stompie
Nowadays there are many brands of really cheap guitars, I'm talking about the ones they don't even sell at music shops.
That made me wonder, when did this start? Were most instruments in the older days properly made and not made for mass production, or has there always been a really cheap guitar anybody could afford? Probably not electric hey?
Chocklit_Thunda
The cheap import guitar market has gotten better over the years... a lot of Old jap and eastern european guitars used to be quite crappy (generalisation) or just plain ugly... that being said there were a few gems... they just werent consistent or well heard of...
nowadays you have one giant factory assembling for hundreds of guitar companies and delivering similar levels of output (the materials are usually the downfall between brands)
Samick is one, cort used to manufacture for loads of guye including Ibanez.
I guess it depends but I think its much easier to get a playable cheapie now than it ever was
Bob-Dubery
stompie wrote:
Nowadays there are many brands of really cheap guitars, I'm talking about the ones they don't even sell at music shops.
That made me wonder, when did this start? Were most instruments in the older days properly made and not made for mass production, or has there always been a really cheap guitar anybody could afford? Probably not electric hey?
I'd think the cheapness goes back to the late 19th century at least, when the mail order business in the USA started booming.
But thinking about that it must go back a lot further. Not everybody could afford to have some well regarded builder make a guitar for them. What on earth were the poor people going to play?
Of course the "guitar" has not been one thing from day one. It's evolved over centuries. Certainly some of it's predecessors were regarded as not fit for genteel company. The cittern was one such. I can't see master craftsmen making citterns for the unwashed and less than well heeled working class types who would actually play them, but somebody serviced that market.
I'm pretty sure that Robert Johnson didn't have particularly expensive guitars. I recall reading that part of the distinctive sound of the early blues players was attributable to them playing cheap guitars with ladder bracing (such guitars being cheaper to make than X-braced guitars).
singemonkey
There've always been cheap guitars. What there weren't were cheap, good guitars. Plenty of these now, although they're not all good.
peterleroux
singemonkey wrote:
There've always been cheap guitars. What there weren't were cheap, good guitars. Plenty of these now, although they're not all good.
When I bought my CV50s Tele one of the quotes on TDPRI was "we are living in the golden age of cheap guitars". I'm under no illusion that a cheap instrument is better than an expensive one, but the value for money at the low end is pretty incredible nowadays.
having said that, Sears/Danelectro guitars got many people playing in the sixties, and there have always been cheap guitar satire just good enough
stompie
Yeah that's what i was wondering, what electric guitar would a person play in the 50's or probably more the 60's, if he couldnt afford a fender or Gibson?
Sneaky-Pete
I got my first electric guitar in December 1959 (just after the Boer War).
There was only one place in Joburg, and they had furniture
on one side and a few electric guitars in a corner,
The guitar was a Maestro and looked vaguely like a Les Paul.
Not sure if Maestro were part of Gibson at that time....maybe
it was before they were taken over.
I seem to remember it was 12 pounds (cost not weight).
They also made a solid plank version which in retrospect looked vaguely like today's Tele.
At that time, we had seen pics of Buddy Holly and Hank Marvin with Strats, but there were no Fender agents in SA.
In fact Hank Marvin's first red Strat was custom-ordered from the States by Cliff Richard who bought it as a surprise birthday prezzy.
Naturally, in those days we knew nothing about pickups, string height, intonation etc. You bought the guitar and you played it just like that. Tuning was a problem...no tuners, nobody thought about a pitchpipe, if you could find one...
At gigs, everybody tuned to the guy who SAID his guitar was in tune. Pianos were few and far between.
The only time you replaced a string was when it broke, Then you caught the bus into town, bought that one string and got the bus home.
One amp was usually enough for a band, with 2 guitars, bass and a singer coming out of the same speaker...
Must stop now....getting slightly moist...
Bob-Dubery
stompie wrote:
Yeah that's what i was wondering, what electric guitar would a person play in the 50's or probably more the 60's, if he couldnt afford a fender or Gibson?
There were loads of other brands, though some of them may have cost more than a Gibson or Fender (IIRC Gretsch were not exactly cheap). But look at old photos from the 60s. Brian Jones playing that tear drop Vox, often alongside a Framus-wielding Bill Wyman.
In Europe there were plenty of options: Burns, Vox, Grimshaw, Framus, Hofner. I suppose that in America there were Teisco and the mail order brands (Sears Roebuck?) and Kay. See if you can get hold of the Robert Plant "Band of Joy" DVD or find some clips on Youtube and watch what Buddy Miller plays - he's a real retro man.
Malkav
X-rated Bob wrote:
In Europe there were plenty of options: Burns, Vox, Grimshaw, Framus, Hofner.
It's quite funny that these days guitars like Framus are more expensive than a lot of the catalogue of those leading brands, or at least their current models are, a vintage one doesn't have any vintage value like a Fender or Gibson may but they do make stellar instruments these days - And what I think would probably be my favourite amp ?
warrenpridgeon
Then if you also look at where you draw the line for "cheap" guitars...
Squire bullets are very cheap and not very nice (I had one)... But then you can get cheap(ish) ibanez guitars for R2000 or something which when used in their desired application would sound and play "acceptable". I am looking at more "mainstream" stuff because it's more common... There are epiphones hanging on the wall at Marshall for 2 or 3k...
Then there are these "starter kits" that come with a little amp, a stap and 5 plectrums or something... very cheap... just over R1000...
Chabenda
Sneaky Pete wrote:
I got my first electric guitar in December 1959 (just after the Boer War).
There was only one place in Joburg, and they had furniture
on one side and a few electric guitars in a corner,
The guitar was a Maestro and looked vaguely like a Les Paul.
Not sure if Maestro were part of Gibson at that time....maybe
it was before they were taken over.
I seem to remember it was 12 pounds (cost not weight).
They also made a solid plank version which in retrospect looked vaguely like today's Tele.
At that time, we had seen pics of Buddy Holly and Hank Marvin with Strats, but there were no Fender agents in SA.
In fact Hank Marvin's first red Strat was custom-ordered from the States by Cliff Richard who bought it as a surprise birthday prezzy.
Naturally, in those days we knew nothing about pickups, string height, intonation etc. You bought the guitar and you played it just like that. Tuning was a problem...no tuners, nobody thought about a pitchpipe, if you could find one...
At gigs, everybody tuned to the guy who SAID his guitar was in tune. Pianos were few and far between.
The only time you replaced a string was when it broke, Then you caught the bus into town, bought that one string and got the bus home.
One amp was usually enough for a band, with 2 guitars, bass and a singer coming out of the same speaker...
Must stop now....getting slightly moist...
I remember having a tuning fork in E! you knocked yourself on the head with it and then held it on the guitar body and tuned to the reverberation! The battery never went flat!!!!! ?
ahhhhhh................the good old days....
Bob-Dubery
You had frets AND strings? Luxury.
Etc etc
chris77
A bit of googling and this is what I found. Not too sure about the accuracy (We all know the internet never lies, lol) but it the sources look legit enough.
I tried looking for the new price of a late seventies Aria Pro ii Custom LP copy like I have, but could only find info for a 1977 Ibanez Custom LP copy. These types would have been popular and cheaper alternatives to the more pricey originals back then. (Both are bolt-on btw).
In 1977 a dollar would buy you what $6.66 buys you today. The Ibanez copy retailed for between $300 and $400 in 1977, the original Gibson LP Custom for between $800 and $900. So the Ibanez copy would have cost you around $2330 in today’s money, the Gibby around $5660. So you could have bought a budget copy lookalike back then for what a Gibson Std LP will set you back today, and today you can get a limited edition Gibson Custom Shop jobbie for what you paid new for a Custom in 1977.
I'm sure there were a lot of cheaper guitars back in the day, but even they would be way overpriced by today's standards. Even if you bought a $100 guitar in 1977, that would be over R6000 today. I read in another thread you can get a new PRS SE custom for that, and there is no way in hell that the $100 guitar from 1977 would even be remotely comparable in quality to the SE.
And even the higher end guitars from then were more expensive than their modern equivalents. Here's another example: In 1970 a dollar would buy you what $5.62 would buy you today. A new Fender strat would have cost you about $350 in 1970, the equivalent of $1967 today. A new US strat will cost you $1199. So that's what, about 60% cheaper today?
I reckon never before have players had it even nearly as good in the value for money dept as we do now.
singemonkey
Using the consumer price index $400 in '77 comes to $1,400 today. And were those the retail prices or the MSRP? $100 guitar would be about equivalent to a $370 guitar today.
Anyway, a year later you could buy top-notch set-neck Japanese clones - including Arias. In the '60s people bought Japanese, Czech, Italian, German, etc. guitars which were cool, but not much in the way of manufacturing quality. In the late '70s the Japanese upped the ante considerably by producing top notch guitars at affordable prices. But they were generally not available in "the West."
From the late '90s though, an incredible number of amazing low-priced guitars has become available. The iconic one, still made today, is the Yamaha Pacifica 112. Here was a top notch guitar that cost less than a Squier (which, as has been pointed out, were almost all rubbish).
chris77
Naah, I just googled " how much is today's dollar worth compared to 1977" Very scientific.? Sure to win me a prize as the crappest researcher ever. ? Got an answer of 15c in 1977 is equal to a dollar today. So 1 dollar in 1977 would be the same as $6.66 today, which seemed about right.
The prices would have been selling. They are what people on the strat-talk forum and another one I can't recall now paid for them new back then.
stompie
I'm glad this history won't get lost now ? i can't imagine how hard it was for a person back then to be a guitarist, and i don't even mean a good one, just having a guitar was probably difficult, then not having things like a tuner or tabs or YouTube vids. And i spoke to a guy who started playing back then, he said he had to listen to a l.p. then try and learn by ear, having to lift the needle the whole time.can imagine that's tiresome.
Sneaky-Pete
Things weren't all bad in 1971..
a pack of cigarettes(Camel/Texan/Stuyvesant) was....28cents
a brand new Chrysler Valiant 6 cylinder/automatic was...R3000
Who wants to go back...!???......not me.....!
stompie
How easy was it to get 28c? Haha
Elvin
In response to your original question . the cheap /cheaper guitars of those early years were much closer in quality to the Big names . Like the Shadows guys , think it was Marvin used an Antoria . Especially in the seventies there were great guitars from japan .
The cheap guitars today is sold at Cash Cru and are REAL junk . That's the difference . firewood is what they are . I don't think such junk was made in the early years .
Malkav
Elvin wrote:
I don't think such junk was made in the early years .
I think you're either sadly mistaken or don't have very high expectations with regards to guitars. ?
