STR- I like Martin, myself. Big Fender guy too. Esteve for classicals. Japan is very close to American when it comes to guitars. I'm not talking about cheaper models made in Japan like Japanese Fenders. I mean Japanese brands. Ibanez and ESP are as good as any American brand in terms of quality, and Yamaha makes some great stuff, too. I have a Takemine and a Yamaha acoustic guitar, and they are on par with each other. Of course, which guitar is better is very subjective, but if you compare the fret-work on an ESP to the fretwork on any American guitar, well, you might see why you have had good luck with Japanese guitars. American and Japan both make great guitars.
I understand having more of a fondness for American knives. That's not really what I am talking about. I, too, have a preference for anything made in America. But that is different than buying American crap for 80 bucks when you could have got Japanese gold for 60 but didn't because it was foreign. If two knives are about equal in price and quality, then using country as the deciding factor is understandable. If you own two knives that are about equal and feel you must sell one, keeping the American one because it is American is understandable.
Rocinante said:
I was in my local music store a few days ago.
Almost every guitar was from China.
The owner says the other guitar makers cannot compete.
Workmanship and sound quality are equal to all but a few really high-end guitars.
Soon everything will be made in China, I guess.
People were prejudiced against Japanese products at first, too.
Rant time.
I don't know what store you were in, but it sucks and the owner is an idiot. Your experience is akin to walking to a crappy knife store and seeing nothing but Chinese knives and the owning saying American knives cannot compeat.
Cheap-ass beginner guitars are made in China, Mexico, Taiwan, etc.... They may make up a lot of sales to a lot of beginners, but they are just a laughable fraction of the guitar world.
And worksmanship and tone are not equal but to a few really high-end guitars. A $100 Memphis is a world apart from a $400 Epiphone. And that is a world apart from an $800 Fender Strat.
If anything, the really high-end guitars are more like their mid-price competitors and have less of an improvement in tone. A $4500-dollar PRS isn't really a better guitar than an $800 Fender. They are different, but many people who could afford either pick the Fender. Any good guitar (above 700 bucks or so, depending on the model and brand) will be pretty solid and compeat better with an extremely expensive guitar than to a Chinese piece of junk.
Chinese guitars are a joke and used by no one but pure beginners. They are as similar to professional-level guitars (which range greatly in price and tone) as swap meet knives are to multi-thousand-dollar custom knives.
Chinese guitars have not taken over the guitar world. They are just crappy guitars sold by crappy music stores that import them for next to nothing. Most of these stores only import electric guitars from one company, and sometimes acoustic from another or even the same one. So of course they will all be from the same country.
*VERY* few beginner guitars are made in China. Most are made in Taiwan or Mexico.
China is a few thousand years away from even being a minor player in the guitar world, let alone a major one.
. I really don't know jack squat about whats really going on between the U.S. and China, but I can't afford to buy all U.S. made products. I still only buy U.S./Japanese made knives with a couple of minor exceptions.
