PLX
Well-Known Member
Are Expensive Guitars Better?
- Thread starter Session 5
- Start date
DirtySteve
Ambassador of Hold My Beer
CoyotesGator
Ambassador of Reptilian Rum Bar Affairs
Seamus OReally
Well-Known Member
What qualifies as an “expensive guitar?” $1,000? $2,000? Over $500?
My favorite guitar cost about $1,300 to build. Is it better than a $500 guitar? Damn right it is. But is a $3,000 guitar better? I don’t think so.
It’s like restaurants. A steak reaches a kind of perfection, and that’s it. It can’t get any better. If you’re eating that steak at Ruth’s Chris, you’re paying for the attentive service and the live jazz. But I got that same service and a perfect steak for much less at a little locally owned white-linen joint in Nashville.
For me, my Warmoth guitar is perfect. You can’t get a better guitar by spending more money. It seems to me that $1,000-$1,500 is the break point. Guitars get much better as you approach that price, and then you hit the point of diminishing returns.
My favorite guitar cost about $1,300 to build. Is it better than a $500 guitar? Damn right it is. But is a $3,000 guitar better? I don’t think so.
It’s like restaurants. A steak reaches a kind of perfection, and that’s it. It can’t get any better. If you’re eating that steak at Ruth’s Chris, you’re paying for the attentive service and the live jazz. But I got that same service and a perfect steak for much less at a little locally owned white-linen joint in Nashville.
For me, my Warmoth guitar is perfect. You can’t get a better guitar by spending more money. It seems to me that $1,000-$1,500 is the break point. Guitars get much better as you approach that price, and then you hit the point of diminishing returns.
Expensive Guitars is a relative term. While we were literally living paycheck to paycheck early in our life together, 100 bucks would have been unaffordable. As time went on….. as we climbed out of debt. Got loans paid off. Paychecks got better. We had some disposable income. So “expensive” continued to move upward. And yet. Even though I can afford it today…. I still have not spent a grand on a guitar.