Menu
I'm so sick of the "collectible" mentality. It seams like these days
everybody thinks all the old junk they have is rare and collectible and they're
all
going to build their retirement fund by selling the junk on Ebay. Fender used to
make good gear for good prices. If you wanted a Strat you went to your
friendly neighborhood Fender dealer and bought a Strat. Now do if you want a
Strat
you've got to decide if you want hecho en Mexico, MIJ or Made in America and
not only that to you've got to decide if you can afford the el cheepo Squire or
the better Squire, the '57, the '62, the '72, or the modern Fender branded
Strats or the rare instant vintage custom shop guitars. Why don't they just run
the company the way they did when Leo Fender and Forrest White ran the place
and cut the marketing hype. There are probably alot of players out there who
have put off buying a new Fender because the different price point make it seem
as if you buy anything less than the top of the line you're getting a
substandard guitar.
But to get back to collectible mania. In 1977 my mom & dad bought me my first
electric guitar and amp for $125.00. A 1968 Gibson SG and a 1965 Princeton
Reverb for $125.00. I still have a copy of the cancelled check. Now this guitar
and amp are vintage items (and I still have them both) but back then they were
just old used equipment. Now everything more than two weeks old is rare and
vintage and collectible. People are probably going to start selling their
"vintage" Hondo IIs and Memphis guitars for big bux on Ebay.
I went to the website that was posted on the list a few days ago for the shop
that still had the Danos in stock. I had to laugh at the warning at the top
of the page about them being New Old Stock now that the factory had ceased
production and that the list prices no longer applied. Let's be realitic here
and
call them what they are-New Dead Stock. The factory ceased production for the
same reason any manufacturer ceases production nobody was buying their
product. They are cool guitars but the demand wasn't there for the supply. The
dealers who have stock now have them because they could not sell them for the
low
list price when they were in production. So now because they are out of
production they are better guitars? So now there is more demand for them? I
don't
think so. Except for the few people out there who will pay big money for them to
stick in a closet hoping that in a few years their investment will pay off.
GUITARS ARE NOT INVESTMENTS THEY ARE TOOLS USED TO MAKE MUSIC.
If you want a Dano buy a Jerry Jones reproduction. They've been making Dano
copies for years long before the marketing group that bought the Dano name
decided to cash in on the Dano revival by making some cool guitars, cheap
effects
boxes and ridiculous marketing claims about the company. And let the greedy
dealers who got stuck with guitars nobody wanted to buy find some other way to
make there boat payment. And don't buy gear from pawn shops. Period. They are
blood suckers who pray on the misfortune of our fellow musicians. And I've
never been in a pawwn shop that didn't think that every piece of junk they had
was
rare and worth every penny of the inflated prices they were charging. I went
to a pawn shop a few years back because I saw a cool guitar in the window.
Every day the sun was beating down on this guitar. I went in to take a look, to
see how it played. The guy in the shop flat out told me he was not even going
to take it out of the window unless I bought it! Wouldn't even let me try it
out! Haven't been in a pawn shop since.
I'll get off my soapbox now.
Thanx,
GT
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
