Wonderful news: THE GUITAR IS STILL ALIVE!

Over at NYT Alex Williams declares:

If the Grey Lady’s use of an exclamation mark strikes the reader as a touch out of character, it nevertheless does signal a story worth covering. Three years ago at WaPo Geoff Edgers outed “The slow, secret death of the six-string electric.” Fender and particularly Gibson were in very deep trouble at the time. Both companies are back in the black, as is pretty much every company making guitars, electric or not. “I’ve been through guitar booms before, but this one caught me completely by surprise,” says Chris Martin, who heads an obscure little outfit called Martin Guitars.

Since I took it upon myself to express some thoughts on the earlier sad state of The Guitar, it behooves me to comment upon its recovery. First, the mea culpa: “[Gibson and Fender have] flooded the market with garbage.” While not exactly untrue, it’s certainly an overstatement. In the last three years I’ve had opportunity to play a few Gibson/Fender entry-level axes, and I amend my initial judgment with this caveat: for what you pay, you do in fact receive an incredible value.

My first electric was an inexpensive Epiphone Les Paul (made in China). It was very playable, but plagued with gremlins that even my trusted local guitar guy could not finally exorcise until we replaced the entirety of the guitar’s guts — at which point the tone of the instrument changed dramatically in a direction I did not enjoy.

Last fall I bought a Squier Strat (made in Cambodia) for $150 CDN. The intention was to give our artist-in-residence a blank canvas to work on — something to hang on the wall, or prop up at local artist shows, with no thought given to tone or playability. Still, when I took it out of the cardboard box and plugged it in, I was gobsmacked by its speedy fretboard and outstandingly identifiable Strat tones. The five-way pickup toggle failed on the final, bridge-only notch, but that (touch wood) should be fairly easily corrected when we reassemble the newly-painted guitar.

Pending Totoro approval.

This spring I took home two Telecasters — one made in China, the other in Cambodia. I’ve kept the latter, from Squier’s Player Series, a line which has earned a reputation for bringing guitarists the most bang for their buck. If my artist progeny is up for it, we may yet disassemble it and sand it down for another customized wowie-zowie job.

Still and all, I’ll stick with my final assertion — a person who really wants to play is better served by a quality clone or a steep investment more in-line with the prices of yore.

As for the current resurgence, we’ve got COVID to “thank” for much of it. But I think the Fender Play stats are quite remarkable — firstly, the surge in user base (from 150,000 users to 930,000); secondly the nearly-level gender stats (women now account for 45%, up from 30%). I’d be curious to see more stats from Fender Play — which genres/skills are most in demand and by whom, how far are the lessons followed, etc. I imagine Fender will be keeping as tight a lid on those user stats as Netflix is on theirs.

I was initially skeptical about internet lessons, but I’ve completely come around to them. I spend more time at JustinGuitar, but am very much a fan of Fender Play as well. Fender Play is a staggering resource, but their engineers do a good job of shepherding noobs and pros alike into the system.

But finally — and I hesitate to say it for fear of jinxing it — the online lesson community is one of the rare internet enclaves that is utterly, sweetly affirming to all who enter. And who doesn’t want a bit more of that in their lives?