The inexorable MSRP creep…are new Gibsons now priced out of the reach of working musicians?

[Boyd]

Not anymore, a broken digital clock will just have a blank screen. 🙃

[IanHenry]

In reality, the price of "professional grade" guitars is relatively cheap when compared with other professional instruments, it’s quite common for Violin players to take out a mortgage to buy a first-rate instrument, we are talking fully trained musicians going on to play in an orchestra with the knowledge that when they retire they can sell the instrument for more than they paid for it.

That is acknowledging the difference between a Guitar player and a musician, personally, I’d call myself a Guitar player, not a musician as I believe is the case with most players.

If the original poster would like to PM me. I think I can send him to a shop that will give him a very good deal, I tried to message him but it said that he cannot receive personal messages.         

[Sgt. Pepper]

1 hour ago, fortyearspickn said:

A clock that doesn't run tells the right time twice a day...

My sun dial is always on time unless its a cloudy day.

[Sgt. Pepper]

Love Martin, but they can suck it for charging and doing this:

https://www.martinguitar.com/guitars/authentic-series/D-45S-Authentic-1936-Aged.html

[Jinder]

Thankyou for your thoughts, all! A really fascinating thread.

In answer to a few questions, I understand that the definition of a “working musician” is approximately the same as the definition of the length of a piece of string. It’s an extremely variable (and changeable from week to week) job in terms of pay and hours worked. 

On average, myself and my friends who work in music earn anything from £15k to £30k a year from a mixture of live work, session work, function stuff, writing for other artists/labels/film scores/adverts, making and releasing records etc. I’m very much a musical odd job man. There isn’t a huge amount of money in it, but if you’re willing to diversify, survival is entirely possible. 
 

In terms of sessions where I’ve lost work through having the “wrong” instrument to hand, I’m not sure who came in after me to do the work. There has only been a couple of occasions where I’ve actually been dismissed from the session entirely based on instrument availability-more often than not, if I haven’t had the desired instrument in my arsenal, there have been some other parts on the project that I’ve been able to play. I remember one EP project that I was asked to come in and contribute BVs to twenty seconds of an outro on one track, and ended up playing bass on the whole record! It’s often very random, and the best sessions are always the ones where you can say “hey, let me try a thing”. 
 

I’m happy to buy used-I’ve never had an issue with doing that, and of course finance is available for people who want to buy new instruments, although the variable income of the working musician can make finance approval very difficult. 

I agree that there are many pro grade instruments out there that are significantly cheaper than classic Gibson models. A good friend and former bandmate of mine is a prolific session player and for many years used a Martin D16R for everything. It was a wonderful sounding guitar and is on several of my records. The chap in question now runs his own studio and has massively expanded his collection, but for a long time the D16R was the only one. Likewise another session player who bought a 000-15 in 2005 or so and has barely used anything else since. In the world of pop sessions, a mid level Taylor will suffice for everything. It’s the more niche Americana/Roots/Folk/Blues stuff that people get picky about!

Anyway, thankyou all…so interesting to read everyone’s take on it.