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Inflation and are you near your limit?
- Thread starter Dr. Cheese
- Start date
Man! I'm very well situated with gear! Don't need nothing! The dilemma is that I actually need to sell off some basses. Got too many. Perhaps with this inflation crap going on, I might get a better price for whatever I sell but with inflation, there is no winning and I may get more money for my stuff but the selling price is going to be worth less too. Back to zero.
this hit me. I work with a bunch of machinists, sometimes doing that work myself. Five have died in their 50s to heart attacks in the past three years and another reasonably healthy looking 51yo guy lived through a HA two weeks ago.
Inflation hasn't slowed me down, but product availability sure has. Seeing long wait times, which also can hinder my ability to get a discount on something when there's a line of folks waiting a year to pay full price for it. I have never really paid full price for much, if you look hard enough you'll always find a discount somewhere. Having good relationships with multiple shops also helps a lot.
Lots of brands have always been overpriced to me for quality/value vs. price. IMO a music man at $2k is overpriced, $3k is downright insane. The price of a really good Lakland Skyline went from around $1350 to around $1500, but you can still get these at a good price shopping around, a much better instrument for close to a $1k than many basses that cost $2k or more. Fender pricing jumped the shark a long time ago too, IMO. I remember buying a Am Standard J bass in the mid to late 90's brand new for $600. Around that same time an Ampeg 8x10 was around $900-1,000. 25 years later the price of an 8x10 is still around $1000, and the price of a standard AM jazz is maybe $1500-1700? Labor costs for Ampeg probably really haven't increased much because they offshored their production. The cost of materials and shipping have certainly increased a lot. Did the pay of a fender employee increase by 250% in the last 25 years? If it has, good for them, I hope so!
Lots of brands have always been overpriced to me for quality/value vs. price. IMO a music man at $2k is overpriced, $3k is downright insane. The price of a really good Lakland Skyline went from around $1350 to around $1500, but you can still get these at a good price shopping around, a much better instrument for close to a $1k than many basses that cost $2k or more. Fender pricing jumped the shark a long time ago too, IMO. I remember buying a Am Standard J bass in the mid to late 90's brand new for $600. Around that same time an Ampeg 8x10 was around $900-1,000. 25 years later the price of an 8x10 is still around $1000, and the price of a standard AM jazz is maybe $1500-1700? Labor costs for Ampeg probably really haven't increased much because they offshored their production. The cost of materials and shipping have certainly increased a lot. Did the pay of a fender employee increase by 250% in the last 25 years? If it has, good for them, I hope so!
Supply chain issues causing new stuff to become harder to obtain results in the sellable value of used stuff going up. I was able to sell one of my road bikes last summer for a profit because bike shops everywhere were/are sold out of everything that costs less than $3500+.
I would imagine the used musical equipment market has experienced the same effect. Maybe all this craziness will smooth out some day but i fear this is the new normal for years to come.
Groceries are the new basses…I will say the rising costs have made me shift some potential off-the-shelf purchases into custom builds. In my collection I'm past buying much stuff in the $300-500 range anyway. I liked some of the nicer USA Fender stuff when it could be had a good bit under $2k, but at $2k or above I'm realizing that I can build EXACTLY what I want and save some change. I don't care about resale. I am not in the hobby to churn basses. I only sell something if I work with it for awhile and just don't like it.
I just bought a nice new roasted maple Fender P neck for $340 for a Mark Hoppus PJazz inspired project I'm working on. I feel like the neck is the most important part of a bass, and the hardest to get right. Quality custom roasted maple necks I've seen are at or nearly twice the price of this Fender. The stock specs and shape are exactly what I want anyway, so there's no need to go custom here. Fender isn't too bad at making necks, lol!
I'm sourcing a custom solid maple body for about $200 and the largest cost will be the crazy 5 or 6 step paint job I'm having Sims Custom Guitars do for me. The paint won't be completed until April or so. About $400 in electronics and hardware (USA Hipshot Ultralites, Hipshot Kickass bridge, DiMarzio P pickup, assorted knobs, pots, jack, straplocks, Hipshot string retainer, strings) and I'll be in it for about $1500. I'll attach the hardware and load the electronics myself, then probably another $100-200 for neck fit and setup by my luthier buddy.
I'm so excited because this Fender neck feels and looks GREAT! To the masses, it will just be some crazy custom Fender. To me it will be a celebration of a bass I've always thought was interesting, a band that was a big part of my teenage years, and a visual tribute to my hometown. (Crockett and Tubbs would love this thing!)
I have seen parts pricing creeping up as well, like @JRA mentioned. I bought a Hipshot Kickass bridge for $42 last year. I paid $56 for another last week. As well, availability is dwindling. I'm watching things in my online carts go OOS regularly, often with no alternative sources to be easily found. I'm actually buying ahead for some of the less expensive parts that I know I'll need on future builds. (Gunna do a '51 Tele style bass next)
Like @el murdoque I am also in sales. I am thankful to have just received a good bump in my bass pay (haha! see what I did there?) as well as having just closed one of my biggest projects to date, with a pipeline of pending deals more full today than it has ever been.
In my day-to-day life I'm more frustrated that the price of groceries has skyrocketed! I am the primary chef and shopper for our house. This is going to sound dumb, but I felt like I finally "made it" when about five years ago I stopped worrying about whether nice ribeyes or filets were on sale or not at the grocery store. We had enough excess funds that I just got what I wanted when I wanted it. Now I'm making more money than I ever have before, but I'm back to watching for sales to come around before I'll let myself enjoy a nice steak dinner. Cereal used to be a pantry staple for cheap tummy-filling fodder. Now it's $5/box, too! I am solid middle-class and am just adjusting to it all while grumbling a bit here and there, but I really feel for folks that are right on the edge and getting absolutely crushed. Costs for all of the more basic, inexpensive foods generally used to feed a family seem to be far outpacing the increases we see elsewhere. It's here where my wife and I are trying to keep our eyes open more for opportunities to help folks around us. A $100 increase on a USA Fender bass is not such a big deal compared to a $100/week increase in food prices for a family of four trying to get by.
Short of being a millionaire, i cant imagine dropping 6 thousand dollars on a bass. I mean, is a 6 thousand dollar bass really 5 thousand dollars better than a 1 thousand dollar bass? If so I’d love to hear why.
JazznFunk
Supporting Member
I guess I was lucky in my timing, since most of my recent major purchases were done in 2020 and early/mid 2021 before the inflation bug really bit. I generally never buy anything at full retail anyway, so I waited for sales to pick up an additional MarkBass 2x10 Traveler cab, a Sterling StingRay34 (natural/roasted maple), and finally a MarkBass Little Mark Vintage amp (surprisingly, one that was Made In Italy vs. Indonesia - must have been N.O.S.). All were on sale at Musicians Friend, and I used my Platinum Card to spread out the payments with no interest. All of my other basses I've owned since the mid-2000's, and it's crazy to see how those particular ones have skyrocketed in price if I were to buy them now. Looks like I need to seriously update my replacement costs for insurance riders!!
JazznFunk
Supporting Member
^THIS. Our grocery bills even for smaller trips have been insane. It'll put you off big gear purchases for sure right now.
Those same demons speak to me… “You have a four string and a five string… but you need a separate 5 string to play in 1/2 step down tuning so you don’t have to keep retuning your bass… and maybe you should get another 4 string and put flat wounds on it… or should you get a third 5 string for that? Oh also get a separate 4 string for D standard so that you can set it up to play well in just that tuning that you almost never play in. A 6 string would be cool too because you like to play higher register melodic stuff sometimes. But if you are gonna get a 6, may as well get a 7 instead and have a conversation piece. On that note, aren’t 8 and 12 string basses cool even if they are pretty useless? Fretless basses sound cool too. Oh and maybe you ought to get a short scale because it’d be more comfortable to lazily play lounging on the couch. And even though you know most acoustic basses are crap, it’d still be neat right? One last thing… did you see that amazing sea foam green fender on reverb that costs 5x what you have any business spending on a bass? You still have room on your credit card right? RIGHT??”
Freaking $20 for a 4 pack of chicken breasts… not even the organic stuff. Chicken for crying out loud! It’s usually the second cheapest meat next to ground beef. It’s annoying for me.. but i feel bad for families who were already tight on groceries.
There are still deals out there if you buy used and are patient. So I've bought a few things recently and plan on a few more guitar and bass purchases this year, but if you just run out and buy something new, or in many cases even used, prices to me are a bit silly. I mentioned it on another thread, new Fender Roadworns are $1399+tax. You would be hard pressed to find a bigger RW fan than me, I've always thought they were great basses for the money. But it was not that long ago you could find one here in the classified for ~$750. Which was a really good value. They are nice, but you'd be over $1,400 out the door for a new one today, and for a a MIM P bass, that's a hard no from me, but to each their own if people are paying it.
I paid 4 bux for a head of lettuce. Buying food is out of control if they even have any on the shelves. Things are not going well.
Lol, buying gear? Gigs aren't paying more, students aren't paying more . . . in a couple months I'll be lucky to afford food.
Food tripling, gas doubling? Yes, that happened in the last year. A year ago, I made a decent living. Well, back that up, in 2019 I made a decent living. 2020-2021 was weird.
That decent living is no longer decent. I had no problem with what students and gigs were paying in 2019.
JazznFunk
Supporting Member
And I get the sense you really, really want to make it known where you feel the sole source of all of these troubles is coming from. Disengaging so as not to violate the no political discussions clause of the rules here. Good day, sir.
Nonsense. J > P. Fight me old guys!
I am P Bass guy at heart and I know it. When I look at my stabel, I have 2 Js, 1 Sterling and a G&L lol
You reach a certain age and you know your yesterday’s outnumber your tomorrows and there is a good chance that all of your tomorrows will not feature the quality of life you prefer. That reality means I really want each day to count.
