I cancelled my order for the Dean Cadi when I logged on and saw that it had like a $10 price drop. I am not sure I'm going to get it. However, I'm watching the price on it. It's falling even further. This is a guitar with an $869 list price.
The way musical instrument list prices go is that those are suggestions, at best. Most people know that's not what you pay for the thing. Some of the better guitars are tough to get much of a discount on. For instance, the maximum authorized publishable discount on Fenders is about 36%.
When I taught guitar, I worked at music stores. Generally speaking, on most good name brands, the cost to the seller is about 55% of suggested retail. The lesser the name brand, the smaller the percentage of suggested retail represents the actual cost. For instance, a poorly regarded brand might cost 45% of the suggested retail. This gives the seller an incentive to stock the item because they have the potential for greater profit margin. Or, it allows them to give the appearance of a deeper discount to move the inventory faster.
So, when I see a guitar going for less than half of suggested retail, it sends up all sorts of (good) flags for me. Usually, this doesn't mean that the retailer is taking a loss. What it usually means is that the manufacturer got stuck with an overproduction and has to get them off their books. The Yamaha bass I have was a $700-ish instrument and it got blown out for a little over $200. If you keep your eyes open, you can get these deals where you're paying pretty much what the components would cost if you tried to build it yourself.
The Dean is obviously in that boat. It's dropped another $16 since I first ordered it. There are 4 of them left and it looks like they're coming directly from the manufacturer. It's just one color, one model, and even the other colors of that same model are still retailing in the mid 400s.
If they give this thing away, I'll buy it. Otherwise, it's not a guitar I particularly need. I think it's an insanely good axe for this sort of money, but if I never got one, I'd live a perfectly content life. $300 spent on this guitar is $300 less to spend on a guitar I really do want. I wouldn't even be mildly interested at a price in the mid $400s, though. If this thing gets down to 2 units left, I may pull the trigger, may not. We'll see what the price finally settles on, but it looks like it's dropping by about $8 a day to try and get rid of the remaining inventory.
Now, the other question that this brings up is, how wise is it to buy guitars sight-unseen? Isn't playing the guitar a tactile experience? Isn't it risky to buy an instrument you've never played?
Well, yes, it is. But like most things in life, there's a cost tradeoff. The manufacturers were better off in the old days when they sold their products through dozens of little tiny mom and pop stores in your hometown. Those stores had good sales people who, usually, knew enough to try and help you get a really good guitar. Trouble is, you didn't get much of a discount when you bought. In fact, a lot of those mom and pops sold at full retail.
What's good for the manufacturer isn't always good for the consumer. The consumer wants to pay 36% less and the only way that's going to happen is with mail-order or internet sales.
The quality of most instruments these days is pretty good, which means your odds of getting a clunker are pretty low. Also, in the old days, you got your guitar and if it played poorly you had to take it to get it "set up" by a guitar technician so it would play well. These days, almost all guitars are set up pretty well at the factories and play well straight out of the box.
Also, frankly, most players aren't really that affected by a good, versus a great instrument. I know enough to appreciate a great instrument, like a Melancon. Most people aren't. Also, although I'm far from a great or even good guitar player, I'm pretty accomplished for a hacker (studied applied classical guitar in college, taught for 3 years.) Even though I can appreciate the good stuff, it doesn't really let me play any better. A $400 mexican stratocaster sounds about as good in my hands as a $3,000 Melancon.
People want cheap. Most players, it just doesn't matter. Most guitars are a good bargain for the money. So, mail-order / internet works just fine for most people, most of the time.
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