Arjun Menon wrote
I can't comment on either Fender or Gibson, but it pisses me off that Ibanez aftermarket parts are very difficult to get a hold of >☹
This is part of the price that you pay or don't pay.
Some years ago I worked for a company that was the SA agent for several Japanese brands. They started losing out to grey market products. However the people who thought they saving money on the grey market product, and thought it just went to show what a greedy bunch of money-grabbing so-and-sos Corporation X were, ran into a problem. Their goods would fail, they'd take it back to the place that they bought it and were told "no spares, no workshops, sorry."
Corporation X were under fire because, people said, their costs were too high. But they had to invest money in building up a stock of spare parts. And the Japanese companies were insistent - if you buy so many of these items for sale, then you WILL have these spares in these quantities. We even got told what kind of solder we could use (had to have a certain percentage of silver) and we had to have multi-meters that could read down to 0,1 milliamp (IIRC) which in those days meant buying very expensive Fluke meters. The grey-market importers didn't have to provide this kind of backup and didn't have to bear the costs associated so they could sell for cheaper. But they couldn't provide backup for their customers.
You can buy cheap cars - but you may not have spares or may have to wait for them and pay a high price. Merc are expensive cars to buy, but part of the reason is the spares that they keep. That's money sitting on their shelves, and they have to recover it somehow. But you can get parts, in SA, for pretty old mercs. You go in say you need the passenger side doohickey for a 1973 230 Supadupa and you'll get it. I drive a Hyundai. There was a problem with one of the ECU chips. They had to get one in from Korea, and, in case you were about to ask, they weren't going to pay for it to be couriered either so I had to wait until they bought their next container load of spares in from Korea by boat.
Service costs money. Sometimes we think we're saving, but all that's happened is that corner has been cut elsewhere.
The flip side of this coin is that if you do pay good money for an item that should imply good backup. I am terminally pissed off with Morgan who do make very fine guitars, and sell them at an approprite price and then seem to wash their hands of their product. I have been trying to get a set of genuine Morgan machine heads out of them. Yes, I know they're really Gotohs, but they are Morgan branded and I want to preserve the authenticity of the instrument. Forget it - they're not interested. I've tried. Hughs Fine Guitars and Andy McGibbons tried on my behalf. A big guitar shop in the UK tried. I went to the company in London that used to distribute Morgan guitars in Europe and was told that they had let the franchise go because of Morgan's attitude. So I love the guitar, but I am peed off with the company that made it.
