Official Luthiers Forum!

I read articles saying guitar sales are down, but if things really look so bad, why continue doing any guitar related business?

I feel like in every single trade, no matter what when a newcomer asks about doing something for a living the answer is always that the market is saturated and thus it's a bad idea. Is this an attempt by the trade to impose some kind of a barrier to entry by psychologically discouraging new entrants into the trade?

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Novation?

_________________
_____________________________

Kurt Thomas

"There's a first time for everything even if you do it by mistake."

They didn't mention if they were closing the whole factory, or just the Ovation part.
A friend from the area works at the Guild factory, so obviously I'm concerned about him.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Dave makes a good point. I have never been an Ovation fan, but that doesn't give me a license to be a snob. Good folks are losing their jobs. That's nothing to celebrate. I apologize. All I have to do is get in the car with my 15 year old to see what the problem is. synth music. No instruments. Just electronic noise. Hip hop. Kids have no idea how to replicate that. But music is universal, and I'm betting there will be a revival of sorts. Crap, bell bottoms came back!

I think David hit the real issue. Turn on a Top 20 radio station anywhere in the world- you're not going to hear any guitars. This has been the case for a long time now...

Mumford & Sons. Currently one of the biggest bands. Perhaps there is still hope.

_________________
Doug

Don't let fear or common sense stop you from trying to build something

There's lots of hope and no need to worry, yet.... in my view that guitar sales may tank.

I'm a data guy with an academic background and several decades of experience in evaluating markets for stuff. Having worked for a man who was famous for saying "be number one or number two in all that you do or don't do it...." evaluating opportunities is something that I do and can't seem to stop....

Check out the data: http://www.musictrades.com/census.html

Guitar sales in 2013 declined a minuscule amount of .7% over 2012. That's less than 1% and certainly explainable in all manner of ways considering the residuals of the "great recession" and the fact that other national markets have not recovered, fully from the great recession.

What's more interesting to me in this data is the inflation in average prices for guitars - the trend is up, a good thing.

Sure the baby boomers such as I are getting fat, bald, perhaps clients for Viagra, and needing progressively stronger corrective lenses.... OTOH these fat, blind, bald, impotent sorts (present company excluded of course.... ) also tend to have more disposable income in so much as older folks tend to be more established, successful, stable, etc. The kids are gone, one is now a victim of the Peter principal and making more coin, and aging thusly also a candidate to "compensate" for the ravages of aging by attempting to relive their youth, now with money....

So they buy guitars anyway but this time they may be seeking that iconic, dream guitar that they always yearned for.

When I ask some of my pro musician clients how they use their Flushtone/Heshtone one of the top three uses is to write songs. Guitars are still popular for this and easy too, no amps needed, no computer, they are portable, and they can be handy if left around one's home, office, etc.

Howard Klepper once said on this very forum that he learned to play guitar to get all of the babes. Personally I don't think that this justification is going away either..... even though..... it never worked for me personally.... But Howard is a very smart guy, an understatement, and he's right in my view that ego can drive guitar sales too.

Now let's talk about cheap Chinese and Asian imports. Are they the scourge and death mill to north American produced guitars?

Not in my view and to the contrary these offering serve a very important purpose in helping to drive demand for Luthier built instruments. I recall the sunbursted (red) Silvertone acoustic that was my first guitar..... The action was so very high that it was impossible to learn on the thing and it was better used to slice eggs or grate cheese....

These days for a bit over $100 one can buy an Asian starter guitar, Yamaha, etc. that far exceeds my Silvertone in playability. What results is more folks succeed with learning to play and then move up, like the theme from the TV show the Jeffersons.... to a deluxe Luthier-built instrument in the sky!

So I'll gladly be the odd man out here and express a positive view for the future of what we do, at least for now. Every day I deal with countless clients and most of them are older folks now. Even though we have over 50,000 students within a few miles of us the guitar repair market likely has an average age skewed toward 40 years old or so. And these folks have lots of life left in them and are upwardly mobile in earnings prospects.

Another common occurrence for us is the recently retired who pull the old J-45 or Guild D-35 out from under the bed and want to play it again now that they no longer have to do the daily bump and grind.

What we are seeing though is a market correction or a thinning out of players/manufacturers. In the last couple of decades it was common for one guitar producer to buy up their competition. In these circumstances the acquired company may be leveraged as an iconic brand or raped of all assets and destined to be teats up and gone.

Fender is not shedding themselves of Ov*tion but simply eliminating stateside manufacturing. Fender is also in massive financial trouble and 1/4 of it's inventory is contractually committed to yet another troubled player, Bain Capital owned Guitar Center - the seat of evil in the guitar world....

Recently Bain and GC started bundling worthless debt and attempting to sell this debt as an investment instruments not unlike the bundling of sub-prime mortgages, derivatives...., and pawning these off on the unsuspecting who will lose their shirts and more if they partake.

GC has around $1.5B in debt and may in my view tank at some point. And if and when they do it will be a good day for the ole Mom and Pop music store and things may come full circle. This will mean, if it happens as I suspect, that fewer music stores will tank as they have been doing massively in the last several years and more new stores may emerge - all good stuff.

And we can get back to something that I will always believe no matter what anyone else says - people prefer to buy from people!!! Sure the Internet can represent good value price wise but was it sustainable and is the support for the client there (hell no in my view regardless of return policies).

Back in 1977 I was home from being abroad (not in the cross dresser sense, not that there is anything wrong with that either.... ) and I wanted a quality acoustic guitar. I went to Grinells that was still in business and located in Briarwood mall in A2 (Ann Arbor). It was December and the store had just received 10 Guild D-25s in cardboard boxes. They had stocked up for Christmas sales.

The sales guy was helpful but didn't like that fact that I made them open all ten boxes and I spent time with all ten of the choices before selecting the one that I purchased and that is still in my life these days too. I could not have done this with Sweetwater, MusiciansFriend, etc. Even at Guitar Center the choices can be limited and in my experience can be shop-worn and all scratched up as well....

There is a place in the world for Mom and Pop music stores and I look forward to their return once the age of the Internet comes full circle.

So am I worried - no. Is the future for builders promising - yes in my view provided that you provide real value. This means a very well made instrument that is marketed where the interest is. Beware though in our repair business we see the stuff that individual builders build and we see it frequently as well. This month I had to tell someone that their 10 year old Luthier built instrument is toast since the $1,200 in repairs that it needs are not justifiable to the owner who never liked the thing anyway.... It's a shame to see a 10 year old instrument needing a neck reset, lifting bridge, poor fret work, saddle and nut that were terrible when it left the maker's bench. And this was a serial number of over 100 for this builder as well. The top had multiple cracks and the body was suffering from dimensional instability that only really results from using green wood. Don't be this builder.....


But if you make em well, again have your offering represent real value, I don't see any reason to be concerned regardless of the current trends in popular music. There will always in my view be great demand for most things that represent the best of the best in terms of what they are.

Ov*tion moving production off shore although again sad for North American jobs and those who did them is simply more of the same trend that we have seen with many things for over a decade now. It's more a statement of "lean" manufacturing than a bell weather for the state of future demand for the guitar industry.

What I find odd is that Fender buys up these guitar companies and then shuts them down or shelves them. Besides Ovation which I am not huge fan of but they also bought up Tacoma and basically shelved them. Tacoma in my opinion made a great guitars. Huge fan of the central sounhole standard design. I own several Tacomas and they compare to any Taylor or Martin that I have ever played. Great waste to have these great instruments shelved. Reality is Big business trumps quality

Hi Anthony: Actually there are countless examples of one company taking over another not unlike the BORG on Star Trek and either assimilating them..... or doing what it takes to minimize the brand, the acquired brand, and eliminate them as competition. It's all about market share for these organizations and the old adage if you can't beat em.... etc. applies as well but perhaps should read "if you can't beat em and have more money than they do buy em and send them on a slow death spiral...."

Often a market correction may include the elimination of certain players with the financially stronger party dominating.

Who are the likely losers in the end? Those who covet the acquired brand.

It doesn't always happen like this, buy the perceived competition and relegate them to a Chinese produced segment of the industry but it happens often enough with Epiphone and Gibson being yet another example of the same thing but some decades back.

I've got my eye on Steinway which was also just acquired and truly hope that the new parent preserves the brand without cheapening anything.

Interestingly Fender itself back in the day was acquired by CBS of all people and the belief then and now was that this was not a good move for Fender's quality.

I'm waiting for Martin to buy Gibson...or vice versa or Collings to buy them both.

I am sad to see people losing their jobs especially in this economy particularly (as said above) we in North America are more and more an economy that manufactures little. I echo Greg's comments and will repeat what I said in an Ovation bashing session likely deep in the OLF archives. When I played in bands it was the only acoustic amplified through a PA that still sounded like an acoustic and feedback was way easier to control than acoustics with poor quality pick ups clipped into the soundhole or standing in front of microphone (not fun). Standing up, they were a comfortable guitar to play and when set-up properly the playability was great. But I hear you gents, with all that is available now on the market including the custom guitars that are now more available than ever, an Ovation just isn't it.

What do you guys think will the value of Ovations in years to come in the collectors market? (I sold mine years ago for about $500).

Reading what you repair guys said above, I hear you, I couldn't imagine how you could service one aside from minor repairs like refretting, re- gluing a bridge, repairing a cracked headstock. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to replace the spruce top on an Ovation.

Manufacturers like Gibson I sure hope are paying heed. I recently played 4 brand new ES series Gibsons and I was underwhelmed by the factory set-up, fit and finish on one and one had open A string resonance that sounded like it was coming from the neck tension rod. (I may just send a letter to Henry). At least Martins I think have improved over the past 20-years.

I didn't realize that Larivee closed its doors too, when did this happen? (I thought that it was their Vancouver facility that closed not the one in California).

You know the only reason America was a world power (and winning WWII too) was because of American manufacturing. With outsourcing they are shooting themselves in the foot. It used to be in a manufacturing boom people had higher wages because they worked in a factory, and now people are forced to flip burgers because there are no other jobs available, and then ask the government to raise the minimum wage since flipping burgers won't pay enough to sustain a family. In WWII America did not have technological superiority (Nazi Germany had better tanks, fighter aircrafts, bombers, cannons, etc.) but they won the war because of their manufacturing power, and became a world power because America was the only country in the world with any manufacturing capability.

I don't know what will happen but intentionally reducing a country's manufacturing power can't be good.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

THANK YOU, TAI!
Tell all the Democrats, will ya?

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Ross Perot pretty much nailed it with his assessment of NAFTA's effect on manufacturing with Mexico, except that manufacturing has left for Asia as well.
Unfortunately, North American companies decided that profits are more important than the workers and communities that made them great. Tai said it well in two paragraphs.

Alex

_________________
"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Why America "won" the war? There was a buck in it. They haven't "won" a war since because it's more profitable to let it drag on forever...read 1984.
This is not about Democrats and Republicans. It's about corporations. They own Democrats and Republicans.
We don't pick our representatives. The corporations do. Voting is a joke.
Kindly quit blaming Democrats. Both parties are essentially the same. They are in it for a buck.
By the way, this is a guitar forum...let's keep it that way.

Please don't steer this thread toward a "who won the war" thread, it's insulting and ludicrous.

_________________
We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

I think there are a few things going on here. The general impression that factories in America are disappearing is true for some sectors and in some regions and cities, but it is inaccurate of the whole. The US is still a world leader in manufacturing and due to cheaper energy in the US and more expensive energy elsewhere among other things it's actually coming back. As oil prices rise it makes it a lot more expensive to ship things from Asia. That and modern technology like robotics is allowing manufacturers to produce more with less workers so that gives another perception of losing jobs. Course some one has to make the robots too

Electricity price is pretty cheap in Taiwan, because the government subsidized it heavily, possibly to make it easier for manufacturers.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com