Cheaper electric guitars, while still look great, are more prone to have blemishes and imperfections. Many companies, like PRS, will reserve the best-looking woods for their premium guitars and the leave woods with imperfects to be used on the cheaper guitars.
This is meant to replicate the look of a maple top while keeping the price down. With all that said and done, do the differences in features between cheap and expensive electric guitars actually justify such dramatic price differences?
Well, the answer is a resounding, no. You could take a cheap guitar and upgrade it to have all of the specifications of an expensive guitar and it would still only cost a fraction of the price. The main factors that make a guitar expensive are branding, cost of labor to produce and the quality of materials. One major reason guitar manufacturers are able to charge so much for their guitars is simply due to brand reputation.
Think about it. Heck, even my grandmother would recognize a Gibson Les Paul. This makes them more desirable. In addition, these larger brands also work directly with famous artists, often creating signature guitars that are custom for them. Due to the influence and popularity have, it allows them to increase the price even more.
Guitar companies even sell full lines of signature series guitars to people can play the same instruments as their favorite musicians. Signature series guitars can cost hundreds or, in some cases, thousands more than a regular production line guitar. The largest contributing factor to why guitars are so expensive is the cost of labor. The higher end expensive guitars are usually made in America, where the cost of labor is extremely high.
As a result, companies will naturally need to raise the price of the guitars in order to make a profit. Does this higher cost of labor always mean that the quality is superior?
Not necessarily. For the lower end guitars, companies have the production done overseas in countries like China, Indonesia, and South Korea. Since the cost of labor in these countries is significantly lower than that of the United States, it allows them to mass produce these guitars in large quantities at a fraction of the price.
As a result, they can charge much less to the end consumer. Now again, does cheaper labor result in an inferior product? Not necessarily, but when you also factor in that there inconsistent quality control across large quantity of guitars, it can make a difference.
Another reason why guitars can get so expensive is simply due to the quality of materials used to create it including the wood, hardware, and electronics. Ibanez is based out of Japan and is also quite famous for their craftsmanship. Like Japanese fountain pens, these guitars are typically made with careful attention to detail. The more affordable, entry-level models are farmed out to their factory in Indonesia.
The Gio is not nearly as comfortable or pristine as the topshelf JS, but it played in tune and sounded decent! Jackson guitars are another company owned by Fender. As with Ibanez, they have factories in China and Indonesia. I had a student a few years ago that had a Jackson electric and the thing was absolute garbage. It would not tune, the frets were not filed properly, and the bridge was questionable at best.
It could be decent, it could be terrible. Your experience with different brands are likely to be different than my own. Consider one of the main reasons for the cheaper labor at some of these places: Quality Control — or lack thereof.
The quality of the ingredients makes an enormous difference. All of the craftsmanship in the world is not likely to make a guitar made of Oriented Strand Board or Plywood sound better than the same model made out of choice Alder, Basswood, or Birdseye Maple. Woods for the neck and body are not the only things that differentiate low-end and high-end guitars.
Hardware is another consideration and there are many pieces of hardware on an electric to consider. Tuners are not an expensive item, but when you are talking about a guitar that is mass produced by the thousands, some low-end guitars will skimp here. Cheaper tuners will be difficult to turn, stick or get gummed up, or just simply fail under string tension and not hold. Another pivotal component is the bridge.
Higher quality bridges will use more carefully machined parts that allow the strings to remain secure to the body of the guitar, and also allow for the natural movement of the strings due to use or changes in atmosphere. Cheaper bridges will have sharper saddles the place where the string actually sits that can cause strings to break more often than normal. Cheap bridges are also more difficult to adjust which can affect the overall tuning of the guitar.
These are even more finicky than your normal tremolo bridge. If you are looking at lower-end guitars that have a floating tremolo system, it is recommended you do as much research as you can on the type of bridge on the guitar.
Ever since the invention of the Floyd Rose, there have been a lot of copies — some great, some terrible. If it is a new design or an early production guitar, tread with caution. It could be said to be even more diligent in your research with the more expensive guitars that have these types of bridges. Case in point: The Ibanez RG Not an expensive guitar, but not exactly entry level either. I can not get this thing to stay in tune if I so much as bend a note. Upon further research, I discovered that most people swap out the bridge or block it, hindering its movement.
On the other hand, some of these guitars come equipped with an Edge Pro tremolo which is much better. Another example is the JS — a guitar that I own. That model actually reverted back to an older bridge system that has been found to be superior to the newer bridges that were used in the earlier JS models. So in regards to the bridge, the more expensive guitars are almost always going to be superior, but can be still be a coin flip with certain systems.
The best way to research this on your own is to ask a local repair tech or luthier about the guitar in question. Higher quality pickups in more expensive guitars are generally going to have a superior sound.
Let me give you a basic rundown of the most common types of pickups you will find in an electric guitar. The production of a high quality pickup is an art form in itself. A typical pickup has a very thin copper wire that is wound over magnetic pole pieces several thousand times. The number of windings is directly related to the output of the pickup. The quality of the pole pieces, bobbin, lead wire, and the winding job all play a part in the sound of the pickup. Single coil pickups will just have one coil of copper wire wrapped around a single set of pole pieces.
Cheaper pickups might sound weak, have a buzz caused by improper wiring or a grounding issue. There may be unwanted distortion or breakup, or not enough. Crackling or popping, uneven volume levels across the strings — all of these issues can arise in a cheap pickup that was just slapped together. Another feature of a pickup might be that it is potted or coated with wax or lacquer. This helps to protect the pickup from moisture and corrosion, a problem that can lead to significant sound issues in cheaper pickups.
A guitar is an extremely precise instrument, very small flaws can make a big difference in playability and quality of sound. Getting these small details requires time and attention, which in turn requires a significantly higher amount of time and makes the price of the instrument go up.
While, generally speaking, there are fabulous guitars that are made outside of North America, many do not receive the care or time that American made guitars receive, resulting in lower quality and prices.
Lastly, age can be an important factor when considering price. Often times, a new guitar can be more expensive than a four or five year old version of the same model.
This might be because the guitar is really only gently used, but nothing is that special about its age. It is when the guitar approaches the twenty year old and up aging that the prices of the guitars can surpass the new prices of the same build.
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