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Interesting Article on the Status of Guitars & the Business


RevDavidLee

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Very interesting read that a friend posted on her Facebook page:

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/classic-apps/the-slow-secret-death-of-the-electric-guitar-and-why-you-should-care/2017/06/22/5a2fce5c-2920-11e7-b605-33413c691853_story.html?utm_term=.c7729e9d73cd

 

I see a lot of truth in this article - some of which makes me sad.. or maybe just nostalgic B)

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As I reported, in another thread, my dealer (of 30 Plus years), just dropped Gibson and Epiphone Electrics,

but kept their 5 Star dealership of Gibson Acoustic guitars. Why, because Gibson has ridiculous stocking

requirements, at least in the "electric" guitar portion, that unfortunately don't reflect what actually sells!

And, the economy won't sustain sales of $3,000+ dollar guitars, like it used to. So, much slower sales and

much higher inventory requirements, was something they simply couldn't tolerate any longer! My dealer sold

and still sells Gibson acoustic guitars, much easier and in greater numbers, than the electric Gibson's have

done, in the last several years.

 

Couple that, with the decline in "Live" music, on the local and even regional level (with the exception of

"Live" concerts, from well established Super Star acts), being replaced with Internet Jukebox DJ's, and/or

"Karaoke," in the bars and small clubs, all too often, and it's no stretch to see how that effects guitar

sales. In the '60's, there were numerous local and area bands, and we all had a lot of places to play.

Now, there's none, in my area...there are (older) "musicians" that jam, but no real "bands" and far less places to

play, for the few that exist. And, the numbers of people that come out to listen, and/or dance, has dwindled

significantly, as well. Kids just don't DO that, anymore. You can't get them off their computers, or other

electronic pacifiers, long enough to have a conversation beyond "yeah, or neh!" Never mind sticking around

to "dance!"

 

The manufacturers, and retailers are scrambling, to figure out "what" to do, and in which direction. Computers,

are taking over everything. You don't need any instruments, anymore, at all...to "make music!" So...??? [unsure][crying]

 

IMHO, cynical or not, as always...

 

CB

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Well I think the big companies have themselves to blame... partly anyway...

 

I do agree about the lack of current guitar heroes out there compared to the 60/70s eras.. BUT Gibson and Fender flood the market therefore devaluing their own product... Constant ltd runs... Stupid prices and people are probably a bit fed up with it. I mean take the decision to make two of each model as in HP and T.. It just seems like overkill.. Shops only have so much room to display stuff, it cant all be on show... Plus shops are forced to buy more, their own yearly profits go down cos of that etc etc etc its a downwards unsustainable spiral...

 

This is also of course part of the weird corporate view of the world which is that there MUST be a rise in profits every year or something is wrong (or more likely the shareholders don't get their precious bonus on top of their huge salary). Like banks who make 5 billion instead of 5.5billion the year before.. Weirdly that's considered bad??? How can making 5 billion be bad???

 

Id say commercialisation and globalisation are just failing and we will see it all over more and more.

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All good points previously made.

 

I'll admit to skimming the article, but I agree with the "gist". I took the Fender factory tour maybe five years ago, and they touted that they were turning out (I think) 800 guitars per week, not counting Mexico. Gibby was saying about 1,200 per week at the time. Then add in PRS, Epi, Charvel, Ibanez, et al, not to mention acoustic makers (Martin, Taylor, etc.) as well as the "used" market, and my first thought was "Who in the hell is buying these things?". I'm 70, been playing for a long time, own 20 guitars, but between pickup configurations, 6 and 12 string, electric/acoustic, solid body, hollow body, semi hollow...well, you get the point. My bases are covered, and sad but glad to say "I don't need anything else". And yeah, just look at the financials (or the fact the companies won't talk about them). They'll tell you what's really happening to the industry.

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Agreed! Especially with the stupidly high prices, and multi-versions of basically the same models! In that way,

I think they're drowning themselves, in product that simply won't sell in enough numbers to guarantee the kinds

of profit they want or even require. It's simply unsustainable! GC's example, and most manufacturer's own

horrendous Debt, reflects that. And, with the continued soaring costs of just the basics (food, rent, housing,

insurance (medical or otherwise), there will be even less, for "luxury" items, like guitars!

 

 

CB

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We all just need to get out there and play more and try to inspire people to learn to play, or if they already play to get better and start a band. The guitar manufacturer's can't inspire people by just building and marketing guitars. It is up to us guitar players to demonstrate to audiences that it is more fun to play live music and listen to us than to a DJ or some other computer generated digital signal coming over the internet into their headphones.

 

I know it's hard to find places to play and you probably won't get paid what you think your efforts are worth, but when you get the chance make sure you give it your best effort and if you inspire one or two people in the crowd then it's a job well done.

 

The "journalist" making the report has one goal - to sell advertising in his magazine or on his website. Sensationalism gets peoples attention (just watch your local or national news sometime) and the more eyeballs the more they can charge for ad space.

 

Rock N Roll will never die. B)

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We all just need to get out there and play more and try to inspire people to learn to play, or if they already play to get better and start a band. The guitar manufacturer's can't inspire people by just building and marketing guitars. It is up to us guitar players to demonstrate to audiences that it is more fun to play live music and listen to us than to a DJ or some other computer generated digital signal coming over the internet into their headphones.

 

I know it's hard to find places to play and you probably won't get paid what you think your efforts are worth, but when you get the chance make sure you give it your best effort and if you inspire one or two people in the crowd then it's a job well done.

 

The "journalist" making the report has one goal - to sell advertising in his magazine or on his website. Sensationalism gets peoples attention (just watch your local or national news sometime) and the more eyeballs the more they can charge for ad space.

 

Rock N Roll will never die. B)

 

 

Well, in all honesty, I've never played out, to make money! I play with other players for the love of "playing," really!

It's always nice, even Great, to get paid a decent amount, at any venue. But, at some point, local and area musicians

devalued themselves, in a way, by agreeing to play with 3-5 other bands, as a "showcase" for "Free," just to get to play

at all! And, the venues took total advantage of that, which they created in the first place, and that (not so suddenly)

became the "norm" for live music venues, at least in the larger cities. Maybe not so much, anymore? I don't know...I live

in The Sticks! And, there's almost Nothing, going on, out here, anymore. Except the afore mentioned Internet Juke box DJ's

and Karaoke! (Heavy Sigh!)

 

 

CB

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Yeah. The other thing is, guitar players have way more instruments than other musicians. And that just doesn't seem sustainable. If all of us had just one acoustic and one electric it seems like Gibson would be out of business.

 

I mean, who has five oboes?

 

And there's the modern business dynamic where people who don't know a business buy the business and then run it like a lemonade stand. Where the idea isn't to make a good product and earn a day's pay, the same way, every day. It's to wring all the value from the established business lines, mortgage the heck out of everything that's tied down and then destroy the company with bad vision.

 

Ego, horrible vision and stubbornness.

 

Plus, who's young and any good at playing the guitar these days. I wouldn't even know. :unsure:

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This reminds me of the movie "Demolition Man" where they say they're going to Taco Bell for dinner. Sylvester Stallone seems very underwhelmed at the prospect of going to Taco Bell for dinner. And they talk about the franchise wars and how Taco Bell won out. And in their time, "All restaurants are Taco Bell." It's a high scale restaurant with fancy food where people get dressed up and socialize but has the name Taco Bell.

 

"All guitar stores are Guitar Center." It's fairly difficult to find good Gibsons in this area without going to Guitar Center or buying online. I agree that what's happening is that Gibson is charging far too much for many dealers to carry them and be a dealership. Unless you're a huge store with lots of paying customers, it would be hard to keep up with that demand. I would guess that for every Gibson Les Paul sold for $2000-3000.00, they sell 100 of the $119.00 Squire Bullets and other low end guitars. There's Gibsons at the GC close to me that have been there well over a year.

 

It seems to me that if they made it easier for even the smaller stores to stock a few guitars or even order them that they would do better and sell more guitars rather than forcing people to go online or GC. But, I'm not a Business Major so maybe my thinking is wrong. That theory sure worked for Bill Gates. A computer in every household was their motto back in the 90's. Combined with pushing the Internet and a computer in every household, they did pretty well. They made them fairly affordable, internet became faster and more affordable and sales skyrocketed.

 

I agree that the music scene isn't nearly what it once was. There's a few places to play but not like it was. A "DJ" with a computer, microphone and a set of PA speakers is the way a few of the places around here is going and it's often painful to listen to.

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Very interesting article and opinions, I would also think that the fact that the used guitar market has become so saturated by the mere fact that anyone can go on line and buy a guitar from anywhere in the world has to eventually impact some of the new markets. Plus the rising costs of the new ones make the used market more viable for more people.

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Very interesting article and opinions, I would also think that the fact that the used guitar market has become so saturated by the mere fact that anyone can go on line and buy a guitar from anywhere in the world has to eventually impact some of the new markets. Plus the rising costs of the new ones make the used market more viable for more people.

 

Yeah, except in the cases where the ridiculous rising cost of (some) new guitars, seems to automatically give the "used" seller's the

idea that their used (abused or not) guitar is suddenly worth "Vintage" pricing. I see used, non-vintage-current model items on Reverb

and E-bay, that are priced higher, than a new one was, from my dealer. So, one still has to be cautious, and know the "true" market

value, on current used gear. Else you get "burned!"

 

CB

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I think this has been a long time coming. I was always surprised that there were as many guitars sold as there were. I mean, a lot of kids get low-end instruments for Christmas, but how many actually stick with the instrument into adulthood.

 

I think the whole thing got bloated and over-saturated. Same thing happened with surfing. I mean do we need thousands of surfboard manufacturers? No.

 

The only problem I see here is that mega retailers and mega manufacturers (Gibson included)need to adjust their business model to more reasonable sales projections. I mean they Gibson made a reported 1,712 sunburst Les Pauls between 1958 and ’60 - now they do that many in what? A month?

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Eventually all gloom and doom comes true. I've had a really good time with a bunch of guitars and I still have a dozen and I'm still having a good time. I don't care what they do, the kids will have to figure this out. And if they don't want a bunch of guitars and they have a different way of having a good time for a long time, that's good.

 

rct

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Yeah, except in the cases where the ridiculous rising cost of (some) new guitars, seems to automatically give the "used" seller's the

idea that their used (abused or not) guitar is suddenly worth "Vintage" pricing. I see used, non-vintage-current model items on Reverb

and E-bay, that are priced higher, than a new one was, from my dealer. So, one still has to be cautious, and know the "true" market

value, on current used gear. Else you get "burned!"

 

CB

Burned badly, imho. The line between the used and vintage markets was originally quite pronounced - especially when it came to expected prices. Predating that, though there was some awareness of a difference (Gruhn was a major force in getting the vintage stuff its own pricey niche) there was basically a category I'd call 'old and used'. That included a lot of instruments of varying pedigrees, and - rather often - high end items were pretty affordable if a potential buyer knew a little about what he was doing. I can't quote published sources for this because all I'm doing here is referencing personal experience (I'm old, remember 😒). So, to bring a bit more focus, my experience has included 3 'levels' of thinking with preowned instruments: 1)a very general category that included virtually anything that wasn't brand new. 2)a pair of categories - one used and one vintage. 3)the situation we apparently have right now.

For me, #3 is rather hard to define. If I felt obnoxiously verbose, *and y'all are all thinking if this isn't obnoxiously verbose, what is?* I could go on at length about the dynamics of #1 and #2 categories. The third, however seems to me to defy logic. I can't wrap my mind around calling just any badly-made, poorly-constructed instrument produced before, say, 1980, "vintage". Nor can I accept that the selling price for a used current production instrument should be greater than @ 50% of the original street price. When it comes to actual vintage items, that's another situation and deserves considerably more detail than the others combined. But WTH do I know😋....

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Eventually all gloom and doom comes true. I've had a really good time with a bunch of guitars and I still have a dozen and I'm still having a good time. I don't care what they do, the kids will have to figure this out. And if they don't want a bunch of guitars and they have a different way of having a good time for a long time, that's good.

 

rct

That's a damn good way of staying relatively sane in an era that seems relatively not👍👍

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Well I think the big companies have themselves to blame... partly anyway...

 

I do agree about the lack of current guitar heroes out there compared to the 60/70s eras.. BUT Gibson and Fender flood the market therefore devaluing their own product... Constant ltd runs... Stupid prices and people are probably a bit fed up with it. I mean take the decision to make two of each model as in HP and T.. It just seems like overkill.. Shops only have so much room to display stuff, it cant all be on show... Plus shops are forced to buy more, their own yearly profits go down cos of that etc etc etc its a downwards unsustainable spiral...

 

This is also of course part of the weird corporate view of the world which is that there MUST be a rise in profits every year or something is wrong (or more likely the shareholders don't get their precious bonus on top of their huge salary). Like banks who make 5 billion instead of 5.5billion the year before.. Weirdly that's considered bad??? How can making 5 billion be bad???

 

Id say commercialisation and globalisation are just failing and we will see it all over more and more.

 

I saw an interesting article about this not long ago. Sometime in the early 1980's corporations (at least those in the USA) shifted their focus from "employee centered" to "stockholder centered". This is the point where employee wages stagnated,CEO salaries skyrocketed, and profits became the only reason for existence. Loyalty to employees and corporate ethics pretty much disappeared for any publicly owned company.

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I saw an interesting article about this not long ago. Sometime in the early 1980's corporations (at least those in the USA) shifted their focus from "employee centered" to "stockholder centered". This is the point where employee wages stagnated,CEO salaries skyrocketed, and profits became the only reason for existence. Loyalty to employees and corporate ethics pretty much disappeared for any publicly owned company.

You gotta love the 1980's - NOT. That decade killed a lot of basic decency.

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I think the guitar goes in and out of favour. But the whole world is being run by greed now. When a man can buy a £150m boat while another has no food, there is no future.I think the top end guitars are bought as an investment now (but they won't increase much) and just stay locked up in their cases. When I look at the models of manufacturers, they really do think we're stupid. To use Gibson as an example. The Les Paul Classic is really the budget real Les Paul. You can buy it for around £1100 UK now. Apart from no pickup covers, is it really 1/3 the guitar of a basic Custom shop? I've scoured YouTube for reviews of Gibson USA vs Custom shop and there aren't any. Why are there no build reviews? Get two guitars and strip them of their hardware and look at the build quality. I personally think that you could take a Classic and a CS, place them into a blindfolded player's hands and they would barely tell the difference.

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