ShortScale.org

I wonder when some manager at Fender is going to have a quick browse of some guitar forums and then say "Hold on a minute here, fellas. We're doing it wrong. People want more than white black red and sunburst. I can't imagine why, but they'd like other options. They also say something about 'fuck off with the signature strats and teles and actually put some effort into new designs k thx' but I've no idea what that means. Anyway, break out the spray paint, the people have spoken."

Unfortuantely I think the people that realise Fender for the most part are all over the place are in the minority.

to my own fault, i have had a jagstang for almost 15 years now, i have had to replace the switches in it so many times that i finally said fuck it and created the pizzastangmasterII so i wouldn't have to deal with sliders anymore. im pretty sure my dad payed 700 for that thing back when i was little.


hahah stupid dad. wtf was wrong with you? i already had a drum set.....moron.



I LOVE YOU DAD!!!!

Wow, what passion you guys have.

Woodyjunior, you go boy, thing is, I really never even imagined the guy was targeting you whatsoever.
And I still dont thnk he was.

Also I know you guys really want to think that cost spread is somehow fully justified, other than merely differential labor costs, but the tech I took mine to says it just isn't.

We all have to decide who to trust, I choose him, he's been fixing guitars for 35 years.

Your preconceived impressions about quality control may be valid as a statistical matter, but I'm pretty sure none of you have the data to make a statistically valid comment about it. So go ahead, believe, and say, what you want. Who knows, you may be right. Certainly nobody here has data to prove you're wrong.

The first time I played a CP jag in the store I thought it was broken too. Turns out none of us knew the rhythm circuit had been turned into a kill switch. Lots of stuff gets messed with at GC, and it isn't all the mfrs. fault.

Thanks... but I'm over the "attack" that never was. I've seen the light and all is well. But this has opened up a great discussion. Everything Al Gore intended in interweb to be.

Absolutely is it reasonable to expect and see a difference in quality between a $700 guitar and a $1600 guitar. Is there always $900 difference between the two. That is subjective. But to suggest its done just for the hell of it and people are dumb enough to pay that much for the right to have "Made in USA" printed on the headstock is simply not true.

But, it must be acknowledged that there are very real cost differences in the manufacturing of, for example, Classic Player guitars and AVRI guitars. Electronic components are different, finishes are different, hardware is different, wood is different, man hours are different... even the case and case candy are different and add to the overall cost, which do add up. These costs differences don't come close to closing the gap between CP and AVRI retail prices.

Ah, but don't forget to figure in corporate overhead (taxes, health care, utilities, facilities, legal fees, etc). Much of those costs have risen dramatically over the last several years, and operating costs in Mexico are lower than operating costs in the US. The prices to make goods, transport them and operate a business have gone up, and companies are passing those added costs on to their customers.

Is the cost difference completely reflected in the difference in retail prices? No. Profit margins for American guitars are much higher than non-US made. That is true. Its also part of a retail pricing strategy that inflates consumers sense of perceived value. Dealers would rather carry the higher profit margin stuff so they could make more money per purchase occasion, but Fender requires them to carry so many MIM guitars for every American.

woodyjunior wrote:

Zaphod wrote:It could be condensed into "nothing is perfect".

Whcih we all know, it's just that quite a few people underrate MIM stuff unjustly.

Couldn't agree more, but don't just assume that is what I'm doing. I read what seemed to be a credible thread about spotty quality, asked a question, had first person experience with it, and then got Ozzied (head bitten off) by Mike.

Not cool.

I wasn't referring to you personally, just snobbishness over MIM guitars. People message my youtube videos daily saying "Why didn't you get a US Tele?"

woodyjunior wrote:Electronic components are different, finishes are different, hardware is different, wood is different, man hours are different... even the case and case candy are different and add to the overall cost, which do add up. These costs differences don't come close to closing the gap between CP and AVRI retail prices.

The case is a clear and obvious difference, and the finishes differ but in England you are talking about a £550 vs £1,200 price difference. This is not justified, especially when you consider the Classic Player hardware is AVRI hardware on the Jaguar and Jazzmasters (control plates, tremolo etc), the Jaguar pickups in my MIM are more useful than the AVRI stock pickups, and the wiring is topnotch. I have opened this thing up and seen how it is built. It is to a very high standard. Obviously QC is still a problem but it is one that blights Fender across all it's price points. In this country anyway, the price difference of nearly a three-fold increase is unjustified. The same wood is used between the Sunburst models I believe.

I also have an MIM Baja Telecaster which when up against the American '52 RI does not shirk the challenge, it is a fine instrument and at £389 is the match of the £1,499 American model.

Things might be different in the US, but over here, it really doesn't make monetary sense to pay the premium for an American Fender guitar.

Waxing philosophical here:

The whole problem with US opening up fully to foreign competition, particularly in cases of a near-commodity type factory-line product, is we really can't compete on price. We are not playing on a level playing field. Nations without our same cost of living, environmental and labor regulations can hugely undercut us every time, for this type of product. And there is no blanket superiority of the labor pool ,certainly not at our end anyway, that guarantees ours will be made any better. In a global marketplace we in the US need to be creating something innovative, push the envelope and create something different and unique, to justify the premium prices we need to charge to maintain our lifestyles here. Or else, renegotiate the trade agreements that have removed our prior pricing protections of our domestic market and have had this inevitable result.

In cases where there's nothing so very different or special, that can't be equalized with a few adjustments: well many people will find the cost differential just isn't worth it then. And that's not just guitars.

Obama has stated he wanted to revisit these trade agreements, which seem to have not benefited American labor (surprise surprise) but there are clearly going to be problems with doing that, now that this "ship has sailed", so to speak. It's a real problem for us, and I don't think it's going away.

Mike wrote:Things might be different in the US, but over here, it really doesn't make monetary sense to pay the premium for an American Fender guitar.

Hey, Mike... no worries, mate. We're good.

There is about a $700 difference between the retail price of CP ($800) and AVRI ($1500) Jags and Jazzys here in the US. The same spread seen in the UK.

Any objective person will look at the MIM CPs and recognize their overall value is MUCH greater than the AVRI. There are no immediate reasons to justify that kind of discrepancy in price. Manufacturing an AVRI does not cost Fender $700 more than producing a CP. Maybe $300-$400? And I'm figuring that is beyond parts and hourly wage, but considering difference in business costs between Mexico and the US. Not to mention they make many more CPs than AVRIs, so unit cost would be different. I'd love to see the breakdown of how much these actually cost to produce.

I would guess this: Slash anywhere from 15%-25% off the top of retail price for dealer profit. There are additional distribution fees under that. By this point Fender has already made their profit having sold their products to the dealers.

Also, Fender manages a retail pricing strategy that is aimed to make that $800 guitar feel like more of a bargain. Restaurants do it all the time - when they feature a $100 appetizer or drink on their menu to inflate the perceived sense of value of the rest of the menu. There is no way in hell a $100 is "worth" $100, but it makes the $20 appetizer look doable, even though $20 is still way too much for an appetizer by most people's standards.

I feel the CPs AND AVRIs are overpriced. Problem is, Fender will keep charging those prices as long as there are people out there willing to pay them.

This is why I mostly buy and trade for used guitars, anyway.

Oh, and here's a real question on my behalf. Do the CP Jags really have AVRI hardware? Aren't the trems screw-in? Don't the RIs have pop in arms? That would indicate an entirely different bridge.

The bridge is different (TOM vs traditional) but the Tremplates are the same. As for the trems, Fender appears to be using some screw ins and some push ins. Mine is a screw in (not that I use it).

I personally think that the trem is the one thing the MIM Jaguar/Jazzy falls down on compared to the CIJ or AVRI versions, the placement change is perfect for a non trem user like myself, but for someone that likes their whammies I think it would feel too far forward with the bar in their hands.

MMPicker wrote:The whole problem with US opening up fully to foreign competition, particularly in cases of a near-commodity type factory-line product, is we really can't compete on price. We are not playing on a level playing field. Nations without our same cost of living, environmental and labor regulations can hugely undercut us every time, for this type of product. And there is no blanket superiority of the labor pool ,certainly not at our end anyway, that guarantees ours will be made any better. In a global marketplace we in the US need to be creating something innovative, push the envelope and create something different and unique...

Amen... and amen. Innovation is the key. That's a better, more effective fix than waiting for politicians to rework laws.

Mike wrote:The bridge is different (TOM vs traditional) but the Tremplates are the same. As for the trems, Fender appears to be using some screw ins and some push ins. Mine is a screw in (not that I use it).

I personally think that the trem is the one thing the MIM Jaguar/Jazzy falls down on compared to the CIJ or AVRI versions, the placement change is perfect for a non trem user like myself, but for someone that likes their whammies I think it would feel too far forward with the bar in their hands.

Yeah, I felt that. I am a trem user, and to properly hold the trem and pick at times, I was picking over the fret board. A shorter arm would have been a nice compensation for the fact that the closer bridge is a compensation.

After my time with the CP HH the other night, I beginning to think its not the best candidate for my project - mainly for that exact reason. Perhaps pickup a nice CIJ and route it for buckers...

I have no experience of the CP HH model, I was never interested in a Jaguar with humbuckers.

I have heard tons of stories of people complaining the electronics on the Rhythm Circuit didn't work because they didn't realise that switch is a kill switch now. Including Guitarist magazine, the largest Guitar magazine in the UK. *sigh*

Fender certainly did not do a good job providing enough information about all their product "innovations"

The neck's "coil blend" pot was internally messed up on the one I played. It has the same pots and hardware as the regular CP Jag, just wired differently.

The stock pickups weren't that bad. They sounded pretty decent through the AC30 I used at the store, although the tapped sound was very thin and weak - nowhere near the power of a normal Jag (but that wasn't expected, either).

Mike, is your CP body routed for Hums or just the singles?

woodyjunior wrote:Fender certainly did not do a good job providing enough information about all their product "innovations"

The neck's "coil blend" pot was internally messed up on the one I played. It has the same pots and hardware as the regular CP Jag, just wired differently.

I would hope not. Seeing as the two pots in a Jaguar Rhythm circuit are a 1meg volume and a 50K tone. This would make one of the blends functional and the other useless.
The schematics here:
http://www.shortscale.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19491




Suggest that you're right though. This is a new low for Fender if so.

woodyjunior wrote:The stock pickups weren't that bad. They sounded pretty decent through the AC30 I used at the store, although the tapped sound was very thin and weak - nowhere near the power of a normal Jag (but that wasn't expected, either).

Indeed. Tapping a Humbucker is always inferior to a single coil pickup (especially Jaguar pickups), however with the above tapping arrangement I would expect they would sound terrible.

woodyjunior wrote:Mike, is your CP body routed for Hums or just the singles?

Just singles.

Could it be that the trem is mostly a matter of what you're accustomed to? I'm having fun with it actually, but I've no basis of comparison. However, Mike and this thread aside, I haven't read that many posts complaining about it from this particular aspect, most of the complaints seem to be aesthetic. which I also don't really get. But then I am not "polluted" by past Jaguar experience.

If this is really an issue for someone though, Ive seen in my websurfing travels a website where some guy actually makes different size strat-style tremelo bars, which might well fit the CP screw in collets. I've got a snap in though. Which I'm told is the same exact part as the AVRI comes with.

FWIW, I tried the CP HH model in the shop and thought it sounded pretty good, actually, even in "single coil" mode. If I were getting another guitar it would be strongly considered.

MMPicker wrote: However, Mike and this thread aside, I haven't read that many posts complaining about it from this particular aspect, most of the complaints seem to be aesthetic.

Oh I'm not complaining, it was actually Hurb and BobAC that told me it would bother them. I'm not a trem-user or Jag aesthetic obsessive so the moved plate is nothing but good times as far as I'm concerned. The better break angle and TOM make it perfect for my spasmodic guitar style.