Lots of people know they're good stuff, lots of people say they'll snag them when they see a great deal coming up. However, how many of us actually bite the bullet and hit the pay button? Not much...
It seems people are still not over the "Chinese products are shite!" propaganda. Yes, there is a difference in buying an American or Japanese-made product compared to Chinese-made products. First thing first, the price is different. We pay for different material costs, labour costs and R&D costs. Knockoffs may come off as the near-perfect clone of something that's usually expensive, but they also pay way less to R&D for starters. And from a company's point of view, that's a threat to their business. From a guitarist's point of view though, it boils down to either you pick value-for-money, or do you support the real deals.
Go to a shop, take an original Les Paul or Strat of your own choice, play it hard. Then, take the cheapest Indonesian or Chinese knockoff that you can find off the wall or rack, play it hard. Compare and let yourself be clear with what are the obvious differences that makes you feel that this guitar is cheaper. Then take a more decent, reasonably-priced knockoff, like Tanglewood or Cort, play it hard. Come on, really. Be honest with yourself and answer this, are the differences really worth that few thousand coins?
The thing with musical instruments is that, if you start off looking at very very low-priced instruments, lets say you can push your budget just a tiny bit more, the quality is worlds apart. But once you get into the higher range or high-end instruments, the differences are only so small, sometimes even negligible. In simple words, the improvement that you experience going from a 50 quid guitar to a 200 quid one is huge. Going from a 400 quid one to a 1000 quid one, the improvement is still reasonably large. How bout a 1000 quid one and 2000 quid one? You are already paying for a very high quality piece at 1000 quid. To further improve on that quality point is possible, no matter how much more you pay, lets face it you won't go far from the 1000 quid piece.
The rare and highly-revered Klon Centaur, which is based on a Tube Screamer and claimed to be an improvement, fetches upwards of £500 for the silver one (quoting Total Guitar). A TS808 Tube Screamer today is priced at almost 1/10 that price. Electro Harmonix created the even cheaper Soul Food pedal as their Klon clone (note how when it's made by a famous company, it's labelled a knockoff anymore?). Joyo, Biyang, Mooer and the likes make Tube Screamer copies, at half the price of the EHX. Are you feeling your GAS yet? Or even better, are you feeling your wallet's sigh of relief and surge of panic at the same time?
You can get down to the details, like how boutique pedals have that little bit more transparency or voodoo, or how a Gibson has that little bit more cojones than an Epiphone Tribute (the ones with Gibson pickups) But you can never argue with economy. It wouldn't make much sense to pay one or two extra grand for that 5% improvement that may or may not matter to you at all. Unless you think brand is important, or supporting an original brand, or that you just want to play it safe and hopefully by buying originals, you can avoid getting substandard products. The choice is yours, whether the price difference is justified or not.
It is however, unfair in my opinion, for companies to charge customers a premium on some old techs that hasn't been improved or required much R&D since half a century ago. I mean, take a look at fuzz pedals. The new Fuzz Face Minis, are basically Fuzz Faces shrunk to a proper pedalboard-friendly size. I have attempted to build this pedal, and I was successful in doing it. In the process, I have learnt that the material cost was not even close to half of the selling price, it's also a pretty easy job with very less components. So why are they selling for half a thousand ringgit or even more here in Malaysia? I mean, dude, Jim, those pedals are way older than me. They've been around since the 60's. And today, they still make that same basic sound. I get it, Jimi's FF has some different component values and germanium transistors, all that stuff, but how much R&D cost did you guy really need to re-make for the N-th time, a pedal that has been around before my parents were even born? Really? There's the schematic in your lab that's 50 years old, and you're still using that same old schematic because it's pretty damn good. I have nothing but respect for that pedal and the company, but come on, you're way past that breakeven point, it's time to cut your price now.
This post is turning out to be a long rant... Anyway, any Malaysians interested in buying cheap handwired Fuzz Face/Big Muff type fuzzes, I do make them. Just drop a comment here and I'll respond as soon as I see your comments.
For those of you out there who took an interest in reading my blog, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your interest means more than anything I can ever afford for myself. I've just started this blog as a platform for discussing guitar-topics from my own POV, and in the near future I'll start doing some reviews or shootouts for products that I have come across or owned, and maybe share some of my personal guitar-related projects as well. I'll try my best to update this blog at least once or twice a week, depending on my daily routine. Once again, thank you for dropping by, and have a nice day! (or midnight, in my case...)
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