GEdwardJones

I still have my brother's little Harmony that he got at the same time I got my bass. There's a not small part of me that wants to refurbish both of those instruments. Yes, they're 23 year old crap, but they were OUR 23 year old crap. Oddly enough, both of those amps still work great. I actually run my drum machine through them and use them for clean tones on occassion.

I got my very first bass (a Global, with a Harmony amp) from Penny's when I was 7. As far as I know JC Penny and Sears have ALWAYS had guitars in their catalogs (Sears actually used to sell Dean guitars and I got my first guitar, a Cort, from there). I don't think tthat either of them has ever had guitars in their stors, tho. From the web: http://www1.jcpenney.com/jcp/ProductList.a...instr.&ShopBy=0

.10 - .52 all 6-string guitars, all tunings. soon as I break a sring on one of my 7s, I'll go 10 - .56 on them

That being said, I was ust watching the new Slayer DVD (War at the Warfield) and...Tom played an LTD (not ESP) signature bass for the whole thing.

additionally name. Epiphone, while lower end than Gibson is still higher end than Jay Turser, even if they make guitars at the same place.

Fender has traditionally used the Fujiken-Gakki plant, which is Ibanez's plant, for its Japanese models. Like brian said Fender's acquisition of Jackson put a lot of good luthiers on the street It also will affect the quality of Jackson's lower-end guitars (for good or ill I can't say) because I'm pretty positive those will move production as well.

1. Absolutely 2. Eh, sometimes you get a deal, sometimes you get ripped off. 3. You're damn straight it's not. 4. Mostly we're arguing over waht's "high end" I think. Also I don't think we have the same definition of "quality" 5. Only because she doesn't know me

For the first four years of my serious guitar playing life I had exactly 0 frieneds who played guitar. For the next three I had exactly 1. The part where you say "you don't have money, so you're better off just not playing guitar." Yeah, ok, I'm trying to keep this civil. but, seriously, that's a jacked up attitude. if u read! it says "save up" man... u guys need to chill, and stop trying to eat me alive... You ever hear the phrase "It takes a buck to make a buck"? Saving up is hard, especially if you don't have anything to start with. I'm not trying to eat you alive. I'm just pointing out the logical flaws in your argument. Trust me, if I was trying to eat you alive you'd have run screaming a long time ago.

No I didn't. You stated that your idea had a greater upfront cost but might be cheaper in the long run. I said that the greater upfront cost is an insurmountable barrier to some people. That still doesn't address the people who can only afford "The best deal in the music store window." I'll put it this way, I don't have any desire to own a Kia. Kia's do not have the features that I'm looking for in a car at this point in my life. I do not, however, suggest that no one should be able to buy a car less exspensive than a Honda Civic. And some people end up loving playing guitar because of their crappy first guitar. I know I did. So you'd rather take away someone's ability to make ANY choice because some people made a bad choice? Well, given that the car you described is dangerous to the point of being deadly then no. Your idea is more like saying that they couldn't buy a $200 car because the A/C is busted and it doesn't have power windows. You're either saying that guitars kill people or poor people shouldn't be given the opportunity to do stuff. Either way pricing something out of the reach of a group of people so that people *WHO COULD AFFORD HIGHER QUALITY GOODS ANYWAY* don't have to worry about having to pay attention to what they buy is disturbing to me. For the first four years of my serious guitar playing life I had exactly 0 frieneds who played guitar. For the next three I had exactly 1. The part where you say "you don't have money, so you're better off just not playing guitar." Yeah, ok, I'm trying to keep this civil. but, seriously, that's a jacked up attitude. There is one universal truth, if you get four guitar players in a room together three of them will disagree on what constitutes a "good" guitar.

It's Edward, not EdwardS. "G. Edward Jones, Jr." People always make that mistake. *sigh* Also, keeping the car would've meant paying for a car that no longer fit our needs (that being hauling around two dogs with a combined weight of around 140lbs). Also, the Blue Book private sale value was still only $14K. The depreciation on a car is no joke. Yes, somewhat. You'd still leave people who can't afford a mid-line instrument out in the cold. There is no way around that. Some people can only afford a $99 guitar. Under your plan those people will all be screwed. And once you add cost of higher grade materials to the cost of the independent verification body to the cost of your "base" guitars the price will not drop, it might, in fact, rise slightly (at least in the short run). Your first mistake is the assumption that everyone has $200 - $300 to spend on a guitar. My first guitar was a Global bass that I got from JC Penny for $50. My second guitar was a Cort that I got from Sears for $70. My family wasn't poor, my parents were just wholly unwilling to make a large outlay in cash until I proved that I'd stick to the guitar. A lot of people don't have that kind of flexibility and I might not be playing the guitar now if my parents had to spend the extra cash for a guitar and maybe have been able to sell it. So let's do a theoretical here. Little Timmy buys a $99 Epi Les Paul Special Jr. It's made out of plywood, but it sounds pretty good and it's pretty dependable (I know because I have a regular old Epi Special). This is a guitar which isn't going to break the bank and, could theoretically be gigged with. I've read lots of pros saying how cool a guitar these are. In your world this guitar doesn't exist. The cheap, but good guitar that requires very little cash outlay but won't be outgrown quickly. There's a reason that most people don't buy cars in cash, because a $15K initial outlay isn't feasible while spending an extra couple of grand over the course of several years won't break the bank. Your idea is nice and all, but it basically stops a large percentage of the population from being able to buy a guitar at all. There's a reason they make $99 guitars, because people buy them and some of those people don't have much of a choice.

Not true. A slab of mahogony costs more than a piece of nato/alder plywood. If you remove the plywood that won't necessarily have any bearing whatsoever on the cost of mahogony. If there were no low-end guitars the only thing that would happen is that people would start making low end guitars.

My wife and I just bought a new car. In order to buy this new car we traded in her old car. Her old car was a Lexus, in immaculate condition. It was, by all accounts the very definition of a high quality, incredibly maintained, four year old car. New car value = $40K, trade in value = $13K. With the possible exception of Harley-Davidson motorcycles no mass produced non-perishable good can be resold for "most of it's value" after any decent amount of use. It just doesn't happen. Plus, a lot of people LIKE cheap guitars and many of those guitars have gone on to become collectors' pieces in their own rights. Think about your plan the next time you see someone with an old Danelectro/Silvertone or you hear The White Stripes or The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. And one more thing, if new guitars cost more money and they're all "high quality" so that used guitars cost almost exactly as much, how is someone of limited economic means going to buy a guitar? Seriously. If I can afford to spend $200 and even USED guitars cost $300, I'm just SOL, aren't I?

When was the last time you made back *most* of your money from selling something?

That's fun. Until you realize that most beginners won't actually KEEP PLAYING guitar and their parents aren't terribly hot on the idea on spending a lot of money on something that's going to sit in Timmy's closet forever. Inexspensive does NOT mean shitty.

I'd turn him off mad every day. People with a slavish devotion to "the free market" annoy me. Pure capitolism works as well as pure Marxist communism does, that's to say, it doesn't.

No, I just like to argue.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy back at the beginning of this thread you stated that one of the main reasons for the inequality of was due to the slave labor like wages paid to uneducated non-luthiers to produce crap guitars. My point was then and is now that there are many (probably by their standards) well paid luthiers in Korea putting out guitars which have similar build quality. Let's not get caught up in bells and whistles. If you want to add abalone or gold hardware or a fingerboard made out of solid, close grained unobtaniun wood then you're going to pay more money, but these things don't really have anything to do with the quality of the guitar. PRS 10 tops are chosen because (Kevan, please memorize this) they are the top 10%, *AESTHETICALLY*, of all PRS tops. Not because they sound better, not because they're better wood, because the look pretty. You'll pay out the nose for a 10 top, but you didn't really get a higher QUALITY guitar, you got a better LOOKING guitar. If you're getting any better quality out of a custom shop instrument you're getting it because, hopefully, part of that extra cost is going to tighter QC. But, you're probably paying more because you're getting EXACTLY the insturment that YOU want (economies of scale being what they are, my theoretical mahogany Ibanez RG with a neck like a 59 LP, a Gold Top finish, Abalone binding ande EMGs will probably cost more than an RG550 for the same reason a gallon of milk costs less than two half gallons). The actual QUALITY might not be any higher than one that comes off an assembly line (and, honestly, even the cheapest guitars are coming with really high build quality these days. At some point the quality just doesn't get any better). Fact is there are INCREDIBLE Chinese guitars and there are utter crap USA custom guitars. That really can't be argued. By the way, by definition a "Free Market" is a market where consumers have complete access to information regarding the goods/services that they are offered, using this information they decide a fair price for the goods/services. By definition a minimum wage sets a price floor which flies in the face of a free market. In a free market if all the employers decide that someone picking apples is worth $.10 an hour then the average salary for picking apples will be $.10 an hour, period. If it has been decided that the fair price for Chinese guitar makers is $.25/hr then the free market says that the average Chinese guitar maker will make $.25/hr. A minimum wage sets an artificial price for these services, that is not a free market concept. The concept of a "living wage" is not a free market concept. The free market doesn't care if you can live off what I'm paying you, the free market only cares that I'm getting the best goods for my money (the corollary is also that in a free market no one would work for less than it costs them to survive and some products would simply cease to be produced because of this). There is no such thing as a true free market. This is not a bad thing (it's not always a good thing, either). Thanks for the complement on my debating skills. Trust me, if I thought you were stupid I would have been a lot more insulting. I tend to debate at the level of my opponent

Well NewsMax in general bothers me and I find it incredibly ironic that they are decrying the free market in action which, of course, goes against everything they stand for. Anyway... China is what Korea was 5 - 10 years ago. While I think it's not cool that people are working 12 - 15 hours a day for a quarter an hour it's a double edged sword. They could work for a quarter an hour or they can *NOT WORK*. No one is at a point where they'll pay more $$$ for Chinese goods because the quality is, admittedly, iffy, but this will (hopefully) change. It bugs me that a good amount of Chinese goods are made by UNPAID prisoners who are, in many cases, locked up for political crimes. Bringing this back to guitars, tho. Apples to apples, is a guitar that is "hand made" in Korea (and with the advent of CNC "hand made" is meaning less and less) comperable to a similarly spec'd guitar "hand made" in Japan or the US? I say, yes.

Given the same level of equipment a Korean guitar can exist that matches Japanese and American guitars in every way (as can be seen in various LTD Delux models). That being said, yes, a $400 can have a body and neck which are constructed in a way that matches the build quality of a guitar that costs WAY more. In a blind test most people couldn't tell a $500 from a $1000 guitar, a lot might even PREFER the cheaper one. Sure you're going to pay for gold hardware or abalone inlays, but let's not confuse decorations for quality. A lot of things go into making a guitar more expensive. In the 80s a LOT of people bought Japanese Squires, which were cheaper (but higher quality) than American Fenders. The Fender cost more money partially because it said "Fender" even though the quality of workmanship was lower. My point, I guess if I stillhave one after all this time, is that highly paid American luthiers can produce utter shite and less highly paid Asian luthiers can create really good stuff. Don't get caught up in labels, don't get sucked in by the pretty (I think it was Lisa Sharken who said if you see two guitars that are the same price, always buy the less flashy of the two because less money was spent on flash and more on quality), test drive everything before you buy it and be happy with your purchase.

I think that after a point you're not paying for quality, you're paying for perceived prestiege. Maybe it's worth it to some people. To me, I'd rather have a fun guitar that I'm not afraid to play. To each his own. I love strats, you don't. I wouldn't spend $3700 for a guitar, you would. I'm not, nor have I ever said that there's not a difference between a $400 and a $1000 guitar (you can look back to my first post where I said the components are usually lower quality). But when I first started playing guitar I knew a lot of people who turned their noses up at guitars made in Japan (I still know a couple), that wasn't THAT long ago. To see the people who swear by Japan turn their noses up at Korea strikes me as humorous to the extreme. In the end, play what you want. We live in a great time for guitars. Seriously, think about a time where you could get more for less than right now. Everybody wins.

My thing is this. There are a lot of people out there (especially kids without $$$) who think that if they don't spend AT LEAST $600 - $700 on a guitar that they don't have a good guitar and need to toss it. This is simply not true. There are plenty of great guitars that can be had for way less than that that can stand up to professional gigging and will last a good long time. This is what always ticked me off when they used to have the "Best Value" list from NAMM on Harmony Central. They'd have "$3700 is a GREAT value for this type of guitar!" Who the hell is going to look for a "value" guitar and spend $3700? If you love your $1500 guitar, that's great. I am genuinely happy that you found something that you dig. But, there are guitars, many of which have similar quality, that can be had for less. Also, given the sheer amount of people in the industrial/nu-metal scene that have shamelessly ripped off Tommy Victor's sound, the fact that his whole setup costs like $1000 is impressive.

Y'know what? If you can find a $2000 guitar that does everything you want, good for you. For me, I honestly don't see any reason to spend more than $500 on a guitar. Noodling around in a guitar store/playing friends' guitars the $1500 Ibanez to me was NOT a better guitar than the $1000 LTD (truth be told I think LTD has some of the best necks out there. A good neck ALWAYS makes a guitar seem better to me.). Honestly, you yourself said you thought a thousand dollar Ibanez was just as good as a two grand fender. Wouldn't that mean that someone buying a two grand fender is getting ripped off? Jackson doesn't give Scott Ian a Korean guitar, but Tommy Victor plays a Santana SE (it should be pointed out that TV has ALWAYS played the cheapest guitars). I have 14 guitars (about half Korean, half Japanese), honestly they ALL give me problems

Yeah, unless it can last for about two months I can't do it. Also, off topic, we're almost 30. We're old

$2000 is still 2x more than the most exspensive Korean guitars. For $1500 I don't know if you're getting much (if any) better quality. For $2K you're probably just getting ripped off To go back to your car analogy. Sometimes buying something for its brand/country of origin is smarter. But sometimes you get a Cimarron (For those who don't know in the 80s GM decided to make an "entry level" Cadillac. It was a Chevy Cavalier with a Caddy grille. You could buy a Cimarron or you could save several thousand dollars and buy THE EXACT SAME CAR from your Chevy dealer).

yes, but is the build quality on the best Korean guitars as good (or better) than the build quality of the best Japanese or American guitars? No, but those guitars cost two, three times as much as you're going to pay for any Korean guitar anyway.