"Does it matter where guitars are made?" article

NEONMOONY

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I have no doubt that a lot of Asian instruments are quite well made and for me, it is not an argument of whether the stuff is any good or not. I, personally have an interest in things that are sort of antiquey, (like me) whether they be tools, guns, instruments and so on. I have tools that are older than me. Also, on newer things I buy, I would like to keep the neighbors working and paying their share of the school taxes etc, although, these days, you are going to buy a lot of imported things if you buy anything at all.
 

Rayk

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Interesting read . Overseas guitars are fine for me because there building better quality.
But I got on board supporting USA built acoustics . I just care more about the acoustic then electric guitars electrics .
One thing is import acoustics mostly are affordable and I’ve not seen a high end acoustic import equal to build quality of the American lines . So if you see a 6,000 Martin what’s import equal ?

I think the main issue is product cost for the average player average worker , it is for me . The Gap between pay scale and inflation are wideing at a constant rate leaving me behind financially.

Product cost vrs income are a problem here if not other country’s as were nickel and dimed to death by the must haves that all the ads and people say we should have .
So Imports are all many folks can afford .

I’ve always wondered why they never tell how much a new car or truck costs ? They’ll tell you what you can lease it for or how much off this one is in rebates/ discounts but they won’t say what the actual price to buy it is .

This is the extreme end of costs , housing is just as bad .

I’m amazed that folks can afford high end guitars but I guess I shouldn’t be because people buy 60,000+ trucks with a 30 yr mortgage all the time like it’s normal , what the heck am I missing ? Oh yeah income lol

So yeah I have a high end guitar or two and I just bought another guitar and now I’m broke no wait been broke but I have great credit !!!

On another note I have a great China Blueridge dread and never played a bad blueridge guitar and they compete dollar for dollar with their American models ! Lol

Now with all that said I find the guitar that I have been playing the most is the Guild Cv-1 , yup the cheapest most worn guitar I have it’s not even close to matching the tonal level of my other guitars but I don’t think about that I just pick it up and play it . Weird huh . 😁
 

fronobulax

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Let me further pollute the waters with this gem: I’ve never played a NS Guild that’s as good as any Westerly Guild I’ve ever played.

Other than the pickup and location I am hard pressed to discern any difference between my NS and Westerly Starfires. That may something about quality, design, materials and execution or it may be I'm just not a good enough player to notice.

I think a lot of the discussions on this subject fail to compare similar instruments with similar materials and targeted at a similar price and so make conclusions about country of origin that might be better made about the materials budget.
 

dreadnut

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I think a lot of the discussions on this subject fail to compare similar instruments with similar materials and targeted at a similar price and so make conclusions about country of origin that might be better made about the materials budget.

I agree, that's why I think the price/value is unique with American hand-made acoustic guitars that are being cranked out in production quantities.

Electric guitars, different story.
 

txbumper57

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I do like my American made guitars but I like quality instruments just as much no matter where they are from. Before the days when I could afford the American Made guitars I love so much I played import guitars that I thought were equal to the quality of some of the much higher priced American Made Counterparts.

For instance My main stage guitar for years was a Japanese made 1976 Takamine F362S which was Takamine's copy of a Rosewood Gallagher Doc Watson model. I still have that guitar and when compared to an original American made Gallagher, it sounded just as good. For my stage electric I played an Aria Pro II LC550 Neck through Les Paul Copy from the Japanese Matsumoku factory and it actually sounds better (still have it as well) than a 77 Gibson Les Paul to me and others who have played it. I also have an Aria Herb Ellis PE175 (which was their version of a Gibson ES-175) from the same period that walks the floor with every American made ES-175 it has been matched up against. It was good enough to get Herb away from Gibson and actually put his name on it. He also played them in concert for several years which is a testament to how well they were made and sound. All three of those guitars cost a sixth of what there American Counterparts did.

I have 2 Gretsch Black Falcons that were made in Japan and are some of the finest instruments I have had the pleasure of playing. Granted their price was up there as well but it just goes to show that quality can come from anywhere if the right folks are doing the work in the right way.

Like I said earlier, Quality can come from anywhere. That being said I am a bit of a stickler when it comes to my Guilds. I like them American made. I have owned in the past Martin, Taylor, Gibson, Breedlove and other American made guitars but whether they were made in America or not I didn't bond with them and I never fell in love with the tone or playablilty.

Guild on the other hand was love at first strum. The more I dove into the world of Guild Guitars the more I realized that not just New Hartford made Guilds but pretty much all American Made Guilds are about as close as you can get to Boutique quality instruments in appearance, tone, quality, and playability without having to buy a boutique instrument. That on top of the fact that Guilds sell for far less than they actually should according to the overall quality just makes me even more of a stickler for buying American made Guilds. If you can get twice the guitar for half the price then why bother with the others?

For instance, The new "Westerly series" of Guilds prices an import Spruce Rosewood Dread for around $800-$1100 New. For that price if I look for awhile I can buy a Used Guild American Made DV52 which is twice the guitar of other American made models that cost 2.5 times that amount. The kicker is if I decide to sell it later on I am almost guaranteed to get my money back out of it because that market never goes away. Where as the import you just bought new will most likely depreciate by 50% in value the minute you open the box in a best case scenario.

Quality is where you find it but after finding American Made Guilds built prior to Oxnard (as I have no experience with their products) I don't have a reason to look anywhere else. As always this is just my opinion and others may vary.

TX
 
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bobouz

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For instance My main stage guitar for years was a Japanese made 1976 Takamine F362S which was Takamine's copy of a Rosewood Gallagher Doc Watson model. I still have that guitar and when compared to an original American made Gallagher, it sounded just as good.

Love that Takamine Gallagher copy! I saw a new one of those hanging in a store back in the day, and couldn't believe they had a Gallagher in stock. Upon closer inspection, I discovered it was a Takamine with a solid top & was very impressed with it's tone, as well as the overall build quality.

And the way they switched the headstock logo 'G' to a 'T' was brilliant!
 

Nuuska

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...And the way they switched the headstock logo 'G' to a 'T' was brilliant!

I remember round 1977 Takamine had a 12-string w logo, that looked like Guild logo from distance - and they also had a 6-string, that had a logo not very different from Martin ... If my shaky memory serves me right, those were first Takamine I saw - leaving me with an impression of "dirty copycats"

Later I have seen quite many good Takamine guitars - that had a logo of their own.



Similar discussion was on https://soundforums.net/ last year or year before - main conclusion was about, that you get what you pay for - it is not the chinese craftsman who is to blame, but the western salesperson, who decides to earn extra buck. Also with china factories - you have to have constant quality control of your own - do not leave that to outsiders - they start soon earning extra bucks, too. This all was in a discussion about Behringer digital mixer quality. Uli Behringer was with and honestly admitted, what they had done wrong in past years and how they resolved it. I have super reliable very nice sounding nifty digital mixer - and come spring, I get another . Behringer X32 rack - made in china.

"They say in the East
you´re paying too high
Your ore ain´t worth of diggin
It´s much cheaper down
in a South-American town
Where miners work almost for nothing."
 
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adorshki

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If all we're measuring is build quality, the whole concept of "Where" is fallacious and a red herring.
What matters the most is WHO made the guitar and it's the worst from of cultural stereotyping to assume that all the builders in any given country perform to an identical level of expertise.
I think even Marcellis would restate his position to state he would never buy a guitar that was inspected by #11 no matter where it was built.
:tongue-new:
 

txbumper57

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Love that Takamine Gallagher copy! I saw a new one of those hanging in a store back in the day, and couldn't believe they had a Gallagher in stock. Upon closer inspection, I discovered it was a Takamine with a solid top & was very impressed with it's tone, as well as the overall build quality.

And the way they switched the headstock logo 'G' to a 'T' was brilliant!

It is a great Sounding and Playing Guitar and the attention to detail is Awesome with the Snowflake inlays on the Fretboard and Bridge. I have actually used that guitar on several recordings. It had sat under someone's bed for 25 years unplayed before I bought it off of Ebay in New Condition for around $250 back in the early 2000's. Spent another $75 on a set of Takamine electronics with an on board tuner and it was my number one Acoustic for 8-10 years before I bought my first Guild. I still pull it out and play it from time to time and it just feels like home. I probably wrote 40 songs on that guitar. One that will never leave the collection for sure.

TX
 

dreadnut

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I still trust the free market to determine the answer. No one offshore is producing acoustics like Martin, Taylor, Collings, Huss & Dalton, etc. If they were, people would be paying the big bucks for them too.

I can't tell you exactly what it is, but I know it when I play it and hear it.
 

fronobulax

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This article is about electrics which muddies the waters on a thread about acoustics, but I note that it is written by a UK author. It lists several non-US made instruments as being among the best electric guitars in the world.

Very few guitars are made from locally sourced wood, or any other locally sourced ingredient. So the kinds of things that will vary based on country of origin are


  • environmental factors such as heat, humidity or pollution
  • regulatory factors that encourage or prohibit certain manufacturing processes
  • local costs such as wages, taxes, bribes, etc.
  • skill of the local labor
  • oversight ("quality control" - I'm talking about YOU, Inspector 11)

So while these things do vary by country it doesn't seem to me that the country is the most important factor.

While I am rambling and waiting for the coffee to kick in I'll note that beer is very much a product that does vary by country. That is because it is brewed with local ingredients, if nothing else but the local water. Stone Brewing opened up a brewery in Richmond VA. Since they wanted their product to be consistent regardless of where it was brewed, they invested a lot of time and energy to determine the chemical characteristics of San Diego water and then developed water treatments so that the Richmond water was chemically the same before it was used for brewing.
 

Stuball48

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Got China built Epiphone Masterbilt - all solid wood - I paid $375 for and it plays and sounds just as well as some that bring 4 times that price.
 

adorshki

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Stone Brewing opened up a brewery in Richmond VA. Since they wanted their product to be consistent regardless of where it was brewed, they invested a lot of time and energy to determine the chemical characteristics of San Diego water and then developed water treatments so that the Richmond water was chemically the same before it was used for brewing.

San Diego water's periodically tested for the presence of effluents of guitar manufacturing.
By #11.
 
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