01.15.14
The Plutocrat’s Stratocaster (literally)
Fifty seconds in.
Currently, you could buy it with 122 bitcoins.
Bitcoin flack, they all look and sound the same, a special breed from high-button tech WhiteManistan.
Wow. Very rich. Wonderful coin.
Ask George Smith e-mail: webmaster at dick destiny
Fifty seconds in.
Currently, you could buy it with 122 bitcoins.
Bitcoin flack, they all look and sound the same, a special breed from high-button tech WhiteManistan.
Wow. Very rich. Wonderful coin.
Chuck said,
January 18, 2014 at 11:33 am
I’m not an electric guitar person myself, but I do have a nodding acquaintance with string instruments. But those rely on aged, selected woods and hand assembly. A $200 Chinese plywood violin is not something to make music with, nor is a $100 Chinese trumpet.
What is it about this particular instrument that makes it worth $100K? Is it better sonically than any other Stratocaster? Is it the belief that somehow, Johnson still inhabits the guitar? I don’t get it.
Now I do understand that some instruments are far better than others. A top-of-the-line Heckel bassoon goes easily well into the 5-digit price range, but they’re handmade from a limited supply of selected wood. And the sound and intonation appears to justify the price. These are not something that can be constructed using plastic and bits of sheet metal.
But an electric guitar is basically a slab of maple with strings made by a third party. I suspect that pickups and fret placement and tuning machines may matter a lot, but how much separates the “really good” from the top of the line?
Thanks in advance for the education.
George Smith said,
January 19, 2014 at 12:19 pm
For this particular Strat, it’s being levered as an investment by the owner. Johnson isn’t famous enough to command that price. However, he has a reputation for being extremely finicky about getting a perfect sound from his equipment. Perhaps that has something to do with it, too.
Most of the front room in Guitar Center is Chinese manufactured merch. Is there a big difference between a “crafted in China” Squier Telecaster or made-in-China Strat, as compared to the domestically made thing? Electronics are always better in the American made simply because the choice is to use more expensive parts. The body wood will be one piece, not glued together pieces.
It will be dressed and set up better out of the factory. Does it make a significant difference in tone? That’s entirely subjective and picky. I’ve never been impressed by such arguments but I’m not much like the majority of guitarists who are prone to argue incessantly over nonsense subjects and be fetishists with regards to what’s thought of as iconic gear.
Here’s a Chinese telecaster — it’s not made from plywood — on Rich Man’s Burden, which I’ve mounted before. I defy anyone to say that something about a domestically made Tele would be more “twangy” or more legitimate.
My drummer thinks it sounds great. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISDLYvJOWqg
Anyway, most of your sound is in you which means someone who knows what they’re doing and has a decent tune can make even an 80 dollar used cast off, provided it’s not profoundly defective, sound like something great.
The other side of the coin has to do with the plutocracy. Chinese-made instruments instantly lose their value once they’re out the door. “Fender” domestically-made instruments are an “investment.” [Spits.]
I posted the longer piece on the Plutocrat’s Strat to Facebook where it was immediately shared by others who had guitar-playing acquaintances. A couple immediately showed up to argue about Chinese-made instruments and claim that 120 dollars wasn’t too expensive, to which I replied, it is if you’ve suddenly been rendered without a paycheck. Neatly illustrating the dilemma faced by Fender, Guitar Center and anyone in the rock music instrument retail business. Like a lot of WhiteManistanis, they overlook the main issue unless they’ve been personally maimed by it.
How many guitarists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Ten. One to do it and nine others to argue they could do it better.
Tom Paterson said,
January 19, 2014 at 5:28 pm
There’s no need to change it:
a) they tie the old filament together; or
b) you persuade them it’s not cheating to use a capo; or
c) the roadie carries them into another room.
Lightbulbs, soap, toilet paper, tampons, a tube of superglue … these things can be the final straw when you’re on the dole. Do you remember seeing women ‘looters’ with their shopping carts full of diapers?
George Smith said,
January 19, 2014 at 10:28 pm
Heh. Archie, your humor will be over the head of late Googlers. Toilet paper, soap and light bulbs, yeah, My ache with superglue is it’s no good after a few months, best as an instant band-aid when fresh. As Barbara Ehrenreich wrote this week (an old blurb of mine is on the cover of her fiction novel on hackers, now over a decade old), it’s expensive to be poor.
Tom Paterson said,
January 20, 2014 at 4:42 am
I knew I hadn’t imagined it …
http://www.neontommy.com/news/2012/04/la-riots-lapd-commander-day-it-felt-everybody-hated-us
Excerpted:
*He [the cop] noticed that the most popular stolen items were alcohol and diapers. “The biggest thing that was stolen was Pampers. It was one of the first things that would go from any grocery store that got looted, all the Pampers were gone. I always thought that was kind of odd. And liquor of course.???*
Yes, Barbara Ehrenreich had a regular Guardian column once upon a time. I think she gave us the tennis match analogy for the game of life. The rich get large tennis rackets and the poor get given small tennis rackets. Each time you win a game you get given a bigger racket and each time you lose you get a smaller racket for the next game. And so on down the generations.
I have a copy of her book ‘Bright-Sided’ (dedicated to ‘Complainers everywhere’ and published in the UK as ‘Smile Or Die’) on a shelf by the bed. You can bet that for every one copy of her book that was sold they sold a hundred copies of useless self-help flim-flam.
http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/?p=13160
Likewise, Hillel Schwartz wrote an insightful book called ‘Never Satisfied’ which charted the history of the fad diet. Out of print. People don’t want to hear the truth? Who knew that Kafka’s ‘A Hunger Artist’ had a factual basis?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillel_Schwartz_%28historian%29
And speaking of flim-flam this line in a Bitcoin FAQ leapt up off the page and bit me:
*Mining is intentionally designed to be resource-intensive and difficult so that the number of blocks found each day by miners remains steady.*
Now why would that be, do you suppose? Paraphrasing Archie, whose problem is it that Bitcoin solves? [He’s not alone in misspelling ‘Winklevoss’.] Wouldn’t you want the mining process to be elegant, as simple as possible and no simpler?
George Smith said,
January 20, 2014 at 11:18 am
Ha. Maybe I should register americakicksyourass.com and yousuckyouloseyoudie.com No one would visit though because MUST THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS.
Another item that was in the news about a year ago, re stealing in the down economy. Laundry detergent is a popular target of pilfering. Desperate people, not criminals in the usual sense, wish to keep their families in clean clothes, undergarments, sheets, etc.
Over the weekend someone was trying to astroturf a new Junkcoin, z*e*t*a*coin into the comments section. There’s even a ridiculous site, Cryptsy, for mixing and matching all the rapidly emerging garbage so one can keep track.
I think I might mint an alt currency, perhaps named WhiteManiCoin. Other possibilities — WishCoin, CoinCoin, DeathtoTyrantsCoin, PemmiCoin …
Tom Paterson said,
January 20, 2014 at 6:16 pm
Yeah, three strikes and you’re out for stealing soap and toilet paper from the gas station.
Okay, so I’m a layman. I know nothing about economics, computing or the money markets. The fact that someone like me is talking about this should be a warning klaxon in itself.
A commenter on theregister.co.uk once linked to this:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html
To what extent is the Bitcoin ‘City on the Hill’ built upon the rock of the C compiler (and other black boxes)?
Chuck said,
January 21, 2014 at 11:51 am
Thanks, George for the explanation. Basically, better materials, finish and care.
But all of this is just continuing an American tradition of getting product into the most hands and it’s not bad, financial speculation aside. Plenty of really terrible pianos were produced in the latter 19th and early 20th century. Heck, at any given time, I can find someone trying to get rid of one for free on the local Craigslist. But they served a purpose–getting music into the hands of the great unwashed.
Some of the stuff currently offered, however, isn’t worth its value as scrap. For example, an Armstrong 104 flute is a decent student flute, not spectacular, but plentiful and serviceable as such. A Chinese-made flute with pot-metal keys and leaky pads appears to be fit only for hanging on the wall as a crafts project.
(One has to be careful with words here, keeping the fate of Brook-Mays in mind.)
The Fender offshore stuff doesn’t sound suitable for someone who can really tell the difference, but it’s probably suitable for a student learning to play, don’t you think?
George Smith said,
January 21, 2014 at 2:22 pm
Fender’s Chinese-made guitars are fine for students, they’re fine for even very good players, it depends on what you get. And that is reliant on playing it in the store where you can sort an instrument with issues you’d rather not have to fix in increments once you’ve bought it with one you don’t have to fix at all.
Here’s a pic of a Fender knock-off made by another brand, in China. It’s a decent guitar and it had been warehoused at Guitar Center until they dumped them on the market about two years ago. Keep in mind Chinese guitar production is all-brands-under-one-roof, not separate brands made in separate places. The US companies contract with a company like Cort (which was Korean) to make these things. Cort used to make them in Korea but then it sacrificed its domestic labor to China, too, so — in many respects — the relationship is like Foxconn, Apple and Samsung.
http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/?p=7345
Here’s what I said and I think more strongly this way now…
Truly, corporate America has been so very bad for most Americans in the last decade, all brand loyalty should be well and truly dead.
The human thing to do is not even buy Fender-branded guitars made in China, but to get another less famous brand doing the same pieces. In the pic above, it’s a Jay Turser.
In fact, one might encourage Chinese business to simply dispense with their American partners and replace them with new names including the multi-nationals out. If possible.
I’d support that.
Weapons, of course, are mostly all still made here.
Mileage and quality may vary greatly on other Chinese-made instruments and gear. The Fender amplifier pictured in the old post, made in China and (ahem) “designed in the US”, failed inexplicably and was not shop repairable. It had a digital component that would not boot/initialize intermittently on start up making it not shop fixable. Fender gets around this by having a liberal replacement with refurbished gear policy.
I’ve had the same problem with other electronics made by US or Japanese firms in China but not all of them. The companies get around this by offering an immediate replacement on things dead straight out of the bubble-wrap.
It’s not a Chinese problem, it’s a corporate American problem. Literally, US companies have the mentality, earned and ingrained over the decades, that’s totally inimical to any idea of society and a civilized labor contract. They’d commission emperor penguins to make things in Antarctica in return for fish scrap if it were possible.
There was never anything inherently wrong or evil with wanting to get musical instruments into as many hands as possible. However, now they all see the problems their business practices chosen to support that, have created in the long term. Corporate America has beggared, and is beggaring, its middle class and that’s where the sales were to be, not to the few guys in mansions who collect 40 guitars as investments.