Why Custom Shop Guitars Make It Harder to Buy a Normal Guitar

It sure looks like the big dogs, Gibson and Fender are a big part of the problem. They have been putting more effort into Custom Shop guitars that are reliced than anything else it seems. Why this focus? Does it make sense and what does it mean for the rest of us?

It’s About The Money

Consider this. A “Custom Shop” instrument is fundamentally built on the same production line as the standard instruments. Whether this is a body or neck really doesn’t matter. There is sophisticated programmed machinery that does the lion’s share of the work. Perhaps is a specific species or a really high end top, but the machining is the same. We still see the use of veneers in really high end guitars. Mahogany is mahogany. Indian rosewood is Indian rosewood. Ebony is ebony. Each has its own particulars and its own cutting process, but companies figured this out a long time ago. So what if solely by making the same guitars that you do everyday, but you find a top that is really impressive, or a really lightweight piece of mahogany as part of your purchased cut. You’ve already paid for it along with all the other wood. Instead of just releasing it, you put that build aside and make a big deal of its rarity. This is the creation of scarcity, and scarcity allows for a higher sell price at the same initial cost. More profit. It works so long as the buyer determines that this marketing scarcity is worth a difference. There is no real value increase except that which one will pay for.

If you can find customers willing to pay more for the same thing would you not spend your time finding those pieces that you can make scarce because they will be more profitable? Of course you would. Guitar makers do this.

Is A Custom Shop Instrument Made from Better Stuff than a Standard?

Of course not. Custom Shop just means that the final finishing is a bit different and that maybe parts are different, not necessarily better. Can you actually hear a difference in tone from a Murphy Lab Les Paul than a regular Les Paul Standard? Perhaps in terms of body resonance when you are tapping the wood, but amplified and run through effects pedals? You might, but are those electronics elements that differ actually better transducers than the stock ones? If they were a lot better, is the company not saying that their regular transducers are sub optimal. Of course, but none of them say that. Pickups are a product of magnets, wires and winds. Old pickups had lower output impedance. This meant that they needed more amp volume and consequently were less likely to over load internally. A super distortion pickup is just different magnets and wire and winds. A low wind pickup sounds more open because it has a lower number of turns and different magnets. You either like or you don’t but be assured that the private pickup makers put more into their pickups than any supplier building them by the ten thousands. That’s why most Strat players will always favour a set of Ron Ellis pickups and wiring loom over the Fender’s best. But that means hearing that guitar through a wonderful amplifier. The sound that we think of as an electric guitar starts in the pickup, but the greatest differentiation occurs in the amplifier output transformer and the speaker cabinet. I can play any guitar through a Katana and it will sound ok. Let me play the same guitars through a Two Rock at volume and they are both going to sound incredible. I have a China built Epiphone Casino. i’m told that the pickups are “chinese shit”. I could put a set of Lollar or Fralin P90s in it, or I could go to Tim Mills at Bare Knuckle for replacements but you know what? Through my Victory Viscount or the Fender blackface Twin or my Tone King Imperial Mark II, it sounds spectacular. It sounds like a Casino should because the sound is driven by the amp. It’s a Casino. It howls and feeds back just as it should. Could I have waited and bought a made in America Epiphone Casino? Sure for three times the money and a long wait. I would need to play the two side by side in a proper studio to even consider trying to hear a difference using the same high end amp and despite having very good hearing when it comes to higher frequencies, I am not sure that I could hear a difference and any playability differences could be handled by a professional set up.

I can pull an American Telecaster and a Fender Mexico Telecaster off a store wall. Both will be very fine guitars. Both will be well made, and while neither may be perfect for me at the outset, a bit of time getting set up by a professional tech will make both of them better. The difference to me is going to be about $1500. However, there’s a difference to Fender in which one you buy because of margin. Fender sells the Mexican builds for less because their burdened cost is less, driven almost entirely by labour cost. Does anyone actually believe that a person on a line in Corona California is that much more skilled in operating a machine than a person in Ensenada Mexico? Perhaps someone does, but the facts will say no. Now what about a Squier made in China? Is a Squier Vintage Vibe a poorer made guitar than one made in California? Having taken both types apart, at a high level the answer is no. The machinery in the China factory is older, perhaps having lower tolerances than the newest machines in California, but for the general musician, will he or she be able to tell a difference? Unlikely. Blindfold tests tell the tale. So am I getting a better instrument for $2000 worth of bucks in buying an American made Telecaster than my brand new Squier 50’s Vintage Vibe? No, I am sure not getting $2K better. And as I have proven via a scope, a set of better pickups and a professional set up, made that Squier has playable and enjoyable as a Fender US Ultra. Yes, I could not get the Squier in that beautiful Texas Tea paint job from the factory. I don’t play the paint.

I’m not dissing any of the big players for focusing on profits. No profits, no company. It’s simple math. They should all take every cent that they can from buyers and increase their profit margins as much as possible. It’s not price gouging. If you want to see price gouging live and in person, go into any mall jewellery store. Diamonds. Now that is price gouging that drug cartels aspire to, because the diamond companies have done a stellar job creating a sense of value and scarcity that has nothing to do with reality.

Paint, Low End Wood and Satin Finishes

All guitars need a finish. One way to cut the cost of a guitar is to go with a satin finish over a gloss finish. A satin finish allows for lesser pieces of wood to be used because the satin finish has a level of opacity that conceals the wood. The same thing is true for a painted guitar but we will come to that. Now you may have seen the same video from a large maker in Nashville where one of their people asserts that its harder to do a satin finish than a gloss finish. This is utter nonsense. Ask any cabinet maker if a satin finish is harder to do than a French polish. They will tell you the truth on this. If I believed that talking head, I would buy a satin finished guitar and a big soft buffing wheel and with a little time and some developed skill I would get a high gloss finish that is under the satin. Nope. Buffing is simply smoothing. Satin has an irregular finish. If I buff it, I get a smoother finish with more reflectance, but I don’t get gloss. Gloss takes longer to do and buff and is a higher labour cost. When makers say that satin is the new gloss, what they are saying is that they feel comfortable selling you a 1 pound bag of salt for $200 because you’ll believe anything. And if the buyer is so gullible as to believe this sack of burning poop, the company makes more money. They charge more for less and improve margins. The difference between a banker and a craftsperson. Other makers follow because they see a pond full of fish and want to catch their own.

A painted finish rather than a stained transparent finish is a godsend to makers. Paint conceals all manner of junk. Filler shows up under stain. Filler doesn’t show up under paint. Anything with a solid colour of any kind improves margin. All you need to do as the maker is have the paint look good. This was never news to us old musicians. We all knew that a Les Paul Custom’s body was not as figured wood as a Standard. We knew that the maple tops were not book matched. If we chose a Les Paul Custom, which when I was coming up came in Black or White, and in limited cases Wine Red, we were looking for the mass and the sound of the heavier body that was normal in a Custom. We also liked the once upon a time mother of pearl block inlays, now long since replaced by mother of toilet seat. Customs cost more. They had fancy binding and fancy inlays. Were they better guitars? Depends on the owner and what he or she liked. I have a number of Customs, all of the Black Beauty type. They all are different, but to an extent, they are also all the same, pickups and neck profiles being the only difference (that and that one as an always out of tune Bigsby). I didn’t care then and don’t care know, but I am older and play the guitar not the finish and wouldn’t buy a Custom again.

The Relic Profit Rocket

The latest trend is to take a perfectly good guitar and beat the shit out of it and charge more for the beating. Perhaps I am overly cynical but this reminds me of the character in Dirty Harry who pays someone to beat him up. What’s the point? Does this beating make for a better guitar? Not at all. Does using bridge designs that date back 60 years make the guitar play better than a newer more technically advanced bridge? Nope. Do steel saddles from 1956 differ significantly from steel saddles today? Heavier less pure steel perhaps. I’d rather have stainless steel saddles myself. Harder to work but will last forever. Back to relics.

Relics are a cash cow for makers. They figured out that many buyers will pay more for a guitar that makes them look like they’ve been playing that same guitar for 50 years, without the trouble of playing the same guitar for 50 years. Relics can actually be made more cheaply of lesser wood because part of the attraction is wearing away the finish to expose “the real wood” Some of these relics look like they are made out of cheap fence board, the wood mismatch is so blatant. The original finish doesn’t need to be done well as it’s all going to get roughened up. This idea is not new. Fake antiquing has been around for a while. Back when I was learning to make harvest tables there were sessions on using flat black paint off a semi dry shaken brush to create fly specks and making the top worn by hitting it with a piece of chain. I never built a table this way, because to me it was an insult to craftsmanship and I had no interest in dealing with anyone stupid enough to buy a fake antique table that was built over the last six weeks. I don’t like relics because I know that they are a scam and I will never buy one. You might and that is absolutely your choice, but please see me, because I have some land surrounded by water for you to purchase.

Relics are salves for ego. You didn’t get your burst in ‘59 and play it in smokey dives and juke joints for 60 years. You got it this year by paying through the nose to anoint your ego or for some other highly personal purpose. You and I are not Joe Bonamassa, dropping millions on vintage guitars because it pleases him to do so and because he can, and even if I had a real ‘59 burst, I would still not play like Jimmy Page because he is a far superior musician. I own exactly the same very rare Ibanez Artistwood double neck that John McLaughlin played. It’s heavy, and a bear to play and while I would not sell it, it does not bring me McLaughlin’s talent.

I’m not immune. I tried a bunch of 1960 Gibson Custom Shop Les Pauls in the tomato soup finish. I wanted one because I was born in 1960. No really good reason and I had put away the money over a long time to be able to buy it. The first four I played left me with a big feeling of meh. All Custom Shop, top line, best builder, yada yada yada guitars and everyone played and sounded worse than my 1971 Deluxe butchered by the original owner into a fake Standard from the famous Norlin years, when Gibson guitars were mostly crap and a decent one was a rarity. Don’t even get me started on any 70’s reissues from any maker. I was there and the only really good guitars in that decade came from Yamaha and Ibanez. Those Gibsons and Fenders were on the whole, crap. The one I finally got is very nice. It plays great and sounds good through my 70’s Marshall stack. But is it better than one of my twenty year old Les Pauls? No it really isn’t. Maybe if I play it solidly for 20 years it will get there. Would I buy that guitar again? No way. I can play it for ten years and sell it for at least double what I paid for it because it has a vinyl thing that says it’s a custom shop guitar

The Impact on Normal Guitars

All of these things make for more margin. Anyone who can make more money on one product over another product will do so. There is no morality that says a company should make more of something that makes them less money. Try to find a Gibson standard anything. They are like hen’s teeth. If all these made in America instruments were actually made in America with American parts, where the hell are they? There are no shipping containers needed to move components across the States. What this tells us is that our standard guitars are not being built because the makers can make a relic, or a Custom Shop or some other marketing spin effort at the same burdened cost as a standard but get more margin for it. That’s why finding a plain old Les Paul Standard is tough. Or a plain US made Strat. Since it has become obvious that so many parts actually come from overseas, what am I getting that is worth five times the cost? You can come up with your own answer.

A Coming Boom in Used Guitars Will Make Buying a Guitar Easier

The data tells us that in the first year of COVID-19, something on the order of 16,000,000 guitars were sold. They were bought by folks locked away in their homes and they’d finished watching everything on Netflix. We also know that if a 100 guitars are bought as Christmas presents, 14 will be still be played 9 months later. The other 86 are in a closet, or under a bed, or forgotten somewhere. Not my numbers, I got them from a music industry report sponsored by Fender. As folks unlock from COVID-19 restrictions, what do you think will happen to those 16M guitars? A large number of them are going to show up in the used market. Some will be sold on Reverb after the buyer figures out just how little he or she can actually get for the instrument when there are a thousand other ones just like it coming available. Watch Kijiji and eBay and Ish and even Reverb. You will find a whole whack of barely touched near new guitars showing up.

In fact, if I ran a guitar shop (I do not) I would be aggressively building a buyback program. Cash for unplayed purchased guitars. Trade in values already give owners hives, because the shops understand what they can sell a used guitar for that they have made whole and they know that they can make good margins on them by paying you as little as possible for one. You will always get more selling privately than by selling to a shop, because shop buyers are smart and know their business. But it’s simple. A smart shop with a Buyback program could get a lot of inventory to fill those empty guitar hooks at good prices, and deliver guitars to people who want them but cannot or won’t pay the ridiculous prices being charged for new guitars. That’s math, not an opinion.

The New Normal

You might also consider what you call a normal guitar. I can buy today an Epiphone “Inspired by Gibson” Hummingbird that is better than any of the new Gibson acoustics selling at 2.5x the price. It will outplay, outsound and look spectacular. It will be made in China, where labour costs are low, and hit your door for about a thousand bucks. I did a comparison against my old Gibson Hummingbird which is a 1987. Mine is definitely more played in, but it is spruce over mahogany and recorded with a really nice microphone, I could not tell the difference in what I heard. Same music, same player, same position, same microphone, same interface, same software, no plugins, no EQ. A new Hummingbird from Gibson, if I could find one, is in the four grand range. The Chinese made Hummingbird sounds as good and the build quality of these Epiphones has been superb. Maybe my normal guitar could come from China, or Korea, or Indonesia. I have guitars from all those places and I paid my own money for them. If they are still here, it is because they are very good sounding and good playing guitars. Be assured that I have played, bought and returned a lot of much more expensive guitars that just did not please, let along inspire me.

In The End

What you buy and how you buy it is up to you, but don’t be under the illusion of fake scarcity. Makers are serving themselves and their shareholders ahead of you. That’s how they stick around, by managing costs, maintaining profits and staying focused on the high margin stuff. If you have a question or even a comment, click here to send it along.