Why Are Guitar Manufactures Making More Than We Can Buy?
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- Опубліковано 11 чер 2024
- #knowyourgear #podcast #guitarpodcast #geekystuff
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My wife says if I buy one more guitar, she's leaving.
I'm gonna miss her, but I really need the room.
Plenty of fish out there my brother.
how many guitars do you have?
You will not miss her.
😂😂
Time to find a new wife who is as passionate about guitars as you are!
Loving these clip pulls from the live eps. Such a brilliant idea and easier to digest than the full 2 hours.
Ditto 👍
Oh me too! That last statement was powerful and will probably be used by others as they compete for office!!
Agreed! I like watching the whole thing, but I don't always have time, or I forget. This is awesome.
@@Vykk_Draygoexactly same as me ✌️
Bless your mum for getting you that guitar. She found a way no matter what. True love. ❤
My dad rescued and restored a vandalized piano. My mother cleaned toilets to pay for lessons. Dirty jobs paid for a used keyboard and amp. Bar gigs paid my way through college. I wore out two keyboards over the years. I still have just one keyboard and one amp. It’s all I need and I’m so grateful.
A good & grateful attitude is EVERYTHING! ❤️
When I was growing up getting a guitar wasn't easy... and I grew up in Fullerton, home of the Fender! At 12 (1970) I got my first strat, Fender amp and external reverb unit... I have been obsessed with music and gear ever since. Just holding a guitar is magical... now that I have what's known as "disposable income" I collect the guitars of my youth (I have 63)... but I'm in a local band and use most of them through out the year. Having them on the walls around me is like a museum of my love for guitars!
So much respect for you in this clip. Yes, guitars are luxury items and we should re-learn to be thankful for simply having the time and peace to sit and play them…Yes, and to sit and listen to you. Blessings to you, Phil.
When I was 15 years old I never thought I'd have the amount of guitars I have now. Most people had no more than two. One electric. One acoustic. I now have over ten. Cheaper prices and higher quality made me go crazy. Mostly modded budget and Chinese guitars. They play and sound great. Not much resale value. They're not investments. But they are a lot of fun.
I still have two.
I three but only because the third was going in end in the trash.
Non communist made guitars between 700 and 1100 ad infinitum!
I just bought 3 new basses at once. I must have been out of my mind! (But I sure do love 'em!)
I went from no guitars to 8 guitars in about 15 months. None of them cost more than $500. They play pretty great.
I wish you did more of these 20 minute posts. 2 hour videos are nuts. 🥜
Phil just hearing your story about how your mom made sacrifices in order to get you your first guitar rig made me realize why so many people love and respect you. You speak from your heart and that fact shines through in all you do. We, as fans of your podcast are so lucky to get the “ skinny” on all things guitar . Add to that your sharing of life lessons and your technical knowledge mixed in with some Phil humor , I’d say we’re all pretty lucky to have you as a mentor and friend albeit online. Wishing you and your lovely wife nothing but the best ! Cheers and God bless. Bobby Wheels. 🙏🏼❤️🎸👨🏼🦽
That must be why Badlands guitars are $3,000? So our mom's have to sacrifice too?
Not always a guitar is luxury. Sometimes it was and is a life saver. A necessity. A ssurvival tool. A lifeboat to escape from an insufferable surrounding and destiny. A way to communicate where words fail and nothing else would suffice. The old blues players... how would they survived without their guitars, harps and pianos? How many lives have been saved or remain bearable only thruogh music? Instruments are medicine!
agree totally! add a few cats and I dont leave the house for days at a time! cats love quiet guitar playing.
My girl always say's, He could be spending it on a lot worse things!!!!
Mine Also.
My dad always said “at least you’re not buying drugs”.
She's a keeper.
@@MrAustinMusic my dad always said, "you play better on drugs" 😭🤣
He was correct aswell 😂
The amount of guitars a person needs is X+1. This is a well known equation. X is the amount of guitars you currently have.
you are correct, of course, but that is the first half of the equation. equations always have an = symbol, hence "equation".
x+1=y
where:
x= the amount of guitars you currently have
y= the ideal amount of guitars to have
Very true. But my problem is that I have multiple variations of the same guitar, with a couple of other guitars sprinkled on top. Would make more sense if all of my guitars were different models, but they're not. That's just how it is.
The same applies to motorcycles
@@rsrmotoltd1144 My guitars (all stratocasters) match the colors of my motorcycles, or is it vice versa.🎸🏍️🤔
We're more than happy if we can make around 1200 guitars per year haha. Cheers from Denmark!
I get tired of tuning up and down with 1 guitar. So yes, i NEED at least 3.
I have 3 electrics and an acoustic. One is in E, one in Eb, one in D.
Exactly, looking for one to tune to C.
I have 5 guitars! Why? Because three have Floyd Rose trems.
I'll tell you this. I bought a used 2014 Fender Standard. It had basically never been played, put in a case and controlled storage. The grain on the body and the neck are great. The pickups sound amazing. I was all ready to change them but they sound great clean, OD, doesn’t matter.
I'll never buy another new guitar.
Subscribed. This episode was your best coherent unbiased human-felt video I've seen on any subject.
After playing guitar professionally for 40 years I don't really care about having an expensive guitar. I've played incredible guitars for $100.00 / 300.00 / 500.00/ 1100.00. If the guitar feels great, subin whatever pickups you want and you have a gem! For a couple of years I actually played a $75 guitar. The neck was incredible and It felt great overall. I altered the pickups and played the crap out of it! I was playing jazz and fusion jazz with that axe and it just made me smile! One more story...I had a student show up for a lesson and he had purchased a squire strat with a pack of strings, strap and a handfull of picks for $100.00. I played it and said, man if you ever want to sell this guitar please ask me first. One of the best guitars I've ever played.
Pros can write it off against income. Once you have more guitars than you can properly maintain it becomes more of a pain than pleasure.
This! Right now I have more guitars than I can play on a regular basis. So someone's gotta go.
@@flohough1870 I have two electric guitars, an acoustic guitar, an acoustic electric bass, and two electric basses (4 and 6 string). I struggle finding time to play and maintain each properly, and I hate how much restringing costs. Minimum of $85 if I were to do them all at once - I can afford it, I just don't like it. 🤣
And I still want a super strat with single coils and maybe a trem, and a fretless 4 string bass. I feel like a masochist. 🤣
@Vykk_Draygo I have 7, 3 acoustics and 4 electrics. And yes, it gets expensive to restring especially if you use premium strings, etc! I feel bad too that some of them are just sitting in cases when someone else could be enjoying them. Goal is to sell off 2 or three over the next year or so. Two for sure. I have found as my playing evolved, so have my wants and needs in regards to body style and tone. It's all a journey, isn't it?
@@flohough1870 It is! And it's good to be able to go on that journey. I sold an electric last year, since I was gifted a new guitar and I just stopped playing the other one entirely. So I get it. When I took it in to the local shop, the guy who was working the sale was super stoked, so I'm betting he bought it (80's Cort Effector Explorer in white). It felt good seeing someone else love the guitar!
How does one write it off for taxes , do you need to prove you made over a certain amount of money with music?
I bought a few of mine when they were still cheaper to buy used: Bought a '62 Gibson SG around 1970 for much less than a new one and others in those years because I could only afford USED guitars. (still in VG condition, no checking or buckle rash etc.) Now most folks can only afford NEW guitars... Honestly there is not that much difference, old is not better, just older.
I've only got 6 guitars left. I owned over 100 at some point in time. If I had had much more money I would probably go back to like 20, ost of them under 2k. And the 6 I have now would still be part of the collection. I needed years to settle on those. I have a single spot open on my wall and I'm buying guitars till I find the one to fill it, but I never have more than 2 candidates at once here. I sell before I buy a new one, because I totally was a guitar messi.
About the professional guitarists: As a professional a guitar is first of all a tool. In most cases you don't want to play a "collectable" guitar on stage and in the studio I'd say it depends... But the job can be done with any guitar suiting the player if it stays in tune. No matter if it cost 100 bucks or 100k bucks.
I'm at the stage/age in life where I'm selling everything off. I don't resent or hate them. They just aren't important to me as they used to be. It's part of growing up.
I never want to grow up. im adding more at age 71.
My first electric guitar was two old wallhanger Sears guitars that two different friends gave me when I was a young teen. One had working pickups and a decent body and the other had a decent neck. They didn't fit together so I had to "make" them fit. It wa a total piece of crap but it worked and that got me started on a lifelong journey to being a guitar player
I recently bought my first Cort ever. And to be totally honest, it rivals any American made guitar I've ever had...better in many aspects. They might be making lots and lots of guitars, but they're making some great ones.
i knew bands, good bands, who struggle to buy instruments plus food. That movie, "Light of Day" is once of my favorite with Joan Jett and Micheal J. Fox was too close to reality for the majority of musician who struggle to play for their supper.
I total of three guitars. A solid body electric a semi hollow and small acoustic. I petty much stop there. more guitar mean more strings to buy.
You and me both, duder. I got a MIM player series strat, Epiphone 335, Boss mkII amp, and a Yamaha FG830.
I picked up a used Pacifica earlier this month but returned it the next day. Im not going that route. I got all the guitar I need.
Even some rich (big name) musicians don't bring their vintage guitars on the road anymore because they're so valuable and hard to replace. Hobbyist or not, I'd rather see guitars USED at live performances and on recordings than sitting in some collection unused or where nobody hears it.
From a person who's seen this trend in every sector of manufacturing, it's also made worse with the race to the bottom.
Here's their logic: the more units we build, the closer our build cost approaches zero, and the greater percentage we can undercut our nearest competitors.
It just took longer for it to appear here because it's not thousands or more of chips on a wafer where giant leaps in quantities per wafer can happen with die shrinks (device size optimization) suddenly dropping the cost of generating the bare die for that device by an order of magnitude in some cases.
Making More Guitars Than We Can Buy? Sweet! More Guitars, Not Guns! 💚
Both are awesome.
Can't protect your guitars without a gun
I'm still a noob taking lessons and I have like 8. Starting this as an adult hasn't been the best financial decision. =)
as long as there's good variety in your collection, go for it man.
try different types of guitar. acoustic steel string, nylon string, electrics at 25.5 inch scale, electrics at 24.75 (or 24.6 for Gretsch), flat radius, curved radius, multiscale, 7 string, 12 string, etc
find your groove
@@fistovuzi That's basically where I am at. I have a resonator, a nylon acoustic, a dreadnaught, a smaller cut away acoustic, a fake Les Paul, a real strat, a real Tele, and a real Ibanez with active pickups. It makes my lessons a little more fun, and it's cool to play with the different tones. But obviously it only went this way, because I'm an adult who can afford things others couldn't because they were kids when they learned.
If I was rich, I might become a collector, but got too much stuff already.
When I had my first Lafayette guitar (which I would love to still have ) I bought it from my cousin with paper route money . I used to fix stings if they broke behind the nut by tying the ends to a small washer . Nearest Sam Ash store or any music store was 6 miles away on a bicycle trip . Spent hours in there .
Good points. We just had a Donner HSS Strat-style delivered with full sized body,bent-saddles,and zero sharp frets--plus a real guitar cable and a decent gigbag. ..,all for $75. The body is worth twice that. Cool with us🤘
Your honesty is a breath of fresh air sir.
You are an honest man, Phillip! What you're saying is true. Crunch time happens when the cost of living for the hobbyist exceeds his/her ability to maintain their gear collection. We are only at the very beginning of this economic recession, and it's going to be a whopper.
I bought a 1982 Gibson Explorer in a pawn shop in 1989, for $300 bucks. It’s black with gold hardware. Turns out it’s a custom shop korina model neck through body. The numbers are stamped into the headstock. I saw the same guitar on eBay for $17,900.
When I played in bands in the 70s and 80s I had 2 guitars and 1 Amp. Now that I'm old and rarely play, I have 20 guitars and 8 amps, 2 PA systems and all kinds of guitar cabs. I built all of it as an experiment. None of them duplicate another one. I'm not a collector. Just a craftsman.
Great post 👍, love the pragmatic insight that your years of experience has given you.
Over the years, I've gone through phases of what I want from a guitar. Virtually always been a 24-fret superstrat guy, but wanted other guitar types to supplement the different tones you can get. Went through a Les Paul phase for a few years, but evetually settled firmly on the side of widdly shredders now. Got 7 in total, reality is that I only play 4 (and one of those is a partscaster) and I have no intention of buying any more. Last one I bought was a secondhand 2017 USA HSS Elite Strat, which I feel completed my collection. The ones I've got do everything I can ever see myself conceivably playing or recording again, so I'm actually out of the market for new guitars completely now after 45+ years of playing.
Tbh, I only *ever* bought one guitar new in all my years anyway - a Gibson KZ-II with Dirty Fingers pickups when I was eighteen. Saved all my money from a summer labouring job and it cost me ~UK£500 back in 1981. Loved it but it had to go to part-pay college.
IMHO, you definitely can have too many guitars, you can't play them all they way they deserve.
NOS, new old stock... The companies can win with their excess holding onto it as an investment to sell later at a higher price or refinish them (like Gibson's Mod collection)
I bought a faded Tea Burst LP and Long & McQuade has a special run of them... my store in town send all the excess ones back to Gibson... likely going to the Mod shop.
I've declared that I'm done buying guitars several times now but then an idea for a sound will pop into my head and won't go away until it's realized. I've done an ok job managing this impulse by repurposing the ones that are getting dusty into more interesting tools that make me want to pick them up again. I just recently turned a squire strat into what is essentially a baritone and it's been a lot of fun. I really wanted a Dano, but spending $600 on that would be reckless right now. I'm glad I went this route though because I'm digging it a lot and it only cost me $20 and some time.
A better question is....why are they so dang expensive then?
Well, they're not, actually....
You can buy a good guitar for $300 - $600 (sometimes less). That's significantly less than many people spend on a new phone.
It's never been easier, or cheaper, to get into playing guitar. New instruments aside, Craigslist can be a gold mine. I watched a ~$1K Charvel recently: I was mulling over buying it, posted at $600. The seller took it down to $525, and I decided to sleep on it. Someone snapped it up. By the pictures and description, the thing was like-new.
@SpartacusColo you are no alone having regrets for not jumping on a good deal fast😊
Gibson’s are more expensive than ever or Atleast from what I can remember back in 2014 ish they had tons of versions of their guitars for well under a grand. They claimed they were pleking their guitars after , Iv bought multiple guitars from them around 2019 and on and Iv played multiple new ones with bad nuts and bought one with a twisted neck without realizing atfirst.
What a joke
Great perspective!
An item you love and appreciate is much more than a mere luxury. A luxury is something you don't need. Something you love and appreciate is treasure.
I once owned 33 guitars. No idea why. I now own 6 which is probably still twice as many as I need/want.
Best testimony of a great Mother ever )))
The smartest thing the vast majority of musicians (over 99%) can do is buy a used guitar for $300-$800, and have a professional technician replace the pickups and do a professional set up. The world needs 0 new massed produced guitars and there are a tiny handful of talented exceptions that need a guitar made to their specific needs by a talented small builder.
I have been fortunate. I have maybe 25 guitars. I am 74 and started watching your channel when you started. Now, every time I acquire another one, I let one go. I either gift it or sell it. Like any collection, you have favorites. I live alone. They are my companions. I take good care of them and they respond by helping me make music.
By the way, here is a tip, if you are selling something and the purchaser objects with, “If I bring another (insert here) she will kill me.” Casually respond with, “Well, don’t tell her…..”.😮
Your Mom is GLORIOUS!!!
Love your videos. They are joyful to watch.
Sir, you are low key always saying some wise or thought provoking things. That's why I keep coming back. 👍
I say purchase one great guitar of electric and of acoustic and stay away from cheap junk... Your message Sir is spot on....I perceive you in a different light....❤
I agree with your viewpoint. Good video. Thank you
Have a guitar for each tuning you want. Or have left and right handed guitars like me. I’m trying to learn both ways. It only takes a few months to get somewhat comfortable with. You’re basically a beginner before that point relearning movements
I go to a lot of pawn shops state wide. One shop told me that they no longer take in any guitar's. They have three Conex box's full of just guitars, they had 150 guitars on display in the shop alone. Rows and rows of amps stacked up along with several boxes of cords and pedals. I aways hunt for older Vox AC30s and black faced Fender twins.
Definitely not an over supply of lefty guitars.
A guitar store owner here in the UK was asked about this. He said he’d increased stock of lefties a couple of times previously. Guess what? They sat unsold for months, sometimes years.
I'm relieved to be lefty. If I wasn't, I'd buy too many guitars. There's about 10:1 ratio of right to left guitars an the market; that's enough.
What is crazy about being enthusiastic about something is that people around you tend to look for things in the realm and gift you with those type of things for birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, etc. This is how some acquire parts of their collection.
I suck at guitar playing, i definitely have an addiction. At one time I had 13 guitars, i sold a bunch and now im down to 3, but i collect and i will own more and more.
My 2nd wife,back in the day, literally stopped me in the middle of a park and said'you've gotta choose between me and the guitar (candy apple red Japan Strat😮
2 acoustics guild f47, f212xl. 2 electrics, Ric 330, Epiphone dot. All I need.
Phil, you are a class act. I love your work. Maybe I'll run into you in Sweetwater some day and we'll talk about all the guitars we won't buy and insure. LOL!
How are guitars like cars? I went to a car show, and they had a vintage (not reliced) Buick from the 50s. It drew more attention that any of the current cars. People took a look at the Aston Martins and the concept cars and went back to the old Buick. Got their photo taken in it. Good memories, I guess. I left the show thinking I'm glad I don't work in an industry where everybody thinks the old products were better. To add insult to injury, guitars are pretty much perfected. Cars got air conditioners and automatic transmissions. Guitars got robot tuners. And fanned frets, asymmetrical necks, synth ready pickups, low impedence, organ guitars, Rickenbacker combs, 9-strings, headless, acrylic bodies, metal necks, Ervana/Feiten, etc. None of this stuff has really caught on. The few things that did succeed like locking trems, locking tuners and intonatable bridges did so because they addressed the few things that still needed improvement.
Does a professional really need a vintage guitar or can he do his job on a upper price-range Squire just as well?
Everyone needs at least one instrument. Guitars are great.
Agreed. I have way more guitars now than I did when I had my record deals. They are like cars. You only need one decent one. But, if you can swing it, why not get more?
What a beautiful comment about your first guitar. ❤
'guitar is a luxury item' is so real. more voices saying this online!
Hmm. As a failed guitarist turned bassist turned hobbyist, I see your point. 1 old Nissan, no boats or $$$ supercars, either....
I'd take an old 510, Z-car or Skyline over any supercar.
Laurel and Gloria too, for that matter.
Well put.
After 70 years of guitar production it does make me wonder if the market could get saturated. Some will eventually get scrapped, a few are stored unused and of course many are circulating in the used market. There are a few collectors who have a large number of guitars but most guitarists probably only have 2 or 3. So saturation is a problem the manufacturers will have to keep an eye on.
It’s not just Cort ramping up production, it took Martin 171 years to build its first 1 million guitars, then 12 years to build the next million!😳
Hey Phil, have you done any archtop comparison reviews?
6:41 great stuff man
I have one acoustic which I play every day at work for kids at our school, one Malaysian plywood Strat style solid body electric which is a complete PoS as it doesn't stay in tune even with the trem locked down, and one old '60s Yugoslavian hollow body electric which I'm piecing back together to replace the PoS. My hobby is writing songs. Collecting guitars ..... not so much.
The best guitar player I personally know -- the guy can perfectly immitate Marty Friedman and plays crazy prog rock -- uses quilter amps and Steinberger Spirit imports. To him a guitar is like a hammer or screwdriver, and if he doesn't like the sound he'll mod it himself.
How many guitars is the right amount for a guitar player? ..........+1, however many you have +1 ....=)))
24 million guitars is more than we can buy? Oh please ...You haven't met some of my musician friends.
❤My mother too...1st. guitar...
I have 20 American made Fender, Gibsons, and Rickenbackers but I stopped buying a decade ago. I've barely bought anything new in the last decade because I have too much.
good instruments used to be very expensive and "student" instruments used to be terrible. Now solid top and solid wood acoustics are much more common and not that expensive. Many more choices as well.
Hobbyists keep the entire industry in business.
Saw a doc about Gibson’s factory and they showed the Les Paul assembly line w dozens of LPs at various stages of the build process. Are there really enough pros and hobbyists willing to part with close to 3K to keep that factory cranking out LPs? It’s not like there is a shortage of clean used ones out there.
Professional guitar players don't need a vintage strat more than a hobbyist. It's possible to buy great guitars for gigging at pretty much any price point if you know what to look for.
the earth will be consumed by the sun at some point so using the trees for guitars is better than just letting them burn eventually :O)
My wife said, "you got another guitar"? Yea, but I sold one. She said, "I can count and you sell one and buy 3". I just turn the amp up.
I'm more interested in knowing why my local GCs have 400 guitars on the wall, and 85% of them are strats or strat clones.
There's no way that is representative of what people actually want. That's like saying I want 4 strats and 1 other guitar.
Retail works on the very simple and basic principle of supply and demand..
A quick look at reverbs top selling electric guitars has a very similar breakdown to what you are describing that you see in musical instrument retail stores.
However,..just because a particular product or design, or even a derivative of certain design might be super successful it doesnt mean YOU yourself are in any way obligated to buy the most popular product in some absurd "4 to 1' ratio LoL.
You, can buy whatever the hell you want,..
Other people buy wtf ever they want!
People have guitar collections made-up entirely of set-neck Gibsons or Rickenbachers loL
People have collections that are all Telecasters.
People have collections of guitars that are each and everyone either headless or semi-hollow !
Why,..why WHY,..would YOu feel obligated, in any way,.. to buy 4 strats or "strat clones" just because your local retailer is having more success selling those models?
And by "strat clone" are you talking about the PRS Silver Sky or a Super Strat?
Super Strats can be anything from a simple Strat with a humbucker in the bridge position, and possibly having a Floyd Rose stye bridge or,..a full on Kramer Baretta or Jackson soloist?
Mos players buying Super Strats have no interest in Leo's traditional 3 single coil and curvy fretboard radius necks ( unless your name is Yngwie )
Brilliant!👏
All you need to do is save for a rainy day and enjoy
My guitars are my Salvation, nothin else matters !
One guitar is need.
One.
This reminds me of the wine trade, collectors of wine for investment; people are just investors not players.
In economics the term is "rentier"
Yeah, the ones who lost their heads.
This is why Gibson and Fender force us to buy Chinese Replicas, and I'm ok with that, they work for me.
I own 7 guitars 4 of them are my good ones meaning they tune properly and sound good. One of my good ones is a 1953 arch top I inherited from my dad. Of the other three, one is a diy repair project the other two I let other people borrow. I like having 4 player guitars because that keeps me interested in practicing which is the real secret to playing well, not the guitar.
Only 24M guitars? There are 8B people in the world. Keep going...
HELP! I have room for my guitars but how to store the hard cases? It is like having a washing machine in the room. I hate losing a closet to hard cases.
The reality is that no one ever throws away a good quality guitar. For something like a Gibson or a Fender even if they need a fairly big repair, they are going to get it and go on to outlive their owners. The number of guitars in existence just continues to grow every year at a rate that outpaces the number of new people/players. They take up a lot of space and sooner or later, the guys buying dozens of guitars just won 't be able to absorb the excess any longer as they have been.
The tragedy is that the vast majority of the world’s diminishing supply of suitable guitarmaking materials are swallowed by these huge manufacturers spitting out sub optimal product…
You know, I've played a plywood bodied guitar. It sounded great. Electric guitars can be made out of pretty much anything, so it's only a concern as far as aesthetics. Acoustic is a different beast, obviously.
How much did you pay for that 1000 year old single malt scotch? When buying anything you need to know what makes it the best. It’s so many nice things available then need, especially luxury items. Just have to search for them.
I've had as many as 7 acoustics guitars at one time 3electric guitars2 Bass guitars I'm down to 3 acoustics1 electric 2 basses key board 5 amps
Squier Affinity Strat ... Does the job
It's funny because on every video of a Rockstar smashing a guitar there's 20k comments from people saying that some kid could have used it, but there's absolutely 0 shortage of guitars. I've never walked into a guitar store and they were completely wiped out because pearl jam smashed a guitar last night.
A lot of guitars don’t even sound good. When I go to guitar center I try many guitars , most of them have weird midranges. I don’t find most guitars to even be passable. Either too thin, too scooped, muffled ,etc.
It’s actually difficult to find a balanced guitar, I’m not a fan of throwing in aftermarket pickups either , for me a guitar must sound good from the beginning and have a nice character, then it’s unique.