Buying a at least RS 30,000 classical guitar in Chennai

mickey, there's absolutely no reason for you to fly off the handle and start abusing me like that. at NO point of time did i attack you personally. you've thrown the first punch, i think i'm going to be man/wise enough and leave it at that so this doesn't turn into a flame war.

i am going to go so far as to say that you completely missed my point. at no place did i say that you should only buy indian products - i said that the very, very small community of people dedicated to making quality stuff in india isn't getting enough support from the "scene". whether this is due to absolute blindness to technical aspects, or the fact that the scene is so brand-driven that they don't care about what they're actually buying, i don't know. i do not play stranger and kustom for that very reason - they make low quality products, and we encourage them.

now, if you gave me the choice to buy a laney solid state 100W stack or get an amp from ansar at BE3 amplifiers for 35k - i would go for ansar hands down, because i know what kind of workmanship and attention to detail goes in to a handbuilt amplifier. i would not belittle his asking price to a point of ridicule without researching this beforehand!

who am i endorsing?
nobody. i'm just trying to stuff some food for thought into the indian musician's collective head: we, the people, are ALWAYS complaining about how we don'T get good gear in india - right or wrong? people are moaning about how they want to go all analog but have to play their shitty rolands and digitech RPs and zooms etc. etc. it is NOT true that there is no one in india making good equipment, or building tube amplifiers, or building world-class classical guitars.

but if we're going to go and lowball a builder's asking price, just because he's building it here, you are doing a number of things:

1. you are killing his incentive to provide a quality product available locally at the same price of an inferior imported product marked up like crazy.
2. you are undermining the value of his work
3. you are reducing the quality of the finished product.

what pissed me off about your original post:
you've dismissed 1.25 lakhs as being "too much" for a handmade classical guitar made from premium materials, and that too because "a luthier in banglore is gonna charge 0ne lakh tewnty five thousand for a classical guitar....." i'd like you to answer the following questions honestly:

1. did you visit the website and read the guy's references and the people he has worked with?
2. do you understand what the guitar is? how it is constructed? what kind of knowledge goes into the construction of a guitar? what materials? what tools are necessary?
3. do you know how much you can pay of a guitar of an equal calibre abroad?
4. do you understand how much of a difference it makes in terms of both expense and finished product quality if ONE super-qualified luthier builds an instrument from scrach for you instead of twenty unskilled workers on a conveyor belt?
5. do you know how many luthiers in the world can build something like this: https://www.arulguitars.com/custom_guitars.htm or this https://www.harpguitarmusic.com/listings/hg-arul.htm successfully?

now, if you had an informed reason as to why he should NOT be charging so much for his instruments, i'd be perfectly fine - bad work, bad materials, bad quality ethics, bad experience, whatever. but to say that something is not worth Rs. X... has to be justified!

what i am trying to say is that it is absolutely unfair and eventually counterproductive for the music scene here to expect me to invest time to come up with an excellent solution for you, and then to ask me to do it for half the price of a machine-manufactured. that is what is killing manufacturing.

....makes no sense whatsoever.

no... but some of it is made in bombay, actually.

i don't want to make you cry, but since you asked, here's all the gear i currently own and rarely play:

------
Guitars:
fernandes revolver pro 7 - sustainer in the neck and SD JB in the bridge
kimaxe maple/mahagony 6 string bass
pluto acoustic
squier stratocaster - neck defretted, paint removed, being completely overhauled into a fixed bridge fretless w. sustainer)

amps (self-made):
1W firefly (12AU7 power tube)
1-5W vox/trainwreck inspired, original design (any octal power tube except EL34)
18W/20W marshall clone with dual rectifier and cascade mods (mixture of 1974x, 2061x and JCM800 2203 topologies
(coming soon) trainwreck blues express, miniature 4W version
(december) soldano atomic 16 w. extras

amps (not by me)
30W italian AC30-like head (steelphon conductor), 1960-70s

cabinets:
two oversized ported 1x12", custom made. ax84 plans, my supervision. dovetail jointed corners. 18mm ply with old burma teak reinforcements. currently waiting to be covered with vinyl and cane. speakers - warehouse guitar speakers veteran 30 and reaper.

effects (purchased):
nobels ODR-1 (original green issue)
boss metal zone MT-2 (waiting for keeley mods)
zoom trimetal TM-3
electro harmonix small stone (1970s, true bypass mod)
boss CE-3 chorus
zoom 508 delay modeller (no longer used)
ibanez tube screamer TS10
danelectro DJ-14 EQ
korg kaoss pad mini
biyang analog delay (modded)
no-name russian chorus
lel! digital modulating delay (loaned out)
1970s hillwood fullrotor rotating speaker simulator
some weird indian analog delay bought for keyboard torture

effects (self-made):
red llama overdrive
tube driver (no longer used, to be given to a friend)
tone bender MKII germanium fuzz
zvex fuzz factory
zvex woolly mammoth
mxr blue box
infinite cruelty machine (feedback loop w. photo eye)
mxr envelope filter (being housed)
brown sound in a box II (being housed)
another 3 envelope/voltage controlled filters and a couple of original designs are in the works.
------------------------------------

hope that answers your question.

 

hey man thanx for the reply......but wat do u mean by "i dont wanna make you cry"?!!.....you think i am gonna end up cryin lookin at your pathetic self made gear/wateva?.whoa.....well buddy guess for me ive got enuff gear for my bedroom playin!....pls stop your sentimental/pathetic nonsense shit here....i said it makes no sense to buy an expensive classical guitar without any assurance... f it mite have flaws in the near future plus as the guy is frm outa country just think about his frustration....you expect him to send it bk to india or cum here again just for that?......anyway flood buddy! look here even i aint gonna fight over shit like this afterall it makes no sense...well reason for me to get triggerd just go thru your first reply n ya'll know y?..you quote it was nvr mnt straight to me...for godsake your reply starts with a quote from my message!!.....anyway it'll be too kiddish to fight over here just thru pathetic replies/words where i see no blood/action!....anyway sorry if i sounded abusive/harsh in my replies.......

 

i think a luthier is much better assurance than ANY big brand instrument builder. also, it's not like you just send the guy money by cash transfer and hope that he sends you a kickass guitar...

i just laughed my ass off.

 

True, it is great for me, much cheaper than my imgination, I saved a lot of money. It will cost double money buying same guitar in the USA.

 

well, congratulations please post a recording or when you have your guitar. i suppose you play western classical or latin?

 

Dude, careful who you point fingers at !
If you're comparing https://www.arulguitars.com/concert.htm to a Videocon TV, or calling flood's DIY effects "pathetic", you really have (bold/italic/size24) NO idea of gear.
There's a difference betwen "enuff" gear and quality gear. You might have "enuff" gear for whatever you play, but from the looks of it, you don't really know jackshit about quality, whether it be guitars or effects.

Before calling on arul or flood, did you care to ask them how they do their stuff and why exactly is it so expensive? Do you know what is the difference between guitars with engleman spruce tops with cedar necks and Indian rosewood fretboards vis-a-vis all-plywood POS? Do you have any idea that flood might be using a cap which is worth more than your entire pedalboard?
I guess no.....

I would usually ignore such posts except the way you have worded your replies throughout this thread, calling out people with no idea of what they do and what is it that makes it special? You have ignored the entire collective intelligence of the worldwide woodworking and guitar-electronics community in saying what you have said.
There's a fine line between being smart and being smart-assed, and since you have called so many people with so many names, I have no qualms in stating here that you are the biggest POS I have come across.

 

THANKS MAN.....so wat are you mr.know all?. i ended the feud by sayin a sorry to flood n reasond out with him on wat triggerd me....so wats ur problem here?.....n callin me a pos?...wat are you?.startin up feuds dat are over?...anyway good laugh is wat i am havin here lookin at a DH like ya.... .....so now you mind your thing n me do my jolly browsin!!.....chill it bud.....

 

"THANKS MAN..."
You're welcome.

Mentioning "your pathetic self made gear/wateva?" and "sorry if i sounded abusive/harsh" doesn't look like reasoning out.

"anyway good laugh is wat i am havin here lookin at a DH like ya"
Trying to intimidate again are you? Never mind I'll let it off because you've been behaving better in other threads.

 

wow 1,25,000 rupees? that is like 3000 dollars man. for that kinda dough you can get a hand made guitar made in the usa itself. seems a little pricey - especially considering that material/labour is much cheaper here in india. i remember once a manager of mine in california had such an hand made acoustic guitar (though he played jazz) - hand made in the usa for like $3,500. hmmm ...

 

btw my knowledge of acoustics is quite limited. the only one i have is a simon and patrick acoustic which i bought in manhattan some 5 years back for like $300. it is made in canada and sustains for days. simon and patrick belongs to a family business which includes godin and seagull. but very nice guitar for the money.

my opinion of godin is very high. imo if you are not buying a "made in usa" guitar, godin is the next best thing - way better than anything made in mexico/korea/china etc. may be even better than japanese stuff. btw i am talking about electrics here.

 

To flood: yes I will at least post some pictures of it when I get the guitar, and I play western classical music.

To nandac: True, the price is very high even for an American or any guy in a developped country. But I didn't come to India with nothing, I did a lot of research. The point is not made in where but what wood the guitar is. If I only need to some plywood from the USA or Canada, then $ 300 will be more than enough, but if you check some web sites like “kronbauerguitars.com” then you will know the price of a fine hand mand guitar, it won't be cheaper than $3000, and don't even mention the best wood like Indian Rosewood and Ebony. You let me know Arul, didn't you? Then you should turst the man, I know him, he is a professional, selfless, modest man and I visited his workshop and saw the guitar he made, it is fantastic and absolutely worth the price. So, again, thank you very much.

To metalmicky: I know you feeling, maybe not, but I understhand your feeling. Because the reason I asked for help on this site is, someday before I called the one of the biggest musical store (which I know from here, too) and ask “how much is your best or most expensive guitar”, the answer I got is fourteen thousand, then I start to know the common situation of most Indian guitar players: they don't have the gears can be called guitar, some wooden boxs in guitar shape at most, not a musical instrument. Basically, it's very similar with the situation of most Chinese players but worse. In China, in maybe every guitar shop, the most popular guitar is between RS.3,000-RS.7,000. Most Chinese are not rich people or not willing to spend too much on an instrument just like Indian. But the most important difference is even in a small store only as big as my living room(this is how big the store where I bought my last guitar) where sells the cheap guitar as their main job, you can still find some very expensive and good guitars (RS.10,000-RS.50,000) for some true guitar lovers with good taste, passion, foresight, knowledge and enough cash. For you, metalmicky, if someday you can play a RS.100,000 guitar personally, then you may really know why flood said that and the motive I said "at least RS 30,000".

 

Why must you feed the troll?

flood, nandac, pacifist, lizefeng: There is no point trying to be civil or otherwise with these people. Just leave them to their pc++. I'd rather that they buy their Ibanez GRG and Kustom Kube and rawk to Raet songs than rape a quality guitar.

 

My respect for flood and pacifist just went up exponentially.

Flood, man, legendary stuff! I'll get my stuff made by (and paid more-than-fairly to) you when I can afford the dough. Seriously looking forward to the day.

@Lizefeng, good luck with your buy, and it's nice to know another western classical player (I'm an intermediate student in the same). Post a recording/video, man.

 

NOT true!

keep in mind that most hardwoods used in guitar building do not grow in india. if you look at the material specs, you have a number of non-indigenous woods. the only indian wood is indian rosewood, which is very expensive when you consider you need large enough pieces to make both the back and sides from. this is a big cost factor. getting the back and sides made from rosewood will drive up the price of any classical guitar greatly.

otherwise, you have ebony (i'm assuming it's macassar ebony, which is far superior to indian ebony), engleman spruce etc. these are expensive in small quantities, and there's also shipping costs and import duties to consider.

about acoustic guitars: building them is an art. it requires a much greater understanding of wood and acoustics than a solidbody does, and also fairly complex working procedures (steam-bending the wood for the sides - don't underestimate!). acoustics can very easily command very high prices - i've seen them go as high as 10000 GBP (this was some insane acoustic with a totally different construction method that minimized on battens and struts to improve acoustics and remove dead spots or something, lost the magazine or i'd scan it in).

also, the hardware is schaller or better. also expensive (well, relatively), also not locally available.

next thing you have to consider is that you need quality tools to work with... and and and.

labour: he, like most luthiers, is a one-man show... so you're basically paying for an expert in all stages of production. hence, i would say that his guitars are a lot cheaper at the same or better quality point than a US made guitar. the US is bound to be more expensive because yoou also have a substantially higher cost of living...

 

https://jenden.us/storage/JD/img/for_teh_lulz.jpeg

 

Yes, the exuberant enthusiasm of being new to posting on this board.

 

Post pics/video of the guitar or it didn't happen.

 

yeah, i've noticed.... just the fact that the img code doesn't display but hyperlinks pictures instead makes this board a lulz fail. :/

oh well.

 

Give the guy a call. With the kind of stuff he makes, you might just be loosening your pockets faster than you can think. !!

Flood, could you post a pic of one of your etched enclosures here?

 

.
*dumbstruck, saliva dribbling*
Whr do u live man??
Can i just drop by to have a look...