lol Fender

the problem for fender/gibson/frankly all the big players is that they are huge companies obsessed with growing their market share. obv doing that is a goal for all functional companies, but the huge dudes have kind of run out of room to expand in their comfort zone, and their target customers tend to be of the never change anything variety. fender has proven time and time again that straying out of the iconic models is hopeless, no matter how good the result might be. so they have to go into things like this crazy comittment to relicing instruments, or car audio, or shitty affliction style shirts and so on because they are getting squeezed on all sides by alternate companies that can push the envelope of their brand while the old guard is stuck in stagnation. having outside industries with no experience with guitar culture (ugh) control your direction just makes that whole thing infinitely worse.

i had a customer who had an interesting take wrt all of this in recently - hes sort of a gear head, and he equated the difference between 20-30 years ago when if you were into performance cars, you were into ford or chevy, and that was it. now the same mindset is down with nissans and hondas and so on, and nobody bats an eye. so ford makes mustangs to hold onto the older dedicated (shrinking) crowd for the same reasons that fender makes strats and teles and hangs road worn aesthetics on them to enhance the legacy/authenticity deal. and when they do target a different demographic, the overshoot by a mile - that gibson explorer x thing and robot guitar, fender 7 strings and punk acoustics.

i could go on forever, i think a lot about this stuff but i dont want to get boring.

other problem i suppose is essentially competing with the 8 zillion vintage teles, strats, les pauls etc that are still out there, which are like cars that (as long as treated w/reasonable care) don't break down and in fact appreciate, not decline, in value as they get older

i could go on forever, i think a lot about this stuff but i dont want to get boring.

― ACA: not bad, needs more death panels (jjjusten), Thursday, October 24, 2013 2:20 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

please, go on! i love your take on this stuff.

The G&L facebook page is a great place to look at guitars.

The Scorpions - Virgin Killer on a guitar, with actually cracks

*actual

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/10355111/Texas+Flood+StevieRayVaughanTexasFlood.jpg

but infinite recursion style, so the strat on the cover is a SRV Texas Flood strat

lol

i could go on forever, i think a lot about this stuff but i dont want to get boring.

― ACA: not bad, needs more death panels (jjjusten), Thursday, October 24, 2013 2:20 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

please, go on! i love your take on this stuff.

― call all destroyer, Thursday, 24 October 2013 18:34 (27 minutes ago) Permalink

seconded

thirded

well ok then!

also the internet has been a huge leveler for these smaller guitar manufacturers and murderous as a result for the big players. 20 years ago if i handed someone a reverend or eastwood or G&L all they had to go on was some sort of trust that i wasn't going to sell them garbage (and wow did lots of guitar shops push high margin garbage back in those days). now dudes can look the shit up on their phone while they're standing in my store, and with a half decent web designer some 8 person builder can have the same gravitas as a mongo corporation. so fender gets squeezed on the low end by the jay tersers of the world, in the midrange by G&L import and reverend and so on, in the base level usa stuff by G&L american, and from the top by the bucketloads of high end boutique stuff like suhr and collins, many of whom are openly known to have been former fender custom shop builders. if i didnt think that the company was run by a bunch of incompetent profit maximizing dicks, i would feel bad for them. to top it off, fender/gibson/etc are all deeply leveraged and indebted, so i imagine the recession has put them in a tailspin of panic.

oh yeah and wrt the vintage price inflation etc, thats why we are seeing all this instant collectible stupidity (runs of 100, $35000 blackie clones and so on). The bloom is off the vine there too for people that know how the market works - the reason the old stuff is worth so much is because people modded it or dropped it or had it float away in a flood or burn in a fire. Most of the collectible shit now is never going to get played or leave the case, so 10 years down the road, the rarity hasn't changed, so in most cases the stuff doesn't even keep pace with inflation or declines in value. intentionally rare guitars are the last thing a collector will seek out, what they want it stuff that is old enough to have been depleted, or stuff that was an unintentional failure (hence the high value of odd custom colors etc). but even then, rarity has to work hand in hand with desirability. no one is paying top dollar for that awful fender Katana or Performer, which makes that new Starcaster reissue the laughing stock of the industry right now - they are rare because they were universally hated back in the 70's, and nobody was clamoring to get them back.

there's a starcaster reissue? omg i am v. glad i now share my bank accounts with another person.

Ok I take it back, "nobody" was apparently overstating the lack of demand

that last post is pretty much what I assumed, and reminds me VERY much of the mid-90s baseball card bubble

Thanks for those posts, jjjusten. Very interesting and informative. It brought to mind Rickenbacker, and how they've been able to flourish by avoiding all traps Fender and Gibson fell into. This is a pretty interesting interview with the owner: http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/interviews/interviews/rickenbackers_john_hall_the_only_way_to_compete_against_that_is_using_various_forms_of_automation_and_working_smart.html

We don't have a bunch of people to satisfy but still we make a nice living. But we don't have all these people to satisfy and we have zero debt. There are no banks that are in line there. We're not publicly owned and we don't have outside share holders and counting organizations looking over our shoulders to squeeze another nickel out of something. Unfortunately those other big companies are looking at the pennies and the nickels and where can we get an extra little bit out of it? That's where the decision to go overseas was made.

someone told me that Martin Guitars is the oldest family run company in the U.S. (still apparently run by a Martin)

Avedis Zildjian Co., Norwell, Mass. Founded in 1623 in what was known then as Constantinople. Moved to the USA in 1929.

The heir apparent of the 58 year old CEO of 182 year old Martin is only 9 years old.

That came out weird: Martin is 182 years old. CEO is 58 years old. Heir is 9 years old.

If they don't get moving soon on an OM-42 reissue with a USB input and built-in multi-tap delay, they're fucked.

To get up to speed on that, they should collaborate with Behringer...

Martin "Walking Dread"-nought D-28

i remember hearing some nutty things abt rickenbacker years ago but good for them i guess. i'm thrilled that their website hasn't changed since i last looked at it in probably 2004.

Peavey's already got that covered, Albert

http://www.premierguitar.com/ext/resources/images/marketing/External-Contests/peavy-contest.jpg

gross

Rickenbacker is a pretty big collector guitar these days. There are just boodles of old dudes who love the Beatles and have a half dozen of them sitting around.

They are really beautiful and nice guitars, but man that skinny fretboard is really hard and weird to play on.

Are the fretboards considered skinny? I have a 330, and it's hella broader (and the neck fatter) than the one on my SG.

The frets themselves are really skinny, though. Not great for playing leads, but it's a fun challenge.

Maybe the 330 is different, my 360 feels like playing a banjo. I also got a weirdo 72 SG Special that's also got this weird narrow fretboard too an that thing is pretty much fretless. It sounds pretty good and its got a cool red paint job.

No way, my SG is a 72 too! Neck is annoyingly narrow at the headstock, but I love the sound, and whoever had it before me put on a tremolo (just a bendy piece of curved metal, not the old Gibson spring-loaded thing). I think '71-'72 is when the necks got crazy narrow on those, because that's why/when Townshend stopped using SGs.

The one I got probably had a tremolo, but sometime it got swapped out for a wrap around bridge. It's got mini-humbuckers that have the Duncan logo on them and look pretty old themselves. It looks kind of like this one but with an ace cherry red finish.

http://dumb.org/wp-content/gallery/gibson-sg-pro/sg_pro-0.jpg

I've thought that with the small neck, it would be cool to set it up for open G ala Keith Richards and leave off the low E, except put the strings up starting at the top and leave the bottom one off.

Wait, are you talking about the maestro tremolo? Because that could be original, I would have to check if they were still using those in 72

http://images.epiphone.com.s3.amazonaws.com/News/2005/N_gom8.jpg

I've thought that with the small neck, it would be cool to set it up for open G ala Keith Richards and leave off the low E, except put the strings up starting at the top and leave the bottom one off.

― earlnash, Friday, October 25, 2013 6:44 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh wow, that'd be a cool thing to try...I may give that a shot. Mine was/is an SG Custom, but the previous owner took the 3 PAFs out and put in two black humbuckers (dunno the make).

Yes, that's the tremolo! Although mine doesn't have that big metal cover.

Pretty sure the one on mine isn't original though, as there are a few extra drilled holes where (I assume) the original bridge used to be.

Send me some pictures when you get a chance and I can prob diagnose it. J0hnjust3n at gmail

Look familiarish?

http://www.allparts.com/TP-3680-001-Long-Gibson-Style-Nickel-Vibrato-Tailpiece_p_4255.html

Or this

http://www.thewho.net/whotabs/images/equipment/guitar/auction/auction_christies_gibsonsg1970_1.jpg

i would have sex with all this SGs

http://www.rocknrollrelics.net/

Really disappointed in them for not going all the way and having the Townsend model have a broken of headstock.

Off

Dude you should take new guitars, smash them to bits, then sell them... Think about it.. The Ultimate Relic Series

I have played a RnRRelics Jazz Bass. It was fantastic, actually.

we have an og starocaster at the studio now,it's bloody lovely!

starcaster*

http://www.fender.com/acoustics/?series=electracoustic&utm_campaign=Fender+Guitars&utm_content=sf21798524&utm_medium=spredfast&utm_source=facebook&sf21798524=1

wtf? why?

*vomits*

Very true - these days the best deals are the Japanese solidbodies from the 70s and 80s. Greco, Tokai, Ibanez, Yamaha, JooDee, Orville, Burny et al. - all made killer instruments to immaculate standards and eventually ended up manufacturing for Fender and Gibson anyway. I bought my 1977 Greco Strat (sorry, Super Sounds) for $250 and it kills any other I have tried - and was only their midrange model.
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7291/16450649541_c44d6e4f28_o.jpg
L-R Greco 1976; Greco 1977; Squier Japan 1983; Ibanez 1984; Fender Japan 1985 - these all came from the same Fuji-gen Gakki factory.

jjj do you still have that red early 80s Yamaha I took a shine to last time I was in town? I'm gonna be back in August and if you still have it I wanna buy it (we're riding the train back to NYC this time so it's a chance for me to bring unwieldy stuff home muhaha)

I don't, but as always, I've got plenty of fun. Stop in when you're in town!

fender is one those brands where you just know it's quality, every time!

Xpost I will!!!

https://reverb.com/news/fender-builds-telecasters-with-original-bench-boards-from-the-hollywood-bowl

https://reverb-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/v1500320167/Fender-1_emnjjx.jpg

perfect if you want a guitar that you can be sure thousands of asses have sat upon

think I spilled some orzo salad on that seat

massively corroded bridge vs pristine neck is partic upsetting to me

just imagining someone leaving it out in a rain storm

Yep, that's dumb.

Fender get in on the 'slap your logo on a Bluetooth speaker' business that Marshall have been doing lately.
https://www.fender.com/pages/audio-bluetooth-speakers/
£300 and £190 respectively.

They screwed up, if it had looked like a Princeton Reverb I would have loved it. Instead it looks like a cheap intercom with the wrong era logo on the wrong era cloth.
(oh shit did I just out myself as a Fender nerd?)

http://www.guitarworld.com/gear-news/fender-announces-supreme-white-strat/31582

http://www.guitarworld.com/sites/default/files/public/2017/08/supreme-instory.jpg

do not want

what the hell is that fretboard made from

ewww

I don't know, I kind of dig it other than the label. Reminds me of Prince's cloud:

https://www.premierguitar.com/ext/resources/images/content/2016_06/FEAT/Cloud-Guitar/PRINCE--MARCH-18-1985-PHOTO--DEBRA-TREBITZ--FRANK-WHITE-PHOTO-AGENCY--NASSAU-VETERANS-MEMORIAL-COLISEUM-UNIONDALE-NEW-YORK_WEB.jpg

Uhhhhh, "white" and "supreme" together?

https://i.imgflip.com/18ikl3.jpg

hitlercaster

at taco bell, supreme = sour cream. so this suits the taco bell of guitar luthiers.