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Interesting take on US Made Guitars

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4K views 34 replies 20 participants last post by  bigdave 
#1 ·
Phill raises some interesting topics here. All spoken in broad general terms but me not being American everything is Import so whenever I hear thew: Ohhh but its a USA made one... yeah so what? More than not to me the price differences don't translate that much (if at all) to the so called "Import" guitars.



Last part of the video is also pertinent. Most US Brands will be making Import guitars. That until the market collapses and weaves out lots of them that can't just compete any longer.
 
#3 ·
Didn't though they were to be honest. Cost raises when things take longer to make. Because taking longer means there more attention to detail and the threshold for flaws is much lower. But CNC machines work the same everywhere. Skilled workers are skilled any part of the World. Give an Indo factory the same time to make a single instrument that a Custom shop level has and then lets really analyse who made it better.
 
#5 ·
It's economics 101. A skilled laborer in the US cannot survive making $10/hour. So, say they can squeak by on $15/hour but should be in the $20/hour range to really do well - as befitting their skill level in context of US society.

For the sake of easy math, let's say he can make one sweet guitar a week, the manufacturer is now shelling out about $900 in labor (his hourly rate, plus benefits, plus unemployment insurance, payroll insurance, etc.) for 1 guitar. They need to make a profit on that labor, so the labor portion of the wholesale price is now, $1500 assuming the company isn't uber greedy.

They buy parts in major bulk and let's say it costs $200/guitar for all the parts necessary (very conservative number, I'm sure, but just for the sake of the illustration) which they turn and add $400 to the price of the guitar.

You now have an $1900 guitar, wholesale, which the retailer is going to sell for, let's say $2500 so they can keep the lights on, pay their Eddie Van Halen wannabe to help you buy it and/or just stand around and pretend to look cool.

Do that same thing in Mexico, where a worker makes $10 A WEEK. and suddenly you've freed up $880 in cost, which allows you to wholesale the guitar for $500 and the local Guitar Center can sell it for $800 and hire even more guys to stand around and try and look cool while teenagers come in and butcher Enter Sandman on their lunch breaks.

The US skilled work isn't necessarily any more skilled than the Mexican one, but the cost of living and all that is hugely different.

(for reference, I've stood on the property of Mexican auto parts manufacturing plants where their employees are paid $100/week, then charged $90/week to live in the 8'x8' concrete box the company forces them to live in if they want to keep their job.)

Quality might not have squat to do with it, economics has everything to do with it.
 
#6 ·
I worked at Fender and I will be the first to tell you that the guitar made in the USA are only different from Mexico because they are 400 miles north. They are basically the same guitars made by Mexicans. Just pick your locale.

Hell the most famous Fender guys are Freddie Tovares and Abigail Ybarra. Those are not "American" names :lol:

Is there a difference in the quality because of the Country of Origin? Generally, yes, but any guitar player should always be looking for what works for them from a quality, spec, and playability standpoint. COO is basically a non-issue for anything north of $500 these days.

One other thing I just remembered. There are legal implications for things labeled "Made in the USA" so if you look carefully at many products that list the COO as USA, be wary of what it is labeled as. Fender started used "Handcrafted in the USA" because its legally means nothing. There is a reason for that.
 
#7 ·
Cost of manufacturing from place to place is not linear, add to that the cost for workers in some countrys and the fact that sometimes the US model has more high end options and parts, makes it way more complicated than it may seem.
 
#10 ·
The prestige of US-made guitars is largely an artifact, now, but there are still small differences--mostly due to the market positioning. US made guitars get the best of everything and more attention. The difference isn't what it used to be, though.

Prior to the late 1980s, the highest level of guitar luthiery existed almost solely in the USA. For production-quality guitars, the Japanese started to catch up in the late '70s and probably achieved parity in the '90s. The Koreans got close in the late '00s to mid '10s, though they've now been undercut by the Indonesians.

A lot of the other stuff this guy talks about is supply chain and marketing stuff. Sizable US manufacturers can't use US-made hardware because there isn't enough of it to go around, and it's been a long time since guitar companies made their own metalware.

In contrast, the lower manufacturing cost of Korean and Indonesian guitars has allowed the companies to improve the quality of the hardware on their guitars. Only the ultra-cheapies have off-brand bridges or pickups anymore.

When I play a US-made Jackson, it's still noticeably different than even one of my Japanese-made ones that I adore. The fretwork is a little different. It's weightier, more solid, tighter on low-end chunk. Those are things that are tough to measure and which a less experienced player might not appreciate. Is that worth an additional $2,000+? It might be.
 
#11 ·
When I play a US-made Jackson, it's still noticeably different than even one of my Japanese-made ones that I adore. The fretwork is a little different. It's weightier, more solid, tighter on low-end chunk. Those are things that are tough to measure and which a less experienced player might not appreciate. Is that worth an additional $2,000+? It might be.
The difference definitely isn't as big as it used to be. The price gap is so much larger, though, that I feel like it can't possibly be worth it - but, since I already own a pile of good US-made guitars, I have a built-in bias.

I still feel like the age of the wood has a lot to do with it, too - those '90s Japanese Jackson that were just meh sounding are getting much better with age in my experience. The age of the wood and not the craftsmanship had more to do with the mystique of the '59 Les Pauls that led to all this crap, anyway.
 
#13 ·
I have several guitars, from decades ago, that are made in the U.S or Japan. Not one of them has ever had fret sprout. I routinely help friends out with their Mexican strats, Indonesian guitars, etc., that develop fret sprout. It might not be so much about the craftsmanship, but the pre-treatment of the materials.
 
#14 ·
I've never wanted to buy a Mexican or U.S.A. Fender in our current era. None of them ever appealed to me, except for the V-Neck Fender American Deluxe USA.
That one was awesome, others were just bleh. So I'm not surprised. The only Fender's I ever liked were the Custom Shops and the Old ones (90's and before).

As far as Charvel goes, in 2009 and 2010, they had those awesome U.S.A. Charvel So-Cal's & San Dimas's, they were sick and definitely worth the price tag of $1100.
They were perfect. These new Charvels from Japan and the U.S.A are crap compared to those. I don't know what changed, but in know way shape or form would I pay $2000 for their current U.S.A. Guitars with the exception of the signature models. That Jake E. Lee Charvel is perfect.

The only guitars that seem to be consistent with their highest quality guitars are Ibanez (Japan, U.S.) and Ernie Ball Music Man (U.S.A.).
And I guess Gibson when they make ONE worth playing.

Those Japanese Soloist's (I've played Several) from the early 90's were sick. I've never played a U.S.A. Jackson I liked, which I find very frustrating because I know how good they could be.
 
#18 ·
If Freddie Tovares and Abigail Ybarra are not "American" names, then I have no idea what an "American name" is. :ugh: I mean, I'm pretty sure that Abigail has been one of the most popular female names in the US for over 100 years pretty consistently, and all the variations that Freddie comes from (Fred, Frederick, etc.) have been pretty popular in the US too (with the Freddie abbreviation/nickname being arguably the most "American"). If it's the last name, then does that mean American last names can only be from England or they aren't American? :ugh: In that case, I don't have an American name either, and my first name is one of the most popular male names in the US (much like Abigail is one of the most popular female names in the US).

So yeah, maybe ******* meant native American names or something. :lol:
 
#23 ·
I can’t recall ever playing a bad EBMM. They’ve all sounded at least good, if not great, and have a very high level of workmanship. I’m no fan of the PRS sound, but the same description applies. I think the issue is most people think of Gibson when they think of American guitars, and their QC has been in the toilet for over a decade.
 
#26 ·
:naren:

Late to the party but any guitar over $800 these days is at least partially buoyed by intangibles. CoO is an intangible value, plain and simple. I've played guitars from China with exceptional craftsmanship and attention to detail (Eastman is a good example). The only thing that CoO refers to is potential resale value and how much budget factored into the consideration when it was made.

It's not that Chinese or Taiwanese people can't make a quality product, it's that it's expensive to ship materials in and out of the opposite side of the world, so companies wouldn't be doing it unless they're getting some benefit from doing that way. In most cases, that's means benefitting from East Asia's lower wages and cost of living, which means the CoO choice is tied to cutting expenses, which means lower quality materials and less QC and attention to detail. A Chinese person can produce a breathtaking instrument, but ask them to do it during a 14 hour shift, with a 1000 instrument per day quota, pot metal hardware and a 5 piece plywood body. You can't no matter that country you're from.

I think Japan and US are neck and neck on quality of output and with the way prices have gone up in the last decade, the cost to value is almost flat between both. One advantage the Japanese have are better in country hardware production. Japanese hardware is also neck and neck with the best hardware in the world, and that they can produce and ship domestically, as far as I can tell there's no notable quality US hardware production companies that are comparable in price or the quality to what's coming out of Japan or Germany.
 
#27 ·
If you guys down in the states buy one of mine, you're buying an import Canadian guitar!

I dont' really think the location matters, just the quality of the works on the guitar. I keep bringing up Gibson, but that was easily one of the worst organized and worst cleaned environments to work in. None of the workers there really looked happy. :(

Out of all the guitars I own, the guitars that I usually judge other guitars by are made in Taiwan and Japan. I haven't really played any US guitar in my entire life where i noticed anything so remarkably different where I thought it was because the guitar was USA built. Jackson managed to get a 23 fret guitar signed off by everyone who touched it at the custom shop and into a customer's hands, so not even one of the most respected shops in the world is infallible.
 
#28 ·
There's definitely an overpriced, over-hyped aspect to the whole made in USA thing. And many of the key points have been raised in regards to Fender's MIMs and MIUs as well as Jackson's MIJs and MIUs. Only 2 of my guitars are MIU at the moment. I once had a few more but easily parted ways with them. One was an actual USA made Jackson. Love the company till this day and it was a fine guitar, but long story short, I have 2 MIJ Dinkys that deliver big time and have a feel to them that I just never really get from what's MIU.
 
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