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Thread: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with it?

  1. #26
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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    Many years ago, I knew nothing at all about electric guitars. My wife had one when she was a kid and I knew she wanted a Fender Stratocaster. We had no nearby music stores so a friend leant me a Musician's Friend catalog. I looked in the section where the Fender Stratocasters were. There was one for 1000 dollars, one for 400 dollars, and one for 150 dollars. I asked my wife what the difference was. At that point she didn't know I was going to buy one for her, I just feigned general interest. She informed me the expensive one was made in America, the middle one in Mexico, and the cheap one she didn't know, probably somewhere in the Orient. My reaction? Who cares where they're made, I said. Why would anyone in their right mind pay 1000 for a guitar when you can get the exact same thing for 150?

    I look back on that now, and I don't even recognize that person! Of course I learned that they are NOT the "exact same thing". Oh yes, the cheaper imports can be good, but they are not the same as the higher priced American instruments. I am so much more experienced and knowledgeable now. But I think a lot of people never get past the naïveté I displayed back then, which is why there is such a market for the low priced stuff.

    But this situation is nothing new, really. Before we had bottom of the barrel Chinese, Indonesian, and Vietnamese instruments, we had Korean, and before that Japanese, and before that there were some pretty awful quality American made stuff. The music industry has survived all of that. What we have now that's different from the past is high quality upper tier imported instruments, coming from countries previously known for low quality.

    Obviously, there are problems in the music industry. But part of the solution is to expose kids to music early, get them interested in real music instead of computerized stuff. And teach them the difference between low quality and high quality instruments. Knowledge is power. If we educate our youth they will grab the baton and run its it.
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  3. #27
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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    What is an electric guitar? Most of the "acoustic " now have pickups. I agree with most of the previous post, times they are a changing, yes the market is saturated, etc but like so many things today the lines are getting blurred. I never thought I'd see a whole bluegrass band with electric instrument. ( in my opinion if you install a electronic pickup an instrument becomes electric.) remember when the Osborne Brothers electrified, people thought bluegrass was over. I'm not expecting the end of bluegrass or americian folk but truth be told I liked it better before.

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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    Quote Originally Posted by DHopkins View Post
    You have guitar makers, amplifier makers, pedal makers (making pedals that will do everything but scratch your back) and lord knows what. Too many people have too much into it for the electric guitar to fall out of favor.
    An industry too big to fail? Might it qualify for a government bailout?

    Hundreds of millions of dollars of debt and the income from electric guitar sales are down by one-third. Something's amiss there.

    The cool factor and the ease of playing combined to sell them IMO. But you had to actually play one to obtain the cool factor. I think society's acceptance of playing air guitar as being totally cool was the beginning of the demise.
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  7. #29
    bon vivant jaycat's Avatar
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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    Quote Originally Posted by Louise NM View Post
    And what happens to people who start with an $89.95 mandolin or a $35 guitar? Are the instruments playable, or are they sheer junk, frustrating enough that people quit within weeks? . . .
    Oh, that's nothing. I started with a Sears Silvertone guitar bought from a friend for $5 ... action about 1" at the 12th fret. As did many others, and yet, we persevered! A 'set-up,' what's that? Never heard of it. Or humidifying our cases either. You only started out on a 'quality' electric if you got it for Xmas (like my pal's Gretsch Country Gentleman, nice!)
    "The paths of experimentation twist and turn through mountains of miscalculations, and often lose themselves in error and darkness!"
    --Leslie Daniel, "The Brain That Wouldn't Die."

    Some tunes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa1...SV2qtug/videos

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    Registered User Charlie Bernstein's Avatar
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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    Gruhn is certainly the foremost authority, but I think he's missing two points.

    1. There might not be more buyers, but buyers are buying more. I can't tell you how many people I know who have over twenty guitars. One friend doesn't even play them. He's a drummer. He just likes how they look hanging in his garage.

    Especially now that there are so many cheap, pretty, playable imports, the opportunities to buy continue to expand. And all the boomer lawyers and dentists who were in garage bands in high school pretty much guarantee that the handmade booteek market will be with us for at least a few more years.

    2. The flattening of the market is most likely a textbook example of a bubble correcting itself. In a nation where every other household now has a guitar, the end of saturation doesn't mean the end infatuation. Our love affair with guitars goes back several generations and will certain go forward several generations, as well.

    The volume might be smaller, but that's not a demise. The market will adjust. They do that.

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    Registered User Ivan Kelsall's Avatar
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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    From Mandoplumb - " ..in my opinion if you install a electronic pickup an instrument becomes electric. ..". If the instrument can be played perfectly audibly 'without' the elecs.,then it's an electricly amplified 'acoustic' instrument. IMO - a truly elec.instrument is one that without the elecs. becomes inaudible - although i do understand Mp's point of view.

    Re. Asian made 'anything' - those guys did produce some horrendous stuff in the begining. Why wouldn't they,they were making copies of Western goods that they'd never made before !. However,drawing on over 3,000 years of skill in producing exquisite works of art & craftsmanship,they were soon developing & improving the goods that they made & at a lower cost. After that they were marketing their own brands of goods & taking on sub-contacts from Western brands - fiendishly clever these Orientals !!.

    I remember reading an article re.the setting up of the Chinese 'Gold Star' banjo production line,overseen by Greg Rich (ex.Gibson) & Scott Zimmerman (Desert Rose Banjos). Initially,things were coming down the assembly line a bit 'not quite right'. Greg Rich said that he only needed to tell the guys once about something, & it never came down wrong again.

    The 'electric Osbornes' were ghastly !!. However,at that time,several bands were trying to get into the rock music market by playing what i could only call 'Bluegrass versions' of rock songs,trying to appeal to the non-Bluegrassers who might bite.
    Jim & Jesse - ''Johnny B. Goode''

    Some of the Osborne Bros. songs recorded back then were far from the Bluegrass shore.
    - ''There's Always a Woman...'' & several more like that one,
    Ivan
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  13. #32

    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    never gonna happen in this millennium - guitars of any kind will always be the most in-demand stringed "people's" instrument.

    imho ....

    what could happen is that people will wake up from the hype and nonsense of the big two - gibson and fender - and realize that the best value for a pro guitar, electric or acoustic, comes off the pac rim. unlike decades ago, gibson and fender are selling far less quality electric guitars for far more inflated dollars. to a fair degree, this is happening with acoustic guitars, too. as to mandolins, these are very Very specialized acoustics, and while the pac rim fodder is not at all bad, i doubt they could make a production line mandolin that'd rival an onshore USA built custom one. ymmv.
    Mandolins are truly *magic*!

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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    Having a hard time getting excited about this article.

    Really, what large guitar manufacturer can't figure out there's a horrible glut of guitars? Guitar Center, Sam Ash... these didn't exist 30 years ago and now there's an uproar that their business model isn't working? The beast gets fed, then we're all supposed to sob when times change? They were happy to swallow the profits when business was good, but business changes. I can think of a lot more interesting subjects to discuss, but certainly understand why a title clearly written to set tongues wagging gets discussed.

    God forbid Gibson dies. Oh wait, they already have several times.

    The article isn't really about fewer electric guitars getting played, it's about fewer being sold. Boo hoo. Well guess what? If you think guitars are going to stop being played, got a bridge for sale.

    P.S. I will now retreat to running a successful (my opinion) mandolin site. An instrument probably above popularity to accordion, likely a bit more popular than banjo--but too many people that think it's a banjo.

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  17. #34
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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    I have a couple of thoughts. Music education is way down in this country. If you want people to play musical instruments, music education is a big help.

    Some of what is going on in the market place is simply poor management by some of the big names. In the case of Gibson and Fender, the price difference between entry level instruments and even mid-level is huge while the quality difference is shrinking and sometimes hard to see.

    The big box model is built on volume and low price. That may be fine for cornflakes but when you are dropping a few hundred to a few thousand dollars people want service, informed service. My experience has been that Guitar center and Sam Ash don't provide it. A friend of mine is a fine drummer with a passion for drum equipment. He got what he thought was a dream job at Guitar Center in their drum department. He was constantly reprimanded for spending too much time with customers even though he had the best sales record in the department. He also wasn't paid enough to live on and quit.

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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    There are cycles, and then there's change. And that's the biggest thing the Boomer generation is struggling with - change. I know who my audience is, so I proceed as diplomatically as possible.

    Seasons come and go, and as much as I love the mid-20th Century blues and rock musicians I idolized as a young kid (I'm only in my 30s, so I was discovering them second-hand even then), time has moved on. This isn't a bad thing. Hendrix's four magical albums don't lose their shine just because no one has seen fit to replicate them.

    Instead of recognizing that this isn't your father's music industry, boomers cry about change and lament that their kids and grandkids don't love exactly the same stuff they did. It's fine. It'll all be fine. We'll be those crotchety old men complaining about the same thing in a few decades.

    As for the death of the retailers, I would posit that I am part of the problem, but for an entirely different reason. I own more instruments than even the average musician, but of the nine instruments I own, I only purchased two new from a music retailer. Add in the acoustic guitar that was a gift and that makes three. The other six instruments in my arsenal were purchased second-hand on a message board. Same goes for all of the amps I have laying around. All second-hand from someone who was not GC or Sam Ash. Or Sweetwater or MF, for that matter.

    The internet killed the big box music store. Not just Sweetwater and Musician's Friend, but Craigslist and all of the other second-hand buying options available to the frugal shopper. Guitar Center hopped into the second-hand market way too late, and smaller independent retailers can't move second-hand gear quick enough to make it worth their time, if they even care to get into the swap-meet game in the first place.

    As a post-script, I agree with what was mentioned above. Improving music education in this country would go a long way toward rebuilding the market for these instruments, but it's just so much easier to let your kid bury their face in a screen than to listen to them fart through a four-chord country song. Even if the long-term payoff is SO much better. Fender has the right idea in trying to offer support for first-time buyers to stick with the instrument and become long-time customers, but their actual strategy reminds me of the slacktivism problem. By posting something online and expecting everyone else to do something about it, I'm helping to fix the issue, right?

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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    I'm a retail killer too I suppose. Of the 70-some instruments I'd accumulated before I decided it was enough, only one was purchased new (a mandolin, when I got the urge to play and had to have one).

    Today, when your child expresses an interest in playing 'rock' music, chances are that gear is available for cheap or even free. When I moved a couple of years ago, I outfitted at least one band with gtrs, basses, drums, keyboard...that our friends' children were getting going..

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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    But Wisson your buying second hand allows the seller to buy a new instrument. It's all part of the " economics" of muscial instruments.

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  25. #38
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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    Quote Originally Posted by sblock View Post
    Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with it?
    The electric guitar market is alive and well.....
    ....and if Gibson folds it'll be there own damn fault...

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  27. #39

    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    The electric guitar will die when young men grow tired of making noise while pompously strutting about, wagging long objects they hold at waist level.

    In other words, never.

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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    We do need a major reset and I believe we are pretty close to getting it. The short term fallout from the demise of the large makers and big box retailers would be huge. It will take some time for the market to recover. From that we should see more success from mom and pop shops reclaiming the local markets, but it will never be like it was in the past. Ecommerce sources left standing will still be the major factor in shaping the direction of the market. Even if local sales are the bulk of the market, nearly everyone researches online and that will always be the benchmark.

    The saturation will always be there. It is much easier to enter the market now. Anyone can launch a brand. It is fairly easy for factories to sell direct and that is becoming more prevalent. This is causing distributors to do what they can to survive and much of this is not in the best interest of market health.

    In the end, I am not sure how all of this turns out. There will always be talented luthiers that love making instruments. They will do this regardless of the profit potential. There will always be people who are passionate about instruments and want to own/run a music store and a successful music store doesn't need the bulk of profit to come from sales. It is often lessons and repairs that keep the lights on and sales are an afterthought. Highly niche business with value added services (such as mine) will always be able to survive, if not thrive.

    Loosely related... Some of the newer pop that has heavy Motown influence is actually pretty good. I don't care for the sprinkled in rap, but overall, it isn't bad. It is surely better than a lot of what I listened to in the 80's-90's!
    Robert Fear
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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    I would not want to be a collector counting on selling off instruments for my retirement. There will be a glut of collectibles and supply and demand kicks in.

    For the last twenty years, I've been building partscasters out of the best components available. I'd be hard pressed to spend six hundred bucks on a telecaster style guitar, and I end up with a nitro laquer paint job, boutique pickups, and better wood. Equivalent Fender would be two grand. I know boomers with thirty highl grade guitars. I know forty year olds having trouble keeping a roof over their heads. Whose going to buy all the estate sale guitars and at what price?

    There will always be people making music on whatever they can afford, but the possible casual player has an awful lot of alternate choices of what to do for entertainment. It takes motivation and effort to master an instrument. Heroes boost interest. Too few on the scene right now. Like every other mature business, it's reached the point where margins are just not there. Great for the consumer, not for a manufacturer or retailer.
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  33. #42
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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    Today a lot of the discretionary dollars are going to smart phones, laptops and other electronic media devices. After all you cannot live without these, ask my kids. This was not the case in the past as these things did not exist. In the 60's, 70's and 8o's the electric guitar did not compete nearly as much with other electronics. What do kids want most, that Strat copy (amp required) or a new phone? Todays dollars are being pulled in many more directions.

  34. #43
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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    Quote Originally Posted by Hudmister View Post
    Today a lot of the discretionary dollars are going to smart phones, laptops and other electronic media devices. After all you cannot live without these, ask my kids. This was not the case in the past as these things did not exist. In the 60's, 70's and 8o's the electric guitar did not compete nearly as much with other electronics. What do kids want most, that Strat copy (amp required) or a new phone? Todays dollars are being pulled in many more directions.
    Show of hands, please, how many were spending a couple hundred dollars a month on $15-20 CDs and LPs 30 years ago. I didn't have that kind of money but was finding a way. Raises hand.

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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    25 years ago was the peak for me, but looking back, it was probably the single most important thing in my life. Hunt down new music to analyze and learn.
    Robert Fear
    http://www.folkmusician.com

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    " - Pete Seeger

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    Middle-Aged Old-Timer Tobin's Avatar
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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    Oh yeah, I was a victim of Columbia House mail-order schemes too. I still have drawers full of cassettes and CDs to show for it. They're virtually worthless now, yet I can't find the power to throw them away.
    Keep that skillet good and greasy all the time!

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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    As a Baby Boomer, I can tell you that everything we do is cool and will last forever. (Sorry for the sarcasm. It's a Boomer thing.)
    Last edited by Warren H; Jun-23-2017 at 1:04pm.

  40. #47

    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    Quote Originally Posted by Folkmusician.com View Post
    25 years ago was the peak for me, but looking back, it was probably the single most important thing in my life. Hunt down new music to analyze and learn.
    In art college buying jazz CDs and reading liner notes was 'research.' (my buddy in engineering also used that rationale)

    Obsessive? (Raises hand)
    Last edited by catmandu2; Jun-23-2017 at 1:15pm.

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  42. #48

    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    Quote Originally Posted by rfd View Post
    what could happen is that people will wake up from the hype and nonsense of the big two - gibson and fender - and realize that the best value for a pro guitar, electric or acoustic, comes off the pac rim. unlike decades ago, gibson and fender are selling far less quality electric guitars for far more inflated dollars. to a fair degree, this is happening with acoustic guitars, too. as to mandolins, these are very Very specialized acoustics, and while the pac rim fodder is not at all bad, i doubt they could make a production line mandolin that'd rival an onshore USA built custom one. ymmv.
    I don't own a single Gibson (or Epiphone) or Fender. I've actually never owned anything made by Gibson, though obviously I have admired Jimmy Page's Les Paul from afar. Of all the guitars in the house (there are 9, counting a bass) there's 1 Fender, and that's my wife's pink Hello Kitty Squire guitar, and none of them were made in the US, except for my Rickenbacker 360.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mandolin Cafe View Post
    If you think guitars are going to stop being played, got a bridge for sale.
    I bet it's a CA bridge!


    Quote Originally Posted by catmandu2 View Post
    I'm a retail killer too I suppose. Of the 70-some instruments I'd accumulated before I decided it was enough, only one was purchased new (a mandolin, when I got the urge to play and had to have one).

    Today, when your child expresses an interest in playing 'rock' music, chances are that gear is available for cheap or even free. When I moved a couple of years ago, I outfitted at least one band with gtrs, basses, drums, keyboard...that our friends' children were getting going..
    Now that you mention it, I bought my mandolin new too! It's a The Loar LM-310 though, so nobody be impressed, lol. My bass was a gift, so while it was new, technically _I_ didn't buy it.

    Because I'm a 40 year old teenager, my tastes tend to run toward the familiar, and toward the "signature guitar" area. There would be pretty much zero chance of me walking into a guitar shop and buying a new solid body electric guitar, and doubly so for an unfamiliar maker/body style/etc.

    As someone else mentioned, I believe, just because people aren't buying guitars from Guitar Center, doesn't mean people aren't buying guitars. All of my guitars came from the internet, and all but 1 were used.

    Just to give you an idea, here's what's in my rack at home, and what was really going on in my head/why I bought it:

    Ibanez JS10th Joe Satriani signature model (the chrome plated one) -came from Yahoo auctions in the late 90's - and since I've loved Satriani since I was 13, this was the ultimate guitar to have. Only 500 were made. Made in Japan. Satriani later autographed it, and commented on how nice the chrome looked (his are beat up from touring/playing)

    '96 Rickenbacker 360 (jetglo) - got in trade for some web development I did for a seller - R.E.M. is my favorite band, so this was a dream to acquire, like the aforementioned "Chromeboy" guitar above. Made in the USA.

    Harley Benton TE-80 NT Deluxe - bought new from Thomann in Germany, exclusive seller of the HB line of instruments for less than $200 shipped, NEW! (deals don't get any better than that). With a pickguard change, it instantly becomes a replica of Prince's famous Hohner Telecaster-style guitar, used in Purple Rain and his famous R'n'R Hall of Fame performance of While My Guitar Gently Weeps (which I later replicated with my guitar, in a Daily Motion video). Probably made in Korea.

    Fernandes LA-85 KK bought on ebay, used, and shipped from Japan - My baby at the moment, somewhat inexplicably. This guitar is a signature guitar of Ken from the massive Japanese band L'Arc~en~Ciel. It was a Japan-exclusive guitar from the late 90's, a garish red superstrat with a red mirror pickguard, and gold hardware. It straddles the line between being a gorgeous guitar, and looking like something you might find in Toys R Us. Even the neck and fingerboard are red. Hopefully made in Japan, possibly made in Korea.

    Fernandes LD-95 KK Love Driver also bought on ebay, used, and shipped from Japan - Another Ken signature, from a later vintage (but still 90's) this is a classic strat copy......except it's sparkle orange, has a cat inlay on the 12th fret, and the headstock is emblazoned with "Fernandes Love Driver" (and the small print at the end says "Original Erotic Body", a parody of Fender's "Original Contour Body"). You GOTTA love a guitar with a sense of humor!

    Hamer Velocity 2 bass This has no celebrity pedigree. 20 year ago or so, I was teaching a friend to play bass &guitar, for free, but didn't own a bass (yet I could slap and play Primus when handed one). His grandma had recently passed and left him some ducats, and he took me to help him pick out a guitar and a bass, and he ended up getting me a bass that was even nicer than the one he bought for himself. It's a lovely bubinga one, cos I don't do paint on basses. It was new

    Kids these days aren't that much different. Nor are many of us old guys here. If the new band kids are into are playing old Supros, they're gonna find them on eBay. People remark on acoustics outselling electrics. A recent Phillip McKnight video I stumbled onto explains that.....Taylor Swift. Kids see her with an acoustic, and suddenly they want a guitar with a big hole in it.

    Everything goes in cycles, but between kids who're influenced by what's popular, and people like me who're only interested in niche things you can't get in the store (other than The Loar, which I did buy at GC), not a lot of people are beating down GC's door. It takes trends, and/or someone who's both talented and has a new approach (see Buckethead and his "kill switch" guitars) to get kids interested in taking the trip down to GC....and then the question is whether the "out of the box" instrument they buy, because they don't know from setup, is even going to be playable....or if the difficulty of playing it causes it to be left in a corner, forgotten.

    With stuff like the Harley Benton guitars (many of which are actually really good, and can be had for next to nothing) the high dollar guitar makers, and guitar store chains will continue to have a hard time competing with outfits that are offering a much greater value for your dollar....especially considering that you can shop in a GC, and then turn around any buy virtually anything you liked from there............on Amazon. For cheaper.

    The $12 drill bit string winder I was eyeballing at GC costs half that on Amazon.


    Sorry if I'm rambling....I'm pretty sure I had a point when I started out!
    Last edited by Billkwando; Jun-23-2017 at 2:05pm.

  43. #49

    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    Quote Originally Posted by Billkwando View Post


    Now that you mention it, I bought my mandolin new too! It's a The Loar LM-310 though, so nobody be impressed, lol. My bass was a gift, so while it was new, technically _I_ didn't buy it.

    Because I'm a 40 year old teenager, my tastes tend to run toward the familiar, and toward the "signature guitar" area. There would be pretty much zero chance of me walking into a guitar shop and buying a new solid body electric guitar, and doubly so for an unfamiliar maker/body ..

    Back in the mid-80s I first rmember this coming to manifest between two mates I was jamming with: the one couldn't "get' why the other didn't play a Gbsn or Fender - he had a prs or Peavey or van halen or I don't know what. (I was happily playing a Fender pedal steel, so I no longer had much of a stake by this point). Today (and since its inception) DiYers are twiddling bits and fiddling with elec. sound.. more contemporaneously with dig and synths et al., but analogers are prolific too.. Confess my affinity for gear from circa 1970 - the great romantic analog period. Going from spiders from Mars to scary monsters was a major leap.

  44. #50
    Registered User Charlie Bernstein's Avatar
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    Default Re: Is the electric guitar dying, taking Gibson and others with i

    Quote Originally Posted by Ivan Kelsall View Post
    If you have a 'saturated' market of any product,then the market will slow down. If production exceeds demand,as so often happens in the car sales game,makers have to cut back on production. I'm sure that market fluctuations happen every so often in any area of consumerism. Wait a few years & the story might be totally different. . . .
    Yeah, that's what I meant. It's a bubble, and it'll correct. Fewer units sold won't necessarily mean a drop in popularity.

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