Plethora of guitars $299-499.

[ElmerJFudd]

Perusing the Guitar Center over the weekend I am simply staggered at the number of guitars hanging on the wall… and their affordability.  Epipohone 335 Dot in beautiful finishes for $479.  Gretch electromatic hollowbody with bixby, $499 in every shade in stock.  Kramer HHS with floating tremelo, $299.  New, used, mint, poor. All stamped, Made in China.  Ok, no surprise, like everything else. Have all these brands been sold off now, too?  I still see Gibson up high on the shelf, $3500.   Strange days.  I prefer a quality instrument over quantity of instruments.  But that’s a huge price discrepancy.  If the build is decent, I’ll solder in my own pickups into an affordable body. 🤷‍♂️ 

[KuruPrionz]

I make some of my own guitars. My Strat has a Squier body, thinner and a cool sky blue color. It also has a Warmoth extra wide neck that was left handed and only had the dots on the lefty side so it went for $150 on eBay. Hipshot locking tuners, an aftermarket Strat pick guard, I don't know where the bridge came from, maybe a Floyd conversion I did a long time ago, EMG SA pickups in the neck and bridge and an EMG SPC. I scalloped the fretboard. 

Would cost you dearly if you bought it built to order, DIY it was probably around $350 max since I got everything I could used. Hell of a Strat too!!!

 

Similar story with a Tele. Those are my giggers currently but a massively boogered early 60's single cut Melody Maker is waiting for some love. It's really light, I like that. The neck is fat too. Probably put one rewound (TV Jones did it) vintage Gretsch Supertron in it at the neck position and call it good. 

 

Guitars are fun if you slither about and scoop up the orphans and cripples!!!!

[Larryz]

I always wanted an ES-175 Gibson but just couldn`t see paying $4,000.  Then Epi came out with their Premium version for $1,000 and I snatched one up.  They are made in Korea and assembled in the USA using all US made parts (switchcraft 3way, 57 Gibson humbuckes, Gibson pot and orange drop caps).  Plays and sounds almost as good as the original.  I figured that if I bought a cheaper Epi off the rack, it would cost me up to a $1,000 to buy and upgrade one...about the only difference is it's laminated spruce top.  Which works good for outdoor gigs when you want to leave the other more expensive guitars at home. 😎

[Winston Psmith]

To address the OP, a lot of those names were bought out a while ago. IIRC, Fender owns, or recently owned, the Gretsch name, and moved much of their production over to China; they also own Guild. Epiphone consolidated much of their production line to their own plant in China, much like Behringer, instead of having a handful of Korean producers. I think Gibson brought back Kahler, although I'm less certain about that.

 

This dovetails into the thread about the Marshall name being acquired. For the most part, what's really changing are licensing agreements; they're selling names, not product lines. A current MIC Gretsch has little or nothing to do with the Guitars that made the name famous; it either stands on its own merit as a Guitar, or it doesn't. The same can be said for Marshall Amps, anything current with the "Fender" name on the headstock, or any of the recent reissue lines. For the money, a lot of those import Guitars are much better quality than the cheap imports that were available when I started out, but OTOH, a $500 starter Guitar isn't exactly cheap.

 

My one semi-hollow is a 2005 Ebony Epihone DOT, from the Samick plant in Korea. At the time, a U.S.-made 335 was running somewhere around $1200+/-, but my DOT was $300, new right out of the box, at my nearest GC. The only thing I did to change it was to install Schaller strap locks.

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, Winston Psmith said:

To address the OP, a lot of those names were bought out a while ago. IIRC, Fender owns, or recently owned, the Gretsch name, and moved much of their production over to China; they also own Guild. Epiphone consolidated much of their production line to their own plant in China, much like Behringer, instead of having a handful of Korean producers. I think Gibson brought back Kahler, although I'm less certain about that.

 

This dovetails into the thread about the Marshall name being acquired. For the most part, what's really changing are licensing agreements; they're selling names, not product lines. A current MIC Gretsch has little or nothing to do with the Guitars that made the name famous; it either stands on its own merit as a Guitar, or it doesn't. The same can be said for Marshall Amps, anything current with the "Fender" name on the headstock, or any of the recent reissue lines. For the money, a lot of those import Guitars are much better quality than the cheap imports that were available when I started out, but OTOH, a $500 starter Guitar isn't exactly cheap.

 

My one semi-hollow is a 2005 Ebony Epihone DOT, from the Samick plant in Korea. At the time, a U.S.-made 335 was running somewhere around $1200+/-, but my DOT was $300, new right out of the box, at my nearest GC. The only thing I did to change it was to install Schaller strap locks.

The biggest change by far over time is the availability of woods. I have a 60-61 single cutaway Gibson Melody Maker that is a project, it cannot be restored to original condition as somebody apparently used a butter knife to modify the cavity for the pickups and installed 3 Di Marzio Strat pickups and a 5 way switch - to get the switch in they cut through the back of the body and added a hideous little plate. But I digress...

The body is a single piece of prime, old growth Honduras mahogany. The neck is a single piece of prime, old growth Honduras mahogany. The fretboard is Brazilian rosewood. If you can find those woods on a new guitar, it will be $$$$$. The Melody Maker was Gibson's least expensive guitar in the early 60's. Those trees have long since been cut down and "Honduras" mahogany is now grown in Fiji. 

[KuruPrionz]

59 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:

The biggest change by far over time is the availability of woods. I have a 60-61 single cutaway Gibson Melody Maker that is a project, it cannot be restored to original condition as somebody apparently used a butter knife to modify the cavity for the pickups and installed 3 Di Marzio Strat pickups and a 5 way switch - to get the switch in they cut through the back of the body and added a hideous little plate. But I digress...

The body is a single piece of prime, old growth Honduras mahogany. The neck is a single piece of prime, old growth Honduras mahogany. The fretboard is Brazilian rosewood. If you can find those woods on a new guitar, it will be $$$$$. The Melody Maker was Gibson's least expensive guitar in the early 60's. Those trees have long since been cut down and "Honduras" mahogany is now grown in Fiji. 

On the other hand, my favorite acoustic guitars are 100% graphite. So the above isn't really a rant so much as an observation. 

I don't really care about what guitars are made of, I care about "do I like to play this guitar". Mostly, I do but most of them could use a bit of set up. 

[ElmerJFudd]

Market value, personal value or both. 
 

I’ve a pre-Fender Guild X-160 Savoy that has appreciated quite a bit. Like most “Guild” owners, I’ve no interest in selling it.  At one point I considered swapping out the pickup system for a specific jazzier sound I had in my head.  But I’ve scrapped that because I don’t want to devalue it either.  
 

There’s a lot of options for specific purpose/sound guitars these days. Tele, strat, semi hollow body, etc.  It’s very easy to break the bank on top tier stuff - but sorting through look-a-like recreations with purchased brand names sometimes comes up with a diamond in the rough.  Like everything else, you have to try it out to know.  

[surfergirl]

My mother paid $500 for my 2011 Fender Deluxe Player Stratocaster blemished, the MSLP from the Fender catalog was $899.99. The blemish is barely noticeable. My grandfather went over it completely when we received it and everything was as it should be. No ruff edges on the fretts or issues at all.

 

[Winston Psmith]

Have to agree with @KuruPrionz on the issue of tone woods. I see a of lot laminated Guitar bodies out, even on U.S.-made Gibsons, and a bunch of unrelated woods being marketed as "Mahogany". FWIW, Mahogany is my favorite tone wood for a solid-body Guitar, and I've been able to feel a difference in Guitars made with those other woods. They feel "spongy", for lack of a much better description, softer than they should be, and they seem to absorb the tone of the Guitar, like a sponge, rather than projecting . . .