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from the while-my-guitar-gently-weeps dept.
Each holiday season, thousands of teenagers tear gift wrap off shiny, new guitars. They giddily pluck at the detuned strings, thinking how cool they'll be once they're rock stars—even if almost all will give up before they ever get to jam out to "Sweet Child o' Mine."
For them, it's no big deal to relegate the guitar to the back of the closet forever in favor of the Playstation controller. But it is a big deal for Fender Musical Instruments Corp., the 70-year-old maker of rock 'n' roll's most iconic electric guitars. Every quitter hurts.
[...]The $6 billion U.S. retail market for musical instruments has been stagnant for five years, according to data compiled by research firm IBISWorld, and would-be guitar buyers have more to distract them than ever. So how do you convince someone to put down the iPhone, pick up a Stratocaster, and keep playing?
Seems Fender didn't get the memo: the music of the future is hip-hop and autotuners.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday November 23 2016, @02:47PM
Every quitter hurts.
They already bought the guitar...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Wednesday November 23 2016, @03:01PM
Which swells the used market which shrinks the market for new guitars.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by rcamera on Wednesday November 23 2016, @03:10PM
which is great for people with a serious case of GAS (guitar acquisition syndrome) that are willing to buy second-hand. unfortunately, most people over-value their entry-level instruments when they sell. i was lucky enough to get an "daisy rock" bass for my kid for about $25, which sounded (and looked) fantastic after a little cleanup.
/* no comment */
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Wednesday November 23 2016, @08:28PM
Yeah, the budget stuff works pretty well, as long as you swap out the tuners and bridge, so it stays in tune, and the pickups so it will sound OK.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday November 23 2016, @10:24PM
A cheap guitar with crappy action is, IMO, the best guitar to start on. If you can get good enough you can sound OK on a piece of shit, you'll sound fantastic on a quality instrument.
Prices of guitars have plummeted since I got my first one in 1965, a cheap Japanese electric. At the time, a Strat was two grand, and that was when a candy bar was a nickle and a gallon of gas was 20¢. Now they're more like $200, although some folks tell me the 1960s versions sound and play better (I don't know first hand). I bought a brand new Epiphone bass about ten years ago for $80 (it was on closeout at the record store my daughter worked at).
Those companies ripped you off big time for electronics back then. A fuzzbox in any music store was $200, I made my own out of broken transistor radios and 50¢ worth of parts. I was pretty popular among other guitarists my age!
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday November 29 2016, @12:33AM
Yeah, they probably sound like crap *because* they're cheaper. You can still get a good Stratocaster -- and it'll still cost around two grand. But they have many, many models and they're willing to slap that name on lower quality parts these days. So if you want the Stratocaster design manufactured from crap wood in Chinese factories, you can get it for $300. Otherwise they're still around two grand, although with inflation that still makes them a hell of a lot cheaper I guess.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @04:14PM
A guy with a serious guitar hobby, like a golfer or a bicyclist, tends to buy thousands of dollars of equipment of their lifetime.
A quitter will take that $150 guitar and sell it, then turn to video games.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Wednesday November 23 2016, @04:48PM
Yup. I knew when I was 17 that I was no John Entwhistle or Jack Cassidy, but I still play my old Gibson EB-3 and other basses in impromptu settings. Over the years I added a Fender, a Rick, and god only knows how many amps, mixers, and pedal gadgets.