$3000 for a custom Korean-made ERB...?

Make sure he's reputable.
Not one guy starting out in a small shop and a large backlog and some serious personal problems.

 

There is no reason a Korean-built instrument can't be a $3000 instrument, it is simply that the majority of them that we import aren't. They have luthiers building wonderful acoustic guitars in China that are worth mega money. These luthiers just aren't anywhere near the Cortek or Epiphone factories, and their instruments aren't sold via AliExpress.

On the other hand, if your $3000 bass is made from bland basewood, finished in 1/2'' of ultra glossy poly lacquer and comes with Artec pickups, 'Alpha' potentiometers and a wiring harness that only pays scant attention to proper lead dress then you might be onto something.

I just can't get behind the notion that as soon as an instrument is built anywhere but the US there has to be a drop-off in quality and therefore the instrument has to be priced accordingly.

Shipping and import tax to the UK will be an absolute kicker on an instrument of this value.

 

Where on the planet it's made doesn't tell you anything about quality. It's quality of build comes down to the control of the company putting their name on it. If he lets a crap instrument go out to a customer that's says more about him the then folks in Korea.

If you really worried about "generic" hardware and pickups, tell him what you want installed. If he's as "custom" as he claims it won't be an issue.

 

the builder being Korean has nothing to do with it.
ERBs are specialty instruments with very poor resale rates. A custom instrument will be even worse.
Essentially, your 3k instrument will be worth 1k the second you put your fingers on it and unless you get lucky, it won't sell without months of add bumping.

This is a very bad approach IMHO. A custom instrument should be meant as a lifelong project, with no intention of selling it. If you plan to sell, going custom is a mistake especially with niche instruments.

 

Whether it's worth it or not is up to you. I'm guessing your gut feeling is telling you "no". I would continue to shop local luthiers and compare build to cost ratios.

I've never been a fan of Luither outsourcing. I could be overlooking something but, it only a matter of time before remote builders decide to take over the market for themselves. $3k is a lot of dough for a "designer" to split up. Especially when he or she is collecting the lions share of the profit on a joint build.

 

I think any bass priced over 3000 is to much, it's just wood and metal parts...

 

+1

People that say that are usually the ones who have never played a good custom bass, they just somehow intuitively 'know' that it isn't worth the money.

To your original question, only you know if it's worth it to you. Do you want this bass? Can you buy it for less elsewhere? Are you willing to accept that it probably has close to no resale value? It's like everything else; if you want it bad enough, you'll pay the money.

 

$3000 is a bit steep then. You want a magnitude more attention paid to an instrument at that price compared to $500 of PRS SE. The PRS SE stuff is perfectly good, but it isn't $3000 artisan-level good.

 

Discussions of the value of multi thousand dollar instruments are old hat here. They're worth what the buyer is willing to pay right? But in this situation I have to wonder where that three grand is going. The Korean aspect of the product is all for keeping parts and production costs super low right? Then it goes back to the UK for a set up? For three grand? I don't know. Seems strange to me.

 

It could be a bonus! Only a fraction of that $3000 is going towards paying Korean wages, so a bigger share of it goes towards materials and time spent setting up and scrutinizing the thing. Build a $3000 instrument in a US factory and a bigger chunk of that change is going towards paying workers, heating, lighting, adherence to environmental regulations... is the whole 'only buy US' thing recognition, in part, that stuff built in the US can't compete with stuff made in the far-East in terms of labour costs, environmental regulation etc?

 

10 strings people. It's not a $3000 JB clone.
Everything is special and take adjustments on such an instrument.
I don't think they're making any significant profit at this price.

 

What else can three thousand get you that's similar?