Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Discussion of newer designs, copies and reissue offset-waist instruments.
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Maggieo » Mon Jul 26, 2021 8:09 am

In terms of what Larry wrote about marketing and new designs, etc...

Fender=Gibson=PRS etc...
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Fiddy » Mon Jul 26, 2021 8:22 am


Image
Im sorry, I don't love this guitar. I find it too much like a cross between a Yamaha Pacifica and a Peavey.

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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Jaguar018 » Mon Jul 26, 2021 8:30 am

Where does Fender say that it's really an innovative guitar company?

Who is arguing that In-bev should be producing exciting new beer flavors all the time and not pumping out the classics?

I get the argument that Fender is a lame corporate conglomerate. Gibson and Fender, over the years have bought up a number of smaller companies. Were Gretsch, Guild, and Charvel doing really great when they were bought out? I feel like they were not.

More to the point though, and I feel like I think this whenever these arguments are made: what percentage of people are buying guitar innovation compared to the percentage that just want the same old models? Corporate behemoths don't give a shit about much besides making money. [I'm sort of wondering if Fender is going to do anything about Eric Clapton's latest bullshit-- my guess is they will not] They crunch the numbers and have concluded that more people are going to buy rehashed classic designs.

There are companies out there that have figured out how to flog new designs. The sneaker/trainer sporting brands come to mind. Gotta get the latest soccer cleats(but even though there are new models every year, throughout the year they just change the colors on the same models before the redesign). And then you have to get the new team jersey for the latest season with the new sponsors.

I really don't understand why some people expect this standard for instruments. Clearly they are not as expensive as cars, but how much innovation do you really want here? Say you buy a new Fender model and then they come out with better innovation the next year. How many people can get that? Isn't that what happened with the Gibson robo tuners and then the Firebird X? Gibson tried to stick its neck out with some real innovation and 97% of their customer base freaked the fuck out and shit down their neck. Is it about design or technical innovation? That shit is SOOOO SUBJECTIVE and personal. Most people don't get too worked up about locking tuners and noiseless pickups either, but they are essential for others.

How many Fender Edsels do you want before you sort have to accept the fact that the fickle public tastes usually don't mirror your own?

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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Larry Mal » Mon Jul 26, 2021 9:14 am

Jaguar018 wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 8:30 am


How many Fender Edsels do you want before you sort have to accept the fact that the fickle public tastes usually don't mirror your own?
Well, I think you are misunderstanding me to a degree, but I'll address your last point first.

Firstly, I don't believe that the market is fickle, I think that guitar buyers have been so successfully marketed to that the past is the ideal. What a crazy situation. Imagine if car makers could do that, then what a boon it would be, all they would have to do is keep making the Edsel forever.

So that's why I don't expect Fender to innovate, it actually would destabilize their business methods and possibly jeopardize their core offerings.

I don't expect Fender to do anything other than what they do. If new technology comes to the electric guitar, and I don't think it will, it will come from somewhere else. I quicker think that the electric guitar will just ossify into the oboe.

I could be wrong. All it takes is one charismatic person up on stage playing that Moog guitar on a song that a lot of people find inspiring, and you have a whole new paradigm.

For that reason, Fender does what they can as the biggest player to prevent competition. And one of those strategies is the Custom Shop. Again, it's not a money maker for Fender, not really, but it does allow Fender to siphon a fair amount of the money that might have been spent on real, actual custom guitar makers who might possibly have their own design and possibly including something there that Fender can't. It's unlikely.

To put it in terms of beer, the Custom Shop is as if you went to Anheuser Busch and asked them to handcraft you some Budweiser. You want ten gallons of it, you want it made by a single brewer, you want her to fill the bottles herself from the bucket, you want the old style label and you want the label glued on by hand. Otherwise, though, you want the same recipe, the same hops, same rice, etc.

And then you would have arguably a slightly better Budweiser at great expense, but what it really means is that you aren't down at the brewpub, spending money there, finding out that while the IPA is the worst fucking beer in the world, but that there are actually a lot of great beers out there that Anheuser Busch doesn't offer.

Anyway, all I am explaining is why when I see some Frankenstein monster bullshit with PAF pickups (1955) and a Jazzmaster tremolo (1959) on a Starcaster body (1976) capped off by a bullshit bridge that is otherwise reserved only for the VIP customer, I don't gain any respect for Fender, or for anyone that would buy such a ridiculous thing at great expense. It's not only embarrassing, but it actually encapsulates everything wrong with the stagnant and sad state of the electric guitar industry, which used to be exciting, progressive and dynamic.

And now isn't.
Last edited by Larry Mal on Mon Jul 26, 2021 9:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by CivoLee » Mon Jul 26, 2021 9:15 am

I don't think Fender are trying to present themselves as some sort of groundbreaking, innovative company, except maybe with the Acoustasonic models; which, while maybe not the cup of tea of some people on here, are something different...

And I don't think Fender really are wholly to blame for the "stagnation" of electric guitar design/hardware/construction. I think it's more of the market as I said earlier. They've basically said, "We've got all of this great music from the past sixty-some years made on electric guitars as they were when they first came out, so if it isn't broken why fix it?" Of course, what one considers "broken" is up to the individual, but I see it like this...

I'm studying to get certified for FAA Part 107 compliance, which one needs to fly drones commercially. In order to do that, you need to pass the Initial Aeronautical Exam, which is the test pilots of manned aircraft take before getting any actual flight training. One of the things the course I'm taking teaches is risk management. Risks fall into three categories:

1. Unacceptable
2. Acceptable With Mitigation
3. Acceptable

For most musicians, the risks posed by traditional electric guitars (such as strings popping out of the saddles on a Jazzmaster or breaking the headstock on a Les Paul) fall into into Category 2 or 3, so those designs continue as-is. Things like the frets falling off a Parker Fly or a possible mechanical failure in Gibson's robo-tuners fall into Category 1, so those designs fail in the market, either quickly or over time.

So if anyone is to blame for the "stagnation" of the electric guitar, don't blame companies, blame musicians; but given the above, can you blame them?

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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Larry Mal » Mon Jul 26, 2021 9:25 am

CivoLee wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 9:15 am
I don't think Fender are trying to present themselves as some sort of groundbreaking, innovative company, except maybe with the Acoustasonic models; which, while maybe not the cup of tea of some people on here, are something different...

Interesting points... I took a couple of classes on risk management, also. Found them very interesting.

About the Acoustasonic, though, that's an example of Fender seeing an innovative product and then literally hiring away the competition design team to develop a direct response to that:

But now, after two-and-a-half years of research, Fender believes it really has cracked the notion of one guitar to rule them all. It's no coincidence that the brains involved in the development of Taylor's T5z have also been behind the new Acoustasonic – it is very much a continuation of the dream.

Also, take a look at that article to see what I mean about how Fender can command a lot of press with very little effort, attention that their competitors simply can't get. Amazing.

But anyway, if the Acoustasonic is supposed to be evidence that Fender is a company with a design vision, I don't know what to tell you. Still, they did do in that situation something that is good: if you are a bloated corporation with no ability to design new products any more, then you hire people that can. It's fine. Happens every day.
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Jaguar018 » Mon Jul 26, 2021 9:52 am

I suspect that part of the reason that electric guitar design and innovation used to be more dynamic is because the genres they were pumping out guitars for was so much newer and more vibrant at the time. Buddy Holly, Elvis, or the Beatles could be on a TV show and 'everybody' (mostly white baby boomers) would see it. Pop culture was so much more monolithic way back when.

When Fender was in its early days it was a fairly small operation (and as the argument has been made many a time, those guitars were fucking expensive back then when you adjust for inflation). What made Fender innovative back then was a singular vision, and many new builders, unencumbered by corporate overlords, have been making some really cool looking guitars. What has made standard Fenders more affordable over the years is being bought out and becoming the giant corporate blob.

Guitar-driven rock music (and all its different branches) has been around what sixty plus years now? It's just not the same cultural juggernaut that it was thirty or forty years ago. Yet people are still buying guitars. To me that means that the whole idea of a guitar, and what it's supposed to do has become untethered from its previous expectations (macho guy with tight pants?). In my mind it's more of a utilitarian tool than it ever has been before. You can get reliable great sounds from a Squier now. The collective experience we all have now makes the understanding of mods and fixes for guitars easier than ever. AND, with digital recording, it's way easier to record and get your stuff out there. Pop music is certainly about 'looks' but the innovation that music has these days has little to do with what kind of pickups you've slapped into your axe. I feel like that's almost irrelevant. Like, it's fun to obsess about, but it has nothing to do with the essence of what still makes music great.

So what is the Fender Custom Shop for? It's just a luxury brand. Is it weird that they make fake beat up guitars, frankenstein guitars, and copies of old guitars that are 60 years old? I guess, but at the same time not really? Don't a lot of luxury brands do that?

And yes, IPAs are terrible.

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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Larry Mal » Mon Jul 26, 2021 10:06 am

Good points... so, Maggie brought up the oboe, and maybe that's accurate. Maybe we are all oboe players and we play classical music.

It seems like a shame to me, but I'm not young or anything, and I've reconciled myself to the idea that the electric guitar will be exactly the same when I die as it was when I was born, except for a brief period of innovation that quickly smoldered out and which I didn't even recognize as an innovative time.

How do you pass this along to the kids, is something I wonder.

"You too can play the music of the past... on the instruments of the past! Have I told you how the best Stratocasters were made ninety years ago?"

Thrilling stuff.

But I shouldn't worry about it, humans are creative and driven to make wonderful music, and they'll do it with whatever technology exists at any given time. The world keeps spinning around the sun and everything is just fine. And it's not like people aren't buying guitars or anything.
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Larry Mal » Mon Jul 26, 2021 10:55 am

smjenkins wrote:
Sun Jul 25, 2021 9:46 pm
I suppose that is like saying you prefer ice beer to the standard Busch? "I like their edgier shit".
"Don't care if they know you are an alcoholic? Try Bud Ice! They'll know you sure aren't drinking this shit for the taste."

I have a good friend who was very successful at marketing, and in his early days in that field he told me how they were working on the Icehouse brand. The goal was to get people that liked Icehouse to buy more of it.

Jon was telling me how the research that they had indicated that Icehouse drinkers would drink like fourteen of them a day, and he wondered how on earth you can get someone like that to drink more of it.

Now, he was probably exaggerating some of this, you should never let facts get in the way of a good story. For some reason it made an impression on me.
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Maggieo » Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:01 am

Fender/Gibson/PRS/= Inbev/Phillip Morris,etc...

Creston/Novo/Carmine Street Guitars= craft brewers
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by sal paradise » Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:14 am

What do we call Brewdog these days?
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Larry Mal » Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:44 am

Maggieo wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:01 am
Fender/Gibson/PRS/= Inbev/Phillip Morris,etc...

Creston/Novo/Carmine Street Guitars= craft brewers
And that's pretty much it. I could have saved a lot of typing.

But anyway, I keep waiting for someone to point out that all my stuff is off the rack. And it is. And I don't mind that! I think off the rack Fender and Gibson is absolutely great. I think that Budweiser and Busch is great beer, also.

I just don't like it when A-B Inbev tries to look like a craft brewer in order to hurt real craft brewers, and I don't like it when Fender pretends to be other than what they are. Just keep cranking out them Stratocasters, Fender... you can't design shit, you don't have anything else to offer.

Sometimes companies need to be told when they no longer have any new designs to offer the world, need to be told that they are creatively bankrupt, need to be stopped from just cranking out some bullshit like those ugly eight thousand dollar guitars at the top of this thread, before the fucking unthinkable happens:

Image
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Embenny » Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:59 am

Larry Mal wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:44 am
But anyway, I keep waiting for someone to point out that all my stuff is off the rack. And it is. And I don't mind that!
Nobody mentioned your rack, Larry, because it's 2021 and frankly we should be able to have a discussion of guitars without objectifying you like that. This isn't TGP.
The artist formerly known as mbene085.

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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by Larry Mal » Mon Jul 26, 2021 12:58 pm

mbene085 wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:59 am


Nobody mentioned your rack, Larry, because it's 2021 and frankly we should be able to have a discussion of guitars without objectifying you like that. This isn't TGP.
You'll come for my rack. You'll stay for my rants about Fender.
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Re: Starcasters from the Custom Shop

Post by smjenkins » Mon Jul 26, 2021 6:30 pm

Larry Mal wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 12:58 pm
mbene085 wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:59 am


Nobody mentioned your rack, Larry, because it's 2021 and frankly we should be able to have a discussion of guitars without objectifying you like that. This isn't TGP.
You'll come for my rack. You'll stay for my rants about Fender.
OK, that got me. :)

Slight side topic: did other builders invent the Telemaster? The very first I'd heard of the concept was the 2009 Custom Shop run for Make'n Music.

https://www.premierguitar.com/gear/fend ... -prototype

Are there small builder Telemasters that predate this?

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