Gruhn Guitars update!!!!

[OzziePete]

would you guys rather spend 400 thousand on a indivdual guitar that you would be afraid to use or buy 400 thousand dollars worth of warmoth guitars?????    i would choose the warmoth axes :guitarplayer2:

Neither.

IF I had $400K to spend and not have nightmares about "What have I done...", sure, I'd spend some decent money on musical instruments and the like for pure self indulgence, but NOT to the tune of $300 -400K.

I cannot justify that sort of expenditure on my love of playing guitar, and the ability I have.

And I'd suggest most folks couldn't justify that level of expense either, which maybe why those guitar are still on a shop wall and not in a  vault or secured warehouse.

IF I had the stature and wealth of someone like Keith Richards or Paul McCartney, I'd be more interested in tracking down Eric Clapton's famous Les Paul that went 'missing' during Cream rehearsals (and giving it back to EC), or buying an ES150 that Charlie Christian had played, or a Selmer that Django had played. Now, instruments like that are probably worth $400K + and would be worth the investment.

 

[DiMitriR33]

So I was looking at pickguards on ebay - - they are selling pickguards from the 50's for $1750. This is a sickness. I wonder if anyone back then had any thought that people would be completely insane today. Probably not.

wow that is completely insane, yea let me buy an old shrunken pickguard that won't fit the original holes on the body of another vintage guitar. collectable items are worth more than the sum of the parts, mismatched parts won't total the value of one original, at that price your throwing money away.

 

[Shmoopie]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=T63uQkKMzzA
stuff

 

[stubhead]

they are selling pickguards from the 50's for $1750

I would amend this to say, they are selling pickguards for $1750 that they say are from the 50's - on the internet you can also find perfectly free instructions on how to "age" plastic, relic guitars, lists of "authentic" serial numbers and date codes.... remember back in the 1970's how all the Japanese companies like Tokai, Aria, Ibanez were making perfect replicas of Fenders and Gibsons, then they got sued so they started making their own guitars? And a few years later, what eventually became millions of authentic vintage guitars started popping up? Gee I wonder what happened to all those old gigs and patterns and tooling dies... :icon_biggrin:

I read that at any given time, there are roughly ten times as many '58 and '59 Les Paul Standards for sale as were ever even manufactured - at $250,000 a pop, why wouldn't there be? When Gibson went to make the Slash Custom Shop Signature Les Paul, it turned out to be a copy that sounded better than a Gibson, so they copied the copy....  :hello2: Pick up a copy of "Vintage Guitar" sometime, there are thousands of vintage Strats for sale, an awful lot of grandmas just looked under the bed recently.

I've worked with a couple of antiques dealers, furniture and whatnot, and it's widely accepted that about 90% of the antiques are fake - it's also pretty widely accepted that if some sucker'll buy them, caveat emptor. "Oh yes, I'm the only dealer you can trust, I'm your friend...." :icon_tongue: Go to one of the big vintage guitar shows, start asking to see some guitars, and start writing down the serial numbers - you'll be escorted from the building. Wanna buy a vintage jack plate? The old ones sound better:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Original-50s-Gibson-Les-Paul-Custom-Jr-Jack-Plate_W0QQitemZ110253197383QQihZ001QQcategoryZ85856QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[chuck7]

I love how he tells the guy with the camera "no, really, you can really buy a usable interment for under $2000.00"...
no shit? really?  I mean, here I was thinking all my sub-2000.00 guitar were just door stops, but you mean I can actually put like strings on them and play them without bringing about the rain of dark gods who cry sooty tears as they feast on the bones of the unborn?  Wow, thanks man, I feel a lot better now! 

 

[Tweed]

"or a Selmer that Django had played"
:sad:
Yes, please.

 

[-CB-]

If you think the mortgage market collapsed... just wait....

The HD motorcycle market has collapsed.  Dealers can no longer get 40 percent above MSRP for bikes.  Oh the shame.

And the vintage guitar market is showing signs... that it will soon collapse.  Its definitely weak, compared to what it was even two years ago, and its not the economy.  Its more... of a cultural thing...  The real "collectors" collecting items of unique and rare vintage will still there, and those prices will be maintained.  But the stupid prices of what amounts to a bunch of used guitars is showing that its not sustainable.

 

[stubhead]

It is rapidly becoming "good business practice" for a corporation to default on their pension and insurance plans - as each successive company does it, there's more and more pressure on the others to do so also to "remain competitive", and CEO's can actually be terminated for not doing so. The city & state governments are all busily trying to figure out whether to pay for police & garbage collection today, or pay the retired city workers... there are going to be huge swaths of "mid-level collectables" that won't be worth more than firewood in another decade or so, once oil hits $350 a barrel and bread is $12 a loaf. Party's over.... as it turns out, there might've been a better use for excess money than to fill your garage with Beanie Babies (vintage Fender Mustangs & Epiphones, Kalamazoos & Airlines? :toothy12  There might've even been a better use for excess money than paying a baseball player 10 million dollars a year to shoot dope and bat .200, or paying J. Lo 20 million dollars per "movie" - but they're not giving it back.

 

[MDVermette]

I love how he tells the guy with the camera "no, really, you can really buy a usable interment for under $2000.00"...
no shite? really?

<rant>To brutalize the deceased equine a bit more, I think it's actually the Golden Age of cheap guitars. If you don't turn up your nose at asian guitars, there are some amazing instruments out there. The PRS SE line includes some laughably great instruments in the $500 range. Fender's USA made Highway 1 series are a bit more, but seem to me to be only a trip to the buffer wheel away from the American Standards. A couple of weeks ago I played an amazing all-maple Ibanez Jazz box with deluxe appointments that was about $750.00. Then there are decent Schecters and ESPs and Eastwoods and a whole bunch of others in the $400 - $800 range that would absolutely destroy the tone of some of the 70's-era major brand cardboard-tone boat anchors that I've played. When I see '76 laminate-body LPs going for $3500-$4000, it blows my mind. Most of those guitars were terrible when they were new, and time is unlikely to have been kind to them. On the whole, neither Fender nor Gibson really gave a crap about the quality of their instruments in the mid to late 70s. Old != good, and cheap != bad.</rant>

 

[jinithith2]

I love how right at the beginning he takes down that old Gibson prototype and then put it on the floor and leans the neck on a chair. I guess he knows what he's doing though...

Lol I can't even make myself do that to my friends Epi Special II!

 

[Chris of Arabia]

Lol I can't even make myself do that to my friends Epi Special II!

Oh I could. Trouble is, it would be just too tempting to put my foot through it round about the neck joint. I should here make it clear. I'm not a big Epi fan, nothing personal you understand...  :toothy11:

 

[dbw]

Pfft, that won't hurt the guitar.