a packet, whereas a similar sized pack in Sainsburys seems to be £2. I guess I bought the murphy labs sosig rolls

'Heavy relic'? I think the Gibson masterbakers kick those around the factory floor before packing them up. 

Christeafur

I tried relicing my wild bean cafe sausage roll this morning…

guitarjack66

Musical_Mystery_Tour said:

Anyone who thinks Gibson and Fender sell guitars, is entirely mistaken; what they do, is sell dreams.

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.

There is also the fact that those Chinese/Indonesian etc workers are paid a pittance and any complaints about their job are dealt with with a goodbye and replacement worker is inserted straight away. Let's als not forget any care for where they source that wood from and the damage it's likely to do to our planet in the future let alone how they source it so cheaply and the various cutting of costs to transport it. Is this worth the difference or is there a middle ground somewhere between 120 quid and 3 grand? 
PS,all my 5 guitars are budget brands even though I am not happy with how they are necessarily made.

CasperCaster

Damn...

....now I've got GAS for a.sauasage roll....

Funkfingers

CasperCaster said:

now I've got GAS for a.sausage roll.

Argent said:

God Gave Sausage Roll To You.  

randella

Yeah of all the feelings I thought I'd be left with after a quick browse of the forum today, a desire to go over to the butchers at dinnertime wasn't one of them.

Musical_Mystery_Tour

ToneControl said:

This is mostly true, except that the £100 Thomanns aren't quite a match for Gibson. However the £300-£400 ones are.
I

I don't think anyone seriously thinks a one to guitar is going to look like a two grand Gibson, but the point is that the Gibson isn't objectively nineteen hundred quid better. And in fact if you look at the pics of that newly announced Gibson LP Studio Modern, the finish around the frets and nut don't even look as good as they are on those one ton guitars, it's well ropey, with cut marks visible on the fretboard, so it clearly is that logo one will be paying for, or not in my case, I'll stick with my 2003 Epiphone LP Studio, which is very nice and cost me two hundred quid.

jasonbone75

CasperCaster said:

Damn...

....now I've got GAS for a.sauasage roll....

Surely the gas comes after...

breakstuff

Greggs have just announced the opening of Greggs Garage Wigan next month.