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Expensive vs
Overpriced
Expensive Guitars: An
expensive guitar would be like a
JET or a
Centurion or maybe an
Abstract. These are
guitars that cost a lot of money. You must understand that they are
worth every penny, because they are totally hand made by a
talented Luthier from start to finish.
There are new engineering ideas incorporated, extremely
high end tone woods, all the finest components available & no
expense is spared to make sure these are the finest guitars
available on the planet. The Luthiers, that build all of the guitars
that we choose to call expensive guitars, are driven by the goal of
absolute perfection. (click
here)
Overpriced Guitars: Are
simply overpriced guitars. Most come from the large mega
corporations that mass produce guitars, they are known to flourish
by putting out limited editions or historic reissues of an
older model guitar. They will then sell these average quality,
average looking, questionable quality guitars for incredibly high
prices. The most amazing thing is that the more they charge,
the more value the public perceives they are receiving &
consequently more are sold. Here at Ed Roman's, we will never give
up trying to re educate the brainwashed public. Lately it seems we
are making a lot of progress.
In all actuality, the usual basic overpriced guitar will
incorporate worthless plastic inlays, cheap rosewood fingerboards,
all plywood construction, loose neck joints, cheap hardware, fair
workmanship, and no new positive enhancements that could possibly
make the guitar worth even 1/5th of what it is selling for.
These companies rely solely on the false perception that their
advertising represents, without paying celebrities huge sums of
money, these
companies would all drop & die.
Some companies are better than others. Fender for example will
charge more for their anniversary models & artist series guitars. In
most cases however there are some definite improvements and they are
not charging an arm and a leg more as say for example some other
companies do.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with a Japanese or Korean
Guitar. In fact some of them are excellent. I take issue that
some of these companies like ESP for example actually have Japanese
and or Korean guitars that list in the $4,200.00 range. That
is simply insanity. The guitar should sell for somewhere around
$800.00 ! That would allow the company to make a fair markup
and be able to function well. These guitars are priced very high and
they don't even offer ebony fretboards.
Another sure fire way to spot a rip-off is to look at the
tremolo system. Don't accept anything with a soft metal bridge
plate, stay away from imported Floyd Rose trems, Be careful of
cheapo rosewood fingerboards.
Frontloading Cache Value:
Never buy a guitar from any company that is charging up front for
possible extra value later. Unless they are only charging a small
token amount more like Fender & Dean do. Some un-named
companies will rip you off for almost 10 times the value when they
release their anniversary models. The dealers who purchase these
guitars lose their shirts. I have bought over 20 of them at
way below dealer cost. Many dealers were stuck with product that no
one would buy. Luckily for the consumer some of these particular
campaigns fail miserably but some companies overpriced Historic
Reissues continue to be a huge source of revenue for them.
If you stop & think about it sensibly for a period of just two
minutes, You might then realize, that these reissue guitars are
designed solely for the purpose of appealing to a counterfeiter, who
may be planning on distressing it to give it the appearance of being
original. The appeal lies in the fact that the guitar could then be
sold to another unsuspecting consumer as an older original model.
Consumers have been known to spend insane amounts of money, trying
to join the exclusive club of people, who truly own the original
vintage guitars.
These people are usually long on money
& short on brains.
Personally, I am not into joining any of those little cliques,
I would rather invest my money in guitars where the workmanship,
quality & designs separate them from the rest of the pack.
Ed Roman
July 2006
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