Why you can't trust The Industry to sell you "affordable"
Apr 13, 2020 0:45:12 GMT -6
Rex likes this
Post by Tony Ravenscroft on Apr 13, 2020 0:45:12 GMT -6
(Yes, I've renamed this thread. 
)
Here's a great example of why I started writing on the FrugalGuitarist forums (defunct), and on the Washburn forums (defunct), and now here.
When I use the word "cheap," 99% of the time I am attempting to redeem the term. Maybe the world will change someday, but I have been bombarded all my life by commercial media with a clear message:
Looking back, I doubt that's ever been true. Some of the toys I loved most as a kid were the nickle-and-dime gewgaws my family bought for me at Woolworth's or Ben Franklin, while the well-intended pricier items broke down or required an endless supply of batteries.
Yeah, sometimes I will still abuse the word, as when I refer to "a cheap Chinese knockoff." But I work at differentiating cheap from outright junk.
In 1975, I sent away and bought a new Univox Hi-Flier -- my third guitar, my second electric -- that I still own. Mailed to me in its chipboard case, it cost me less than an empty used hard case would have. It was and is a cheap guitar, and it's a part of my life, and I still enjoy its unique feel and tone.
Clearly, I am not the only person who believes that "cheap" is redeemable... because it's being twisted around as in order to justify jacking prices up and steering you toward "quality" without necessarily giving you actual quality.
Here is an exemplary article that I will momentarily savage -- "14 Best Cheap Electric Guitars".
The shameless hype begins earlier than you'd think: the URL actually contains the sequence best-cheap-affordable in order to lure eyeballs from Google.
And it dribbles downhill.
Let us first step aside for a moment. We are talking CHEAP guitars here, right? I bought my Univox, sight unseen, totally confident that it would be a clear step up after the previous -- a log-necked beat-up p.o.s. that wasn't worth the $25 I spent... but I made it work, and I played, and I learned. When the Univox showed up, not a truly great guitar but definitely a credible instrument, my abilities took off. It cost me a week's pay from my part-time job.
So what then should the first question be? Oh, that's really obvious, nicht wahr? What the fack do you mean by "cheap," round-eye?
I am at multiple advantages here. For starters, it's VERY doubtful that -- unlike here, unlike me -- you are going to find ANY magazine or commercial website that is going to even SUGGEST that you could spend your spare cash on
a USED guitar simply because they can't figure out how to sell ads for used guitars. Yes, these "articles" are often transparent advertisements. And those that pay for ads don't pay for ads that oppose those who pay for ads. 
When bought from a credible seller, the majority of used solid-body electric guitars have been played recently, have had some degree of setup and maintenance, and the strings have been changed in recent memory.
By way of comparison, 95%+ of new guitars will arrive by post, having never been touched by human hands since leaving the assembly line. Warehoused for a month or more, then shipped on a slow container barge in a big sun-heated wind-chilled metal box, and warehoused again for another month, they have likely been subjected to huge swings in temperature and humidity as well as thrown around like (face facts) the cheap furniture they are.
In short: a new guitar is MUCH more likely to show up unplayable -- maybe even in multiple pieces -- than a used guitar packed by a moderately well-intentioned amateur seller.
(HINT: Anyone who pays $1,000 or more for any guitar, by mail -- sight unseen, uninspected and unadjusted -- deserves everything they get. The sellers rely on the fact that they can send out higher-tier guitars that are barely playable and most buyers will never say a word, either because they are over-moneyed "collectors," or they only want to set the axe by the fireplace in hopes that people will finally think they're cool or at least mildly interesting. {Yes, I mean all you tone-deaf gullible lackwit junior attorneys and fund managers inflating the PRS 10-Top Pattern-Neck Custom 24 market. If you actually played guitar you would know that you could have a guitar hand-built to your exact specs for less than that.) And that leaves out the buyers so inexperienced that they don't realize the guitar is unplayable -- e.g., in my collection is a nice bass where the nut (original) is clearly too high, but fret-wear makes clear that the previous owner put hundreds of hours of wsrist-killing play on it.
}
USED IS GOOD. Give me a C-note and I can hop onto Reverb.com right now and have a half-decent axe shipped to you, probably out-of-box stage-ready. (NOTE TO THE KIDDIES -- by "C-note" I mean a $100 bill, because in Roman numerals... oh, forget it.
) Give me two bills and I'll cast the net wider, and what you receive will impress you. Make it $500, and you will weep with joy when you open the box.
I am at a point in my life where I could afford to drop four figures on a guitar; maybe five, even. But let me offer an analogy. I occasionally enjoy a single-malt Scotch -- a good one, I mean. Not so terribly long ago, finishing an afternoon conference at a very nice hotel, I stepped up to the bar, ready to have one slow relaxed drink before leaving. About to order the usual Scotch, which I knew would set me back less than $10 with tip, I noticed the place had a lot of bottles, with labels I didn't see often out in the wild. It had been a very good day, so I ordered the most expensive small-batch single-malt they had, which set me back $80. And, you know, it really was a very good Scotch, the best that I have ever tasted, and I savored it for a full hour... but it wasn't $70 better than my usual choice.
Guitars work that way. The only $4,000 guitar that ever impressed me was a one-off luthier-built dreadnought with delicate decoration, from a shop a few miles outside Minneapolis, and it felt so beautiful and sounded so sweet that it literally brought tears to my eyes. Electric guitars are much simpler creatures, and slab-body solids the simplest of all, so there's no reason other than sentiment or vanity that a PLAYER actually needs an axe costing even $2,000, and the great majority of players -- weekend hackers that we honestly are -- likely can't appreciate a guitar that has an actual value of $1,000. (I know for a fact that experienced gig players have difficulty differentiating the sound of an actual first-generation Gibson "PAF" from a recent $10 copy.)
Oh, yeah, that damned article. The only real upside is that it got me thinking about the subject -- feel free to read it yourself, but I'm going to make short work of it.
It begins weaselling within the first forty words -- the "Terence Stanley" hack (sorry, kid, but it's true) who put this mess together immediately raps under-$200 guitars for likely having garbage frets and "unplayable action" and "overall quality control issues."
Look, kid, that describes MANY midline-and-higher fresh-from-factory guitars, which obviously you ought to know. I have a friend who's a huge Gretsch freak, a dozen vintage Gretsches and not a one that he didn't carefully pick out at an actual guitar store or inherit from his Dad. Recently, given so many great experiences, he bought a new Gretsch for gigs, from the biggest online gear store in the U.S., and it arrived with half the binding fallen off and a corner of the top curling. So you see, youngster, we're talking a $3,000 guitar that arrives in unplayable condition. And I have often tried out new USA Strats that weren't even as good as the midrange Squiers a few feet away, but the managers knew that soon enough some fool (young or old) would drop $1,500 on it without batting an eye.
I accept that a cheap guitar, used or new, is definitely going to need a new nut and a proper setup... just like many if not most new guitars. If a rosewood fretboard, that will need oiling. On a bargain beast, the fret ends will certainly need attention, but that gets taken care of as part of softening the fretbard edge... something that (nowadays) isn't done at the factory except on truly high-end guitars.
Mr. Stanley walks himself even further into a corner with a sweeping claim that a jacked-up price indicates better playability. No, sorry, that's a "w.t.f." term -- and if by it you mean "it has been properly set up," that is unlikely if it's been bought from a glorified warehouse with a fancy website. He digs further by stating that a grand (i.e. $1,000) grants "quality-of-life features" and I can hardly guess what the Hell that's supposed to mean. 
So, on to Guitar #1: the Yamaha Revstar RS502T. A nice guitar, yes. Also a street price of $650. Right off the bat, we're far past "cheap" and even "affordable." That tag can get any number of G&L Tribute series, NEW, and leave $150-$250 in your pocket. (Heck, you can even snag a Tribute Special, a Tele-type with the big single-coils unique to G&L. :
Same for #2, a Fender Player Jazzmaster HH: $675.
The third, a Ibanez S521-MOL, is much more sane at $400, a stripped-down hardtail h-h, bt damned with faint praise as "a great guitar for a beginner." Nothing is said, of course, that it will need to have at least a $50 setup, as almost all mail-order axes do.
But I can't go on much without total repetition. Guild Starfire I: $499. Jackson SL3X Soloist: $600. Squier Classic Vibe 50s Stratocaster: cool enough at $400, or about what you could find a good used Fender Standard (MIM) for.
After all that, here's your rules, Frugalistas: Don't believe the hype. Learn to do basic setup work. Play before you buy.
Go forth and be awesome.
)Here's a great example of why I started writing on the FrugalGuitarist forums (defunct), and on the Washburn forums (defunct), and now here.
When I use the word "cheap," 99% of the time I am attempting to redeem the term. Maybe the world will change someday, but I have been bombarded all my life by commercial media with a clear message:
- Inexpensive = Cheap = Bad
- Expensive = Quality = Good
Looking back, I doubt that's ever been true. Some of the toys I loved most as a kid were the nickle-and-dime gewgaws my family bought for me at Woolworth's or Ben Franklin, while the well-intended pricier items broke down or required an endless supply of batteries.
Yeah, sometimes I will still abuse the word, as when I refer to "a cheap Chinese knockoff." But I work at differentiating cheap from outright junk.
In 1975, I sent away and bought a new Univox Hi-Flier -- my third guitar, my second electric -- that I still own. Mailed to me in its chipboard case, it cost me less than an empty used hard case would have. It was and is a cheap guitar, and it's a part of my life, and I still enjoy its unique feel and tone.
Clearly, I am not the only person who believes that "cheap" is redeemable... because it's being twisted around as in order to justify jacking prices up and steering you toward "quality" without necessarily giving you actual quality.
Here is an exemplary article that I will momentarily savage -- "14 Best Cheap Electric Guitars".
The shameless hype begins earlier than you'd think: the URL actually contains the sequence best-cheap-affordable in order to lure eyeballs from Google.
And it dribbles downhill.
Let us first step aside for a moment. We are talking CHEAP guitars here, right? I bought my Univox, sight unseen, totally confident that it would be a clear step up after the previous -- a log-necked beat-up p.o.s. that wasn't worth the $25 I spent... but I made it work, and I played, and I learned. When the Univox showed up, not a truly great guitar but definitely a credible instrument, my abilities took off. It cost me a week's pay from my part-time job.
So what then should the first question be? Oh, that's really obvious, nicht wahr? What the fack do you mean by "cheap," round-eye?
I am at multiple advantages here. For starters, it's VERY doubtful that -- unlike here, unlike me -- you are going to find ANY magazine or commercial website that is going to even SUGGEST that you could spend your spare cash on
a USED guitar simply because they can't figure out how to sell ads for used guitars. Yes, these "articles" are often transparent advertisements. And those that pay for ads don't pay for ads that oppose those who pay for ads. 
When bought from a credible seller, the majority of used solid-body electric guitars have been played recently, have had some degree of setup and maintenance, and the strings have been changed in recent memory.
By way of comparison, 95%+ of new guitars will arrive by post, having never been touched by human hands since leaving the assembly line. Warehoused for a month or more, then shipped on a slow container barge in a big sun-heated wind-chilled metal box, and warehoused again for another month, they have likely been subjected to huge swings in temperature and humidity as well as thrown around like (face facts) the cheap furniture they are.
In short: a new guitar is MUCH more likely to show up unplayable -- maybe even in multiple pieces -- than a used guitar packed by a moderately well-intentioned amateur seller.
(HINT: Anyone who pays $1,000 or more for any guitar, by mail -- sight unseen, uninspected and unadjusted -- deserves everything they get. The sellers rely on the fact that they can send out higher-tier guitars that are barely playable and most buyers will never say a word, either because they are over-moneyed "collectors," or they only want to set the axe by the fireplace in hopes that people will finally think they're cool or at least mildly interesting. {Yes, I mean all you tone-deaf gullible lackwit junior attorneys and fund managers inflating the PRS 10-Top Pattern-Neck Custom 24 market. If you actually played guitar you would know that you could have a guitar hand-built to your exact specs for less than that.) And that leaves out the buyers so inexperienced that they don't realize the guitar is unplayable -- e.g., in my collection is a nice bass where the nut (original) is clearly too high, but fret-wear makes clear that the previous owner put hundreds of hours of wsrist-killing play on it.
}USED IS GOOD. Give me a C-note and I can hop onto Reverb.com right now and have a half-decent axe shipped to you, probably out-of-box stage-ready. (NOTE TO THE KIDDIES -- by "C-note" I mean a $100 bill, because in Roman numerals... oh, forget it.
) Give me two bills and I'll cast the net wider, and what you receive will impress you. Make it $500, and you will weep with joy when you open the box.I am at a point in my life where I could afford to drop four figures on a guitar; maybe five, even. But let me offer an analogy. I occasionally enjoy a single-malt Scotch -- a good one, I mean. Not so terribly long ago, finishing an afternoon conference at a very nice hotel, I stepped up to the bar, ready to have one slow relaxed drink before leaving. About to order the usual Scotch, which I knew would set me back less than $10 with tip, I noticed the place had a lot of bottles, with labels I didn't see often out in the wild. It had been a very good day, so I ordered the most expensive small-batch single-malt they had, which set me back $80. And, you know, it really was a very good Scotch, the best that I have ever tasted, and I savored it for a full hour... but it wasn't $70 better than my usual choice.
Guitars work that way. The only $4,000 guitar that ever impressed me was a one-off luthier-built dreadnought with delicate decoration, from a shop a few miles outside Minneapolis, and it felt so beautiful and sounded so sweet that it literally brought tears to my eyes. Electric guitars are much simpler creatures, and slab-body solids the simplest of all, so there's no reason other than sentiment or vanity that a PLAYER actually needs an axe costing even $2,000, and the great majority of players -- weekend hackers that we honestly are -- likely can't appreciate a guitar that has an actual value of $1,000. (I know for a fact that experienced gig players have difficulty differentiating the sound of an actual first-generation Gibson "PAF" from a recent $10 copy.)
Oh, yeah, that damned article. The only real upside is that it got me thinking about the subject -- feel free to read it yourself, but I'm going to make short work of it.
It begins weaselling within the first forty words -- the "Terence Stanley" hack (sorry, kid, but it's true) who put this mess together immediately raps under-$200 guitars for likely having garbage frets and "unplayable action" and "overall quality control issues."
Look, kid, that describes MANY midline-and-higher fresh-from-factory guitars, which obviously you ought to know. I have a friend who's a huge Gretsch freak, a dozen vintage Gretsches and not a one that he didn't carefully pick out at an actual guitar store or inherit from his Dad. Recently, given so many great experiences, he bought a new Gretsch for gigs, from the biggest online gear store in the U.S., and it arrived with half the binding fallen off and a corner of the top curling. So you see, youngster, we're talking a $3,000 guitar that arrives in unplayable condition. And I have often tried out new USA Strats that weren't even as good as the midrange Squiers a few feet away, but the managers knew that soon enough some fool (young or old) would drop $1,500 on it without batting an eye.
I accept that a cheap guitar, used or new, is definitely going to need a new nut and a proper setup... just like many if not most new guitars. If a rosewood fretboard, that will need oiling. On a bargain beast, the fret ends will certainly need attention, but that gets taken care of as part of softening the fretbard edge... something that (nowadays) isn't done at the factory except on truly high-end guitars.
Mr. Stanley walks himself even further into a corner with a sweeping claim that a jacked-up price indicates better playability.
No, sorry, that's a "w.t.f." term -- and if by it you mean "it has been properly set up," that is unlikely if it's been bought from a glorified warehouse with a fancy website. He digs further by stating that a grand (i.e. $1,000) grants "quality-of-life features" and I can hardly guess what the Hell that's supposed to mean. 
So, on to Guitar #1: the Yamaha Revstar RS502T. A nice guitar, yes. Also a street price of $650. Right off the bat, we're far past "cheap" and even "affordable." That tag can get any number of G&L Tribute series, NEW, and leave $150-$250 in your pocket. (Heck, you can even snag a Tribute Special, a Tele-type with the big single-coils unique to G&L. :
Same for #2, a Fender Player Jazzmaster HH: $675.
The third, a Ibanez S521-MOL, is much more sane at $400, a stripped-down hardtail h-h, bt damned with faint praise as "a great guitar for a beginner." Nothing is said, of course, that it will need to have at least a $50 setup, as almost all mail-order axes do.
But I can't go on much without total repetition. Guild Starfire I: $499. Jackson SL3X Soloist: $600. Squier Classic Vibe 50s Stratocaster: cool enough at $400, or about what you could find a good used Fender Standard (MIM) for.
After all that, here's your rules, Frugalistas: Don't believe the hype. Learn to do basic setup work. Play before you buy.
Go forth and be awesome.
