I just purchased a Made In China guitar today and am totally stoked. It represents a niche in my collection and I could not be happier with it. Good stuff!

you would have saved yourself a ton of money had you just got your Johnson JD26 earlier.............:)

China is competing with Canada and the USA really hard in what I think of as low to mid range guitars, these are "most bang for buck" instruments.

There seem to be so many nice guitars right now and it seems competition is fueling a push to make even better guitars in this range.

I don't know if it is worth it for the Chinese to build more expensive guitars for a certain market. I bet they could make guitars to complete marginally at the 1500-2000 level and maybe a little above, but they would have to put a lot into it. They seem to do fine below this range and might actually make more profit than if they moved up. I wonder if we will see the Chinese do what Takamine did and offer more expensive instruments in their top linew

When I had my music store in the 1970's our best seller by far was the Yamaha FG180. They had good sound, they held together and they were affordable. Initially, they were marked Made in Japan.

Sometime in the early 1970's the markings changed to Made in China. I thought that the Chinese-made ones were just a little bit nicer than those that had come from Japan.

I never saw one with a bad neck set and never had one come back for anything serious like a lifting bridge. If you could get past the emotional issue that they were laminated and didn't say C.F. Martin on the neck, you were generally very satisfied.

A lot of people bought those as a first guitar and were very pleased with them. We also sold a few of the FG150's. Children liked those because they were a bit smaller.

What I saw the times I visited Asia is that there are upper range product categories for Asian-made guitars that are mainly intended for their own domestic markets, or for their own and those of neighboring countries. On those trips I saw that they did in fact make these higher quality, higher priced guitars, but weren't bothering (or, at best, only occasionally attempting) to market them in North America.

Just as it doesn't make a lot of economic sense for North American manufacturers to try to compete with the cheapest entry level guitars from Asia, because of built-in cultural resistance at the upper end of our market it doesn't always make a lot of sense for the Asian guitar manufacturers to push hard to sell their more expensive instruments over here.

So, short version: yes, expensive and often exquisite musical instruments do get built over in Asia, but they're mostly sold over there.

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

it's not. without getting into luthier-built or boutique brands, how about these three brands?

martin
gibson
taylor

they certainly come to mind first, and most guitar stores carry at least one or two if not all three of those brands.

For major brands:

higher end Guilds (low end in china)
higher end Martins (low ind in Mexico)
higher end Taylors (ditto?)
Some Larrivees are still being made in Oxnard the rest in Vancouver Canada.
higher end Breedloves (low end in Korea)
Gibsons

And of course there are lots of good folks around here that would happily make you a custom instrument in the US.

God Bless the Chinese
 

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Care to relate your personal experience with an Asian guitar that last "a year or two"? And maybe how that extrapolates to all Asian guitars?

If you mean a player would 'outgrow' them, maybe, but they are serviceable and respectable players. Most won't hold anyone back from any level.

If you mean the gits won't last, I totally disagree.

Did you not hear !... The Chinese have developed a biodegradable glue that after 2-3 years, it starts to self-destruct ensuring a continuous demand for their products. They also treat the wood with a enzyme that slowly eats the wood cells thus ensuring within 10 years your guitar will be sawdust.

And some adults...(me). :D I keep going back to my 150J. I love it.
It's interesting to be able to watch this debate from outside the USA. This is understandably a predominantly USA-based forum. But, I don't feel strange about not buying a Maton or Cole Clark. I'm just not in that price range...fact of life. Am I going to deny myself the best for the money? Well...no, obviously.
But as one person above said, this situation may not last anyway. Make the best of it. I love my Crafter (Korean), too.

My Chinese made Hagstrom Parlor is an awesome bang for buck!

Sue Ye, keep up the good work! :)

It sounds like an Esteban guitar ;)