The black hole?

[haydukej]

As I was trying to get to sleep last night, my brain wanted to get philosophical, and I began thinking of the supply/demand of guitars manufactured. I'm sure I'm not the first to ponder this thought, especially given the company around here, however:

I've heard reports of the Gibson factory cranking out 2,500 guitars per week. For arguments sake, let's assume the Fender Corona, CA factory is the same. Then let's add another 3,000 per week for the Fender MIMs. For these three sources, that totals 8,000 brand new guitars per week or 416,000 per year. Adding the other players; Ibanez, PRS, Gretsch (I know it's part of Fender), Deans, etc. it's probably safe to say at least 500,000 new guitars are being made each and every year.

Reaching the climax of this point, I find it baffling that there's a demand to make this output feasible. It's not as if guitarist rush out each year to get a new model, guitar model that is. And while I can imagine at some point in everyone's lives there's a little desire to be the next Django, only a small fraction pursue it by purchasing a guitar.

So the question is, where are all the old guitars (either discarded, abused, unsold) ending up? It's not as if there's a giant smelter to make them all into next years models.

[newey]

You're probably low in your estimate of the totals. Let's assume that 1 million new guitars are made each year from all sources.

Bear in mind that there are 7 billion people in the world. If total guitar production is 1 million units per year, that production is absorbed if only 1 person in 7000 buys a new guitar each year.

And that's now. If we look at vintage production, numbers were much lower. In the '50s, Fender probably made just a few thousand guitars per year. Not that many old ones have to disappear for new ones to be needed.

[lunaalta]

Although I agree with you, newey, haven't there been sales booms, maybe in the 70s or 80s? I would think production capabilities were quite high then, too.

I don't know, I'm just asking...... that's an interesting question, from haydukej 

[newey]

Yes, there have been sales booms. Without knowing the numbers, my guess would be higher numbers now than at any time previously. But again, just a guess.

It is an interesting question. There are several ways to look at it. We could (at least theoretically, naturally we don't have any real numbers)calculate how many guitars each year become unplayable- neck too warped to fix, busted by roadie, etc. Then subtract that number from the new production to get the excess of new production over losses. That then gives one the actual number of the increase in guitars each year.

To absorb that number, we'd have to figure the number of guitarists who bought multiples (call them the "collector group") and add in the number who take up the guitar each year, then add in the "replacers", those who bought a new guitar after an old one was destroyed.

[ux4484]

...and yet... I cannot find another Aria Diamonds 335 bass single pup Mother of Pearl headstock/pickguard/pickup/inlays anywhere on the planet... Not even a picture online or in old Aria brochures...

[newey]

...and yet... I cannot find another Aria Diamonds 335 bass single pup Mother of Pearl headstock/pickguard/pickup/inlays anywhere on the planet... Not even a picture online or in old Aria brochures...

Are you sure it's all stock? If so, try posting it over at VintAxe. If anyone knows about it, Steve will, he probably has the catalog page as well.

Not to derail the topic or anything . . .

More on lunaalta's point about sales booms- I tried the Google, and was amazed that I couldn't find any manufacturing data for guitars. You would think that someone would have posted numbers at some point.

But I did find sales data at www.musictrades.com/census.html. This is for the US only, and it is not clear from the synopsis if it includes only new sales, or whether it also includes used as well. But they claim, for 2012, that 2,489,390 guitars were sold in the US alone in 2012.  Slightly more than half were acoustics.  The average unit price was $410.  Total sales were just a bit above 1 billion USD.  The numbers were down .9% from 2011, which seems to be a high point.

Of course, Music Trades will be happy to let you have a .pdf copy of the entire report for $35.

I assume that these figures include anything that can be classified in some way as a "guitar", i.e., bass guitars, synth guitars would be included.

The numbers for acoustics are interesting.  Consider that sales of electrics are pretty much exclusively to males, whereas acoustic sales are split more evenly between the sexes.  Given that, ratio of electrics to acoustics seems surprisingly high.

Back to Haydukel's original point, I conclude that there is indeed a black hole for guitars.  And, it's located in people's collective attics.  There simply aren't that many players out there, and most own only one or two guitars.  So, we're left with a majority of sales going to people who bought a guitar, played it briefly, then shoved it in an attic after losing interest.  Mostly, these would be gifts to kids, I assume.

An interesting statistic, probably unknowable, would be the percentage of people who take up guitar who are still playing 1 year or more later.  I'm guessing a miniscule fraction.

[gumbo]

What the OP doesn't take into account (not to derail this post like some other people)...is that most guitarists have far more instruments than they will ever admit to..all salted away somewhere safe where the divorce lawyers can't find them..

HTH

[ijustwannastrat]

Aug 21, 2013 9:35:26 GMT -5 gumbo said:

...somewhere safe where the divorce lawyers can't find them...

I think we could avoid the foul language on the board. If you MUST use such language, let's use the child friendly "L-word."

[lunaalta]