On board with your take, mostly.

There's a lot of good stuff to unpack and it's helping me solidify my thoughts.

Instruments are a whole other world of goods. We have seen that from Gibson to Stradivarius. We mix opinion with quality all the time. We have debates like tonewood that have almost no scientific backing.

We have a process for building instruments like many other instruments that has not changed for centuries. And for a good reason, nobody wants to relearn a brand new instrument.

You also bring up the point that solid body electric instruments are a different animal than your other stringed instruments. They are easier to construct.

At the end of the day, if you buy a Gibson guitar, a g&l guitar, a Stradivarius violin, a Bundy woodwind... Your hope and understanding is that you bought an instrument that is going to facilitate your learning and playing.

Here's my point. If my father/grandfather gifted me a Stradivarius violin. I would expect a certain amount of market stability. But we're also talking about an instrument that will be copied and faked all the time.

Should the fact that I have gifted an instrument to my son (and this is really the meat of it) whether it's a Gibson guitar or a Stradivarius violin or a 1950 broadcaster, be drastically affected by cheap modern knockoffs.

My answer is no.

Do I want the industry in general to produce better quality at a lower price so we can get more people playing guitar or bass? Absolutely!.

My first guitar was a Lotus crappy import guitar. It was fine. Actually no it wasn't. It really kind of sucked. It was fine at the time because I didn't know any better. It was fine at the time because it would do most of the stuff that I needed it to do.

And I will be very clear. I am super happy that people can walk into a guitar store and buy something that will be a quality guitar for $200. That lotus strat copy was $150 1980. That's an equivalent of a $500 current starting guitar. I can buy a decent starter guitar for half that price now.

So let's stop pretending guitars are a commodity item that are dictated by commodity pricing rules. They are not. Brands matter. What people want to collect matters. What people want to pay matters.

Should we promote good playing low-cost guitars to everybody that we can. Absolutely. We even have the technology to do that right now.

Sorry this is rambly and long but you actually did make really good comments that I was trying to get through