An interesting observation based on our last couple of webcasts.

Mark Wein

Mark Wein

Grand Poobah
Staff member
Two of the three guys we have had in for webcasts are shopping for or have just gotten inexpensive Epihone or Fender Classic Vibe instruments to use professionally. Paul Pigat has a Gretsch endorsement and a ton of vintage guitars as well as a hand made Tele from a small builder and really likes his Classic Vibe Tele and Kirk Fletcher (who has two Suhrs among other high end instruments) was discussing with Tom the differences between the Chinese and Korean versions of the Epiphone Casino as a reasonable replacement for an ES330 that he had sold that would be a reasonable travel guitar since he's always going to Europe to perform. Even Rick Holmstrom went through a phase where he played Stratotone H44's for a long time....


Discuss. :)
 
If there playable for you and you can get the sound youre looking for from them then why not. It would suck losing or getting an expensive Gibson or custom built guitar stolen or lost on the road.
 
Tom has one of those Japanese or Mexican (I can't remember which) Esquires that he put a Don Mare pickup in for the same reason...
 
the quality floor has gotten better. this isn't the 80s anymore when $200 got you a Hondo. yeah, you can still buy that crap. but you can also buy a really nice instrument with quality hardware for $350 - $700. i think you still have to be choosy about it. but find the right one and maybe swap the pickups and go.
 
I imagine pros who travel must get tired of worrying about high end gear. Same with handing expensive gear to students. Decent low end stuff makes good sense in some cases. A lot of the imports on the low end have gotten very, very good.
 
My MIM tele was as good as any American I ever played. I payed $200 for it new at GC put some Fender CS nocaster pups in it and it rocked. The best $400 I ever spent.
 
Tiltsta said:
I imagine pros who travel must get tired of worrying about high end gear. Same with handing expensive gear to students. Decent low end stuff makes good sense in some cases. A lot of the imports on the low end have gotten very, very good.
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that's really how the whole relic thing got started too. legend has it that Keith Richards didn't want to bring out his old teles anymore. he knew they were old and worth a lot. so he asked Fender to recreate them. word got out, other people wanted one, and Fender started charging through the nose for beat up guitars. Gibson followed.

so to you and me, they're overpriced beat up guitars. but to Keith Richards, whose guitars are worth tens of thousands, they were a bargain.
 
I think the Squier Classic Vibe stuff really upped the game for lower end instruments. I have the 60's Strat, have played several, and really only found one that was a dog.
 
Help!I'maRock! said:
that's really how the whole relic thing got started too. legend has it that Keith Richards didn't want to bring out his old teles anymore. he knew they were old and worth a lot. so he asked Fender to recreate them. word got out, other people wanted one, and Fender started charging through the nose for beat up guitars. Gibson followed.

so to you and me, they're overpriced beat up guitars. but to Keith Richards, whose guitars are worth tens of thousands, they were a bargain.
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I heard the same story, although not specifically attributed to Keith Richards. Makes good sense, when you think about it. You want to bring the 51 fender nocaster you played on all those Stones records on a world tour? Play a couple hundred shows a year, and something bad is bound to happen eventually. Guitar alone is worth many thousands, add the history and it becomes like the Hendrix guitar auctions...insanely valuable. Bring the fake on tour, keep the original in your castle.
 
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It's all down to the player....some people just can't wrap their heads around a lower priced instrument. I've got a friend that just doesn't feel right if he's not playing something MIA. Remember back in the late 80s early 90s when the Japanese strats were on the market and everyone said they were crap? Look how desirable they are today with everyone and their brother saying that the CIJ/MIJ build quality eclipses MIA of that same period. Where were they back then?

Lots of great moderate and lower priced instruments on the market. It's a great time to be a guitarist on a budget.
 
Yep, I wish I was starting out today. When I was first learning in the early 1980s, a shitty Harmony strat copy cost me something like 199 bucks. I couldn't afford a hondo, as they were like 249 or so. 199 in 1982 money is about 450 bucks today. Just imagine what you can get for that kind of money today.
 
I bought my first guitar (other than my old acoustic) in late 2006. I shopped around plenty. Granted I am no pro, but the stuff that you can get for a few hundred dollars is pretty amazing. The bottom of the barrel is still bottom of the barrel. But if you shop around, the next step or two up is pretty nice. My 2006 MIM, which was released in the year they improved the MIM's, is perfectly fine to me. I do not prefer other American made ones. In fact, the factories are not that far apart. Just with a border in the middle somewhere. And my Asian Hagstrom, whilst not perfect, is pretty darned good for the price I paid. The CV Tele Custom I am going to pick up the week after next is darned nice too.

So I could see the pros getting in on this stuff, especially for their travel gear. In fact, other than endorsements, and certain models, I am not sure why gigging musicians would choose differently.
 
Help!I'maRock! said:
the quality floor has gotten better..
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This and when you are touring, having a $400 guitar bite the dust, is much easier to take than a $2000. It is one thing playing around a few local bars, but packing up in a van and driving across the country is another thing.
 
Help!I'maRock! said:
the quality floor has gotten better. this isn't the 80s anymore when $200 got you a Hondo. yeah, you can still buy that crap. but you can also buy a really nice instrument with quality hardware for $350 - $700. i think you still have to be choosy about it. but find the right one and maybe swap the pickups and go.
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If it werent for this, I wouldnt be playing at all. I tried several years ago to buy a guitar to learn to play but in my budget price range, what I got was basically unplayable. Five years ago, I decided to give it another try and havent paid more than $450 for a guitar and have had some pretty nice ones. I could see someone playing my Asat professionally for sure.
 
One thing I do want to interject is that all of these guys still have their expensive instruments, and I'm not getting rid of my Suhrs or any of that stuff but it is nice to see that you can find usable instruments that don't cost an arm and a leg anymore.
 
Mark Wein said:
One thing I do want to interject is that all of these guys still have their expensive instruments, and I'm not getting rid of my Suhrs or any of that stuff but it is nice to see that you can find usable instruments that don't cost an arm and a leg anymore.
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i guess the question that gets asked is, "well if your main touring guitar is $400, then why isn't it good enough to record with?" personally, i don't have an answer for that because i'm not in the same position. as was said above, i'm playing local bars, so i get to bring all my cool shit.
 
Help!I'maRock! said:
i guess the question that gets asked is, "well if your main touring guitar is $400, then why isn't it good enough to record with?" personally, i don't have an answer for that because i'm not in the same position. as was said above, i'm playing local bars, so i get to bring all my cool shit.
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Well, thats a good question. I think "good enough for onstage" and "Good enough to be heard forever" are two different things, for one. Kirks comment about the Suhrs is that even though he's not in a business relationship with them anymore he still uses the two guitars he has from them to record with in the studio...he does a ton of session work and having instruments that are just more accurate in terms of intonation are probably very important. Sometimes you don't realize what a problem an instrument is until you are recording and everything is in tune except for one chord inversion up the neck. Live thats not too big of a deal but once you've recorded it and it needs to sit in the track next to a synth or something that is 100% in tune you start having problems.

Also, if you have a great instrument that is too valuable to take on gigs then probably you spent the money on something that sounds pretty special to you. I'm another guy who doesn't travel much with his instruments (I have a few out of town gigs coming up this year but they are all a days drive away or less). One thing they were discussing off camera was that Kirk had an L5 that changed drastically in terms of tone after a trip to Italy and back and a few other guys have had that experience. I would think that if you are in a bus going slowly from climate to climate its not that big of a deal but these guys do short trips from Southern California to Northern Europe and back, to the Mediterranean and back, to South America and back....sometimes a couple of trips to different climates in the same month...I'd imagine that would be pretty hard on any instrument.
 
Mark Wein said:
Well, thats a good question. I think "good enough for onstage" and "Good enough to be heard forever" are two different things, for one. Kirks comment about the Suhrs is that even though he's not in a business relationship with them anymore he still uses the two guitars he has from them to record with in the studio...he does a ton of session work and having instruments that are just more accurate in terms of intonation are probably very important. Sometimes you don't realize what a problem an instrument is until you are recording and everything is in tune except for one chord inversion up the neck. Live thats not too big of a deal but once you've recorded it and it needs to sit in the track next to a synth or something that is 100% in tune you start having problems.

Also, if you have a great instrument that is too valuable to take on gigs then probably you spent the money on something that sounds pretty special to you. I'm another guy who doesn't travel much with his instruments (I have a few out of town gigs coming up this year but they are all a days drive away or less). One thing they were discussing off camera was that Kirk had an L5 that changed drastically in terms of tone after a trip to Italy and back and a few other guys have had that experience. I would think that if you are in a bus going slowly from climate to climate its not that big of a deal but these guys do short trips from Southern California to Northern Europe and back, to the Mediterranean and back, to South America and back....sometimes a couple of trips to different climates in the same month...I'd imagine that would be pretty hard on any instrument.
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a lot of the shows i go to allow audience recording or even recording direct from the soundboard. and even in situations were this isn't allowed, there's always some jackwagon recording the entire thing on his iPhone or sneaking in a Zoom recorder. so the idea of "well it's close enough for the stage because it won't live in perpetuity" really doesn't resonate with me. IMO, it has to be just as on in either situation.

i definitely agree when it comes to vintage instruments, especially hollowbodies. but current production solidbodies (which is mostly what we talk about here) shouldn't have those kinds of problems.
 
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