The one thing guitar manufactures do not make anymore

[@24avenged24]

Companies making their own parts is something I miss. The bridge(s) and pickups on the Peavey T series basses are a huge part of why I love mine. Even the knobs are unique (metal with the peavey "P" on top).

[@xxxxneoxxxx]

My mind was blown when I found out the P.W. kluson style tuners Gibson uses were manufactured in Taiwan... They say that some Gibson and Fender pickups are sometimes ghost manufactured in some Asian factories...

[@RF-lz9cd]

Fender has a machine shop that’s shared between the standard line and custom shop which make pretty much everything except screws.

[@bluglass7819]

I’m a hobby builder. I’m working up to building all my own hardware including because I have ideas that I can’t believe companies aren’t already doing.

[@geraldfichtner]

True true But our Dollar does not have the value it once did, I'm 61 and a Candy bar is $ 1.80 in "a big Store" when I was a kid in the early 1970's that same $1.80 I could go to the Corner Deli and get two large Bulkie Buns 1/4 lb fresh sliced cheese,1/4lb sliced Ham a small jar of yellow mustard a free wooden spoon from the ice cream freezer two daily local newspapers a 20 ounce soda and some form of sweet treat for $1.80 ! just saying

[@DeWittPotts]

I grew up in the 60's and 70's. I probably started playing guitar in the late 60's. Back then the budget guitars were mail order brands that came from a catalog like Sear's, Montgomery Wards, or JC Penney. They had brand names like Harmony, Kay, Silvertone etc. They were mostly made from cheap woods and some were made from materials like Masonite. The pickups were cheap imitations of single coils, P90's and Humbuckers. The quality of construction varied widely. The guitars had a tendency to feed back because of poor pickups and unshielded electronics. the budget amps of the day were usually cheap solid state units with the exception being the Silvertone which is actually a collector item today.

[@samizdat113]

I started playing in 86 and $150 didn't get you much of a guitar. You could also fill a grocery buggy slap fricken full for $200. Gas was about 70 cents per gallon. This is truly the golden era of budget guitars.

[@johnl.6012]

When I think of a budget guitar I remember the Keith Urban guitar comercials on TV late at night. Where he is selling his branded guitar for 169.99. With that being said, my first guitar was a Jasmine Takamine for 199.99, still have today, it actually sounds good for a budget guitar....

[@pkdude5334]

those were great acoustics, punched way above their price. Washburn had some great entry level acoustics at that time as well

[@Jerry_Fried]

My first bass was a Kent bass, which I got in 1966. It was pretty horrible, but I didn’t know that at time. It was simply my bass which I played in my first band. Eventually, I switched to a short-scale Hagstrom that belonged to our drummer. It was a pleasure to play. In addition to the bass, Harry also had the Hagstrom advertising poster of Frank Zappa sitting on the toilet. Unfortunately, Harry died while still in high school. Recently, after fifty-five years, I reconnected with Harry’s older brother. Bert still has that Hagstrom bass and he plays it in his band.

[@craiglinderman5249]

I had one as well...l.p.style

[@djlehara]

awesome story

[@bluglass7819]

My first was a Kent Guitar with a matching amp. It was pretty terrible.

[@geraldscott4302]

I bought a budget guitar 25 years ago. It was a Kramer Focus 111S (Strat copy) from an online place called Music Yo. I was amazed at just how good it was for the price. I still have it. I've made a few changes, just personal preference, but after replacing the strings and tuning it, it played amazingly well right out of the box. And it was much more substantial than the Squier Bullet Strat I bought a year ago. Thicker and heavier body. That new Squier was unplayable when I received it. The fret ends stuck out so far that the strings would get hung up under them, plus they would cut your fingers. I had to have a local independent music store dress the frets. The Kramer had perfect frets.

[@danielduplantier3741]

Great answer Phillip. Engaging.

[@sd3falco]

My first bass back in the 1970's was a "Kimberly" which my dad purchased at a local department store. It was a big step up to finally get a Fender Mustang bass a few years later. Kids have much more choices these days for entry level guitars.

[@The.Adam.D]

In 1998, I got my first guitar. It was a Lyon by Washburn Strat copy. Was fantastic.

[@martinclayton7260]

I bought my Ibanez RG550 secondhand in 1991, it's a late 80's one, and I paid £250 for it. I still have it, but the only original parts on it are the body, machine heads, scratchplate, and back cover, and neck plate. Everything else has been replaced. It originally had a maple fingerboard, it had a new neck about 17 years ago, and it's got a rosewood fingerboard now. Great guitar.

[@Lowtech14]

In ‘03 I bought my 1st guitar, a Squier Std Strat, for $220. My buddy, a pro, said $400 is min for a decent beginner guitar, but was shocked at how well that Squier sounded and played, and changed his mind.

[@rebeccaabraham8652]

Go back almost 50 years... and if you bothered to be discerning and paid attention - you could still get an exceptional guitar at a budget price! I paid GBP105 for a Sakai strat (3 way switch) - turns out it was probably one of the best they ever made - and I was playing it this morning; still sounds like a fine instrument! Allowing for inflation... it would be around a GBP800 instrument nowdays - but back then it was about a quarter of the cost of a decent Fender strat.

[@23whatsleft]

my fist guitar and set of drums was "norma" mail order from aldens in chicago, 60609. actually used those drums in some gigs till got a set of blue swirl ludwig.

[@mattj6676]

The major sources of cost in making something like a guitar are labor, raw materials, and control of the retail chain. Technology has made it that you don't have to be a master luthier to carve a perfect body and neck parts. Materials still matter but are easier to source as well as the needed parts, and modern finishes are much faster and cheaper. Finally companies like Amazon and other online retailers make it almost impossible to have huge markups anymore and stay competitive. Some cheap guitars today are truly better in many ways than the expensive ones were 25 years ago, and with places like Amazon you can upgrade any parts you want easily.

[@nellayema2455]

I wonder who actually makes the Epiphone Kluson style tuners and their Epi branded Lock-Tone bridges and tailpieces? Also, the Epi branded lightning bar wraparound bridge that's found it's way onto other brand guitars?

[@kosmonument2682]

I bought my first bass in 1998 or so, a Yamaha RBX P-style. They're still basically putting out the same guitar today at almost no difference in price, if you adjust for inflation. It was really good. Sometimes I miss it.

[@jimross9429]

I clearly remember how miserable budget guitars were when I first started playing back in the 60’s and beyond. Fast forward to today and the “budget” guitar is a really good guitar. I picked up a PRS Paul’s guitar SE recently and am just amazed what a great guitar it is.

[@prtauvers]

My first guitar 40 years ago was a dumpster find Hondo Strat…it worked but like hell to play.

[@Journey-of-1000-Miles]

My first guitar had such terrible string height, that you could slip a deck of cards behind the 12th fret. Also, there was no truss Rod.

[@daveduffy2823]

It’s amazing the wide gap in employee and location costs between the US and elsewhere. No wonder manufacturing is pretty much dead here.

[@gringogreen4719]

True. Most budget guitars were barely playable back in the early 1990s. That said some budget brands from the 1980s like Tokai and Squier made actually pretty good guitars. I have a 1989 Squier Stratocaster II made in Korea and the body (fortunately mine is a solid body and not a plywood body) and neck are really good. The stock pickups were cheap but ok and the tuners were "meh" (mine has Grover Minis that were already on when I bought it). So you COULD find a decent Import guitar but most were barely playable as a whole. That's why you don't really see too many of those today. Peavey guitars like T-60s and T-40s were well made and great buys (but heavy) for under $100 from pawn shops back in the 1990s and early 2000s. Today those same guitars go for $1000 and up if they are in great shape.

[@1969Donovan]

I remember in the 80s I bought an acoustic guitar and went to tune it up and the neck broke off the body.

[@gelidsoul]

Same thing happened to a little $50 12-string I bought in the 90s.

[@Slktrx]

1980 Hartley Peavey changed the world with CNC

[@richiebricker]

They dont make em out of cheap plywood anymore

[@greendayray]

Fender still stamps their own bridges, neck plates, and jack plates don’t they? And what about the fender stamped tuning keys?

[@justmehere6094]

I think you far undervalue how much CNC technology helped. Yea, cheap guitars of old had crap hardware. But in many ways they still do, with Chinese pot metal hardware. But, back in the day, cheap guitars all too often had bad necks, no chnce at anything but a super high action because of ill fit, or glued necks to bad body neck pockets, cheap 'plywood' bodies etc. Having workers work fast, and manually like that made for a wide variance. CNC machines got rid of that aspect. Faster and uniform in quality (for the most part), made for at the minimum a good mod platform.

[@PNWJEEPER01]

Phillip- What do you think of Gibson coming out with the $1699 LP Jr. double cut through the Demo Shop? Wasn’t it just the other day that you made a video explaining why it doesn’t make sense for them to do that; and do you think they were flipping you the bird?

[@albertcoburn5674]

I had a Heit Delux that proved awful when I picked up my Telecaster.

[@Steve_Tracey]

Does MannMade make all the PRS bridges or do they just pay licensing to PRS to sell aftermarket stuff?

[@bobbydill6388]

Early PRS guitars had John Mann bridges. That changed sometime in the early '90s. My 1990 still has one. Easy to tell, just look to see if it has a one piece bridge and trem block.

[@chuckthetrucker]

1976 Electra strat copy...JUNK!!

[@Jon-ty6bb]

Many late seventies Fender and Gibsons weren’t that good either. By the very early eighties Electra/Westone, Tokia and Squier were all making quality budget guitars.

[@mazukakai]

In 1999 you could buy a Les Paul Studio for 600 bucks. THAT'S the difference.

[@WillyWP]

I dunno, a friend bought an Epiphone Les Paul with a bolt on neck about 12 years ago which was the worst guitar I've ever played.

[@tiki_trash]

The 1970s had the worst budget guitars. We're living in the golden age now.

[@SempaiXDX]

Budget guitars was moree budget then

[@Mytwocentsisallicanafford]

You'll don't know about budget guitars in the 50s and 60s they had some junk it basically looked like a guitar Yamaha actually changed all that

[@DSteinman]

Yeah, you simply can't sell a guitar-shaped-object anymore. The lowest end stuff is so much better now

[@barbmelle3136]

From Leo: If you go back before 1975, you will find how bad budget guitars really were. Teisco, Kent, Norma, and several others were short scale, plywood, usually no truss rod, etc. I still have my 1966 Harmony (made in Taiwan) solid body. I have it just to remind friends that the good old days were not always good. Pretty much nothing on it would fit anything modern, and it was all junk. .

[@84kjk]

Who is Leo. Lol