There’s a huge price variation from one end of the spectrum to the other on the guitar market. Somewhere between the $50 “beginner” guitar and the $50,000 “collectors dream” lies a sensible sweet spot for your every day musician.
I’m going to try to help narrow that down. With the aid of a little perspective we’ll look at where you can expect to find the limits of the disposable toy price bracket and the brand name bloat price bracket.
As far as possible I’m going to try to avoid using actual dollar amounts to remove confusion over which currency I might be referring to, as well as inflation and price variation over time.
Back to basics: what does it cost to make a guitar?
First of all, let’s look at the timber. We all know the commonly used timbers for guitar building: mahogany, maple, alder, ash, and if weight is a consideration (or you’re an insufferable tight ass) bass wood.
Have a google around your local timber suppliers and have a look at the price tag on a decent slab of those timber species. Right off the bat this is starting to look prohibitive.
Now consider the cost of turning that timber into something playable. Some of you might consider shaping a guitar body yourself without too much difficulty. Fair enough.
How about the neck though?
Sometimes you’ll find your local luthier or repair guy will post the cost of a re-fret on their website. Try to find that.
Now pick your chin up off the floor and consider this: if that’s what it costs to rip the old frets out and put new ones in, think about what it would cost to build the whole freaking neck from scratch.
This would be a great point to consider what you think would be a fair hourly rate for a skilled luthier to be paid.
With that in mind, let’s talk about finish. Paint, stain, lacquer etc isn’t free, and it takes time to apply. A lot of time. However long you think it probably takes to sand a piece of timber flat enough to apply finish, its likely twice that. Multiply that by the hourly rate you previously came up with, and you have a ball park figure of the cost just to make it look pretty.
You can easily get up around the $1500 – $2000 mark to have a luthier put together a fairly basic, nothing-fancy guitar. Mind you if you do this, you’ll have a one-of-a-kind, hand made guitar built to your specifications which will be worth every penny and then some.
If you have that kind of money spare you should definitely do this. You’ll be supporting your local luthier and end up with something really nice for around half the price of certain popular big brand name guitars. Quality control will likely leave the big-boys in the dust as well.
Although, there’s a fair chance that if you’re reading this blog you don’t have that kind of money to invest in a new guitar. The obvious question then is:
How can this whole process be made cheaper?
The most obvious thing to lower the cost is economy of scale. Bulk buying timber and hardware, shaping everything on CNC machines and assembling everything on a production line smashes the price down to next to nothing.
Despite this, labour still adds a significant cost. Someone still has to sand and finish these guitars, and CNC machines aren’t going to tackle fret work or check your intonation.
The cost of that labour varies depending on where in the world it happens. Knowing where your guitar was built can be a good indicator of what you’re paying for. China is notoriously cheap with its labour costs. That cost doubles if your guitar is made in Indonesia, double that again if it’s made in Korea, and more than double that figure to get one made in the US.
Some folks equate cost of labour with quality of labour. While there is definitely a case to be made for a reasonably consistent correlation between the two, it’s not always the case. You occasionally see good work coming out of China and glaring quality control oversights coming out of the US.
How low can you go?
There’s a few cost-cutting practices used with cheap guitars that have become fairly common practice.
You’ve no doubt noticed the beautifully figured flame/quilt/spalted maple caps on Les Paul style and PRS guitars. There’s no way you’re getting an actual maple cap on budget level guitars, so what’s going on here?
The most common method is to utilise a veneer. Aesthetically speaking, there’s nothing wrong with that, and some of them can look quite nice. They’re stained and finished the same way as their more expensive counterparts, and if you didn’t notice the price tag, you’d have a hard time telling it wasn’t the real deal.
Far less common and far more sinister is the use of an inkjet print-out under a clear coat, in an attempt to avoid using even a veneer of the proper timber or bearing the cost of applying a proper finish.
The fewer pieces of timber that get glued together to make the body of your instrument, the better it’s harmonic resonance and sustain. Finding one or two large slabs of wood with no knots or chips in it is difficult though, so where they exist, they come with a premium price tag.
The obvious cheap work around is to use many pieces of timber laminated together and cut to shape. Three or four piece bodies are fairly common and aren’t anything to worry about, but you’re starting to creep into compromise territory after that. Chances are if you’ve bought a cheap Asian guitar with a solid finish or a veneered top, they’ll be covering up a patch work collection of timber off cuts glued together.
To be clear, the sonic impact of doing this isn’t massive. There’s a good chance you won’t notice. Having a one or two piece body is just one of the many small things which work together in aggregate in a more expensive guitar to make you go “wow this guitar sounds so much more impressive than the cheaper guitars”.
Another production money-saver is using “pot metal” for the hardware. Pot metal tends to be a mash up of different kinds of recycled scrap metal. It lacks the usual structural integrity you might expect and can’t really be relied upon. If you’ve bought a dirt cheap Asian guitar you’d be well served to upgrade the bridge and tuners.
So that’s all there is to know about what you’re paying for when you buy a guitar right? Not exactly. Materials and labour probably make up about a quarter to a third of the retail price.
What you’re really paying for, and how to get around it
Everyone who handles the guitar wants a percentage of its value. That includes marketing, warehouse costs, shipping costs, retail mark up etc. By the time it hits the display at the retail store, that guitar has likely quadrupled in price.
It can be maddening to know that the majority of what you’re paying for has nothing to do with the cost of building the guitar. Here are a few things to consider if you want to beat the system:
- Get a cheap Asian guitar and upgrade its parts
Once upon a time cheap Chinese guitars were unplayable pieces of junk. A lot has changed over the years, and while there are still likely to be a few quality control issues, the standard you’ll find these days is much higher.
Find an inexpensive guitar from a decent species of wood. Replace the pickups, tuners and bridge. Take your new guitar to your local luthier and recruit them to put it all together, give it a set up and get it playing like a professional quality instrument.
That whole process may cost you twice as much as the guitar itself. Bear in mind though, that if all these upgrades were already in place at the point of manufacture, you’d be paying four to five times the price at the retail end. An extra $100 on pickups at the start of the process adds $400-$500 to the total cost of the instrument by the time it gets to the shop.
- Buy second hand
The cost of a decent second hand instrument should be in the same ball park as option one above. Realistically though, it’ll probably cost a little bit more, and will likely still end up in the hands of your local tech for a look over and a set up. This way though, you don’t have to deal with the social stigma of having a budget brand’s logo on your guitar.
The major advantage of buying second hand is you have a sporting chance of getting some money back when you sell it. If you have a high-end, well known brand of guitar it should retain a respectable resale value. Hardly anything else will.
- Buy a kit guitar and DIY
I’m cautious about recommending this approach, but you may want to consider it.
Getting a kit guitar intercepts the whole process pretty close to the start. The same factories that churn out necks and bodies for well known brands also provide necks and bodies for kit guitars. By getting a kit you’re not only removing the cost of shipping and marketing, you’re also removing the cost of finishing and assembling the guitar by doing it yourself.
What might not be obvious is that you’re also skipping the quality control nip-n-tuck that most guitars get before moving on to fit and finish. The neck pocket might be a bit off, the fret work could be appalling, there could be a rough looking gap between the veneer and the binding – you get the idea.
This could potentially be an inexpensive way to end up with a unique guitar built to your specifications. It could also be a painfully frustrating and expensive lesson in why most folks leave guitar building to the experts.
Only do this if you’re equally motived to gain experience in guitar building and don’t mind the end result looking as amateur as it actually is.
If you do go with this method, give Pitbull Guitars a go. There are higher quality kits available, but you’ll have zero interaction with the supplier beyond adding the kit of choice to your kart and providing payment and shipping details.
With Pitbull you have a native English speaker operating the front end of the store who is more than happy to have a bit of to-and-fro by email to discuss customisations and modifications to standard kits. He’s also well aware of the unavoidable quality control issues with Chinese factories, and goes above and beyond in the name of customer service if what you receive doesn’t measure up.
At the premium end of the spectrum is Warmoth. By all accounts their quality control is fantastic and they come with a large range of customisations. You can even get them to do some of the finish and assembly for you.
How much should you spend?
So now you’ve got a decent idea of what you’re paying for when you buy a guitar, and hopefully that’ll give you some perspective on what a reasonable price to pay might be.
If the retail price of a guitar is dirt cheap, imagine what sort of quality parts and labour you’d get for a quarter of that price. If that thought horrifies you, walk away from the guitar – it’s likely junk.
Likewise, if the price tag is more than the cost of having a luthier build you a guitar by hand from scratch, they’re probably charging too much. You’re likely paying for a brand name and the reputation of the company rather than tangible improvements in build quality, playability or tone.
The Bottom Line
Being a guitarist is expensive. None of the gear is cheap, and if you buy some that is, you’ll spend a lot more along the journey towards discovering what you should have bought to begin with.
Have a long hard think about the sound you’re after, do your research into what type of gear can make that sound, check out reviews of equipment on your short list, and try to play that gear before you buy it. Try to make decisions based on what’s practical and appropriate, not based on the latest trends, flash marketing, or internet hype.
Tone Quest 