What erks me.

[08 Ric 4003]

I am a Senior Chief at the Training Center in Yorktown, VA. I am an Electrician's Mate.

[jingle_jangle]

It takes a college degree to brake it and a high school education to fix it. Thank for teaching me how to spell irk. I sorry.

You wanna know how to spell "break", too?

Anyway, Joel, nobody's disagreeing with your basic premise--there are far too many "celebrity endorsed" models out there. What we need to understand and appreciate about the RIC Artists' Series is that they all had very reasonable prices (a slight premium to cover the special features and artist's fees, if any), and are as "handbuilt" as any Fender Custom Shop stuff.

Don't get me started on "relics", either.

What you'll find in reviewing this thread, besides a rapid descent into oblivion before you once again resurrected it on the Third Day, is that it's the details you use to support your argument that invalidated your observations, at least where Ricks are concerned.

It's a point of pride at RIC that their prices are based on the reality of making a great product, and taking a fair profit. And because the company has NO debt load, they don't have huge loans and interest on same and bank lines of credit while they wait for their products to sell like Fender and Gibson do. That factor alone goes a long way toward explaining why a Les Paul or CS Strat has an MSRP twice that of a Rick, while quality of a Rickenbacker is superior to either.

Yeah, Lemmys are pricey. Frankly, I don't think RIC made a penny on that legendary edition of 60. EACH ONE was hand-carved; no two are the same. That's besides all the other special features. The Lemmy was announced in late 1999, became available in January 2001, sold all 60 copies very quickly, and was a burden to produce...the last few left the factory sometime in 2006, as I recall.

$17K? Ah, that Ed Roman a Clef.

[08 Ric 4003]

I agree. Now here is the last thing to go along with your relic statement. Buying a brand new guitar that is "Road Worn". That makes me laugh. Company's deserve to reap the rewards on that one. Anyone foolish enough to buy a new guitar that looks 40 or 50 years old and pays a high price deserves to get taken to the cleaners. Buy a cheaper axe and beat it up yourself. What is everyone English majors? So no one but me has misspelled a word on the forum? I am just happy I can spell "A" in A chord. Just wanted to get the sig thing off my chest. Ric indeed does charge a fair price for their axes. I am talking about the whole market in general on sig models.

[Danotron]

Clapton has a sig model Les Paul. Hasn't played a Les Paul since his was stolen back when he was in Cream. Who associates Clapton with a Les Paul? Slash has a sig model Epiphone Appetite Les Paul. Slash doesn't play an Epi.

I had an odd thought.

Wouldn't all Les Pauls, by definition, be signature guitars (I mean we're talking about a guitar named for Les Paul with his signature on the headstock)?

I believe that would make a Clapton or Slash Les Paul a double signature guitar

Sorry for the interruption, back to the subject at hand.

[ram]

Folks are gonna buy what they want to buy… If there is a market sooner or later someone will fill it. I try not to worry too much about the things I don’t like. I personally am an atrocious speller and even worse typer – thank God for spell check. Ben Franklin (no intellectual slouch by any stretch of the imagination) wanted to implement phonetic spelling – In my mind this would mean just about anything reasonable goes. Communication, such a many splendor thing (or is that splintered??)!!! Les Paul’s guitar was very different from the stock ones issued by Gibson – so I don’t think that they would qualify as a signature copy

BTW - Joel - thanks for your service!

[cjj]

Folks are gonna buy what they want to buy… If there is a market sooner or later someone will fill it.

And sometimes, they just make a market for something, even if it's a silly idea - and end up making millions. Remember Pet Rocks?


Yeah, people can get silly at times, but hey, think of how boring it would be if we were all the same and only liked exactly the same things...

[bassman7365]

"think of how boring it would be if we were all the same and only liked exactly the same things..."

there wouldn't be enough Rics to go around

[08 Ric 4003]

I think I mentioned in the original post that I started that a Les Paul is a sig model. Glad someone agrees with me. It is not about all of us having the same guitar. Look on Fender's website. How many different Strat models are there.
Artist ( 18 ) American Deluxe ( 5 ) American Vintage ( 5 ) Standard ( 5 ) Deluxe ( 4 ) Road Worn™ ( 4 ) American Standard ( 3 ) Classic ( 3 ) Highway One™ ( 3 ) American Special ( 2 ) Classic Player ( 2 ) Pawn Shop Series ( 2 ) Vintage Hot Rod ( 2 ) Blacktop™ ( 1 ) Here are just your differnet Strat choices. Plus the Strat Jimi played is nothing like the one I have. My Ric may look like somebody eles's that has a 4003 but I'll bet his sounds different. I play through a my amp with my effects and my picking style and have after market Sergio Silva pups on it.

Your welcome, It's not just a job it's an adventure, oh wait that was that other branch of the service I was in for only 4 years. Coming up on 22 total with my CG time. Time flys when your having rum.

[just_bassics]

People sell what people buy. Fender can make a Danny Partridge P-Bass for all I care. If it sells, good for them.

What else can be said?

[Danotron]

I think I mentioned in the original post that I started that a Les Paul is a sig model.

You did and I missed it, sorry

Dan

[jingle_jangle]

People sell what people buy. Fender can make a Danny Partridge P-Bass for all I care. If it sells, good for them.

What else can be said?

Here's what else:

Why do you prefer Rickenbackers over other brands? (Or do you?)

This sort of laissez-faire attitude toward ideas and products, puts marketing ahead of quality of idea and execution of product. In the hands of marketing "gurus", it degenerates into cynicism and disrespect for the consumer and his/her hard-earned money. It's why Detroit cars (with some exceptions) sucked for four decades, and why the Japanese took over the market, only to succumb to their own cynicism with the recent Toyota debacle.

And, on its face, this statement that 'if you can sell it, that alone justifies making it', is cynical on its face, too.

There is no comparison between cheap (or pricey, for that matter) "fad" items like the Pet Rock (which is often quoted in this sort of context, but was VERY short-lived and not as huge as folks seem to remember) and expensive, cynically-marketed capital goods that scam people out of a disproportionate portion of their income by playing on celebrity and nostalgia in the name of profit and "keeping the stockholders happy".

It's why I'm glad that RIC is privately-held and beholden to nobody.

[just_bassics]

Yes, I'm so happy that Rickenbacker stays the course!

[ram]

Yes, I'm so happy that Rickenbacker stays the course!

Amen!

[jingle_jangle]

Yes, I'm so happy that Rickenbacker stays the course!

Jim, the addition of the laughing emoticon turned a simple replacement for the long and fascinating post you had originally written, into a statement that, without explanation, could be construed as "cynical"...

The original post made no reference to "supply and demand", although that simple answer could have stopped this thread in its tracks, without allowing it to entertain us as thoroughly as it has. However, this whole "supply and demand" thing was mentioned as a contributing factor to Smith's "invisible hand" principle of economic self-levelling, and was exactly the source for the "laissez-faire" approach of Austrian economic practice.

All interesting theoretical stuff to the economist. However, all of this completely ignores the additional and important factor of contemporary cultural influences on the lives of individuals, perhaps because most of this theory was formulated just as the United States (world leader in supply and demand and the culture that has given it its strongest flavor) was beginning to be noticed as an upstart colony. Milton Friedman and other economists have paid it lip service as necessary to support their own observations and theories, but the issue of personal quality of life and its perceptions by the individual, and how this ties into both fulfillment and marketing of product concepts, has not produced (to my knowledge) any defining studies which break out the societal bottom line when intrinsic value is ignored in favor of profit motive, which is essentially what the original post really implies. This is a much more fascinating and complex issue than a three word, thread-stopping answer would enjoin, and is also more relevant to the question asked in the original post.

If "supply and demand" were the only answer, it would be incomplete and unsatisfying. The discomfort that many feel at the unnecessary and whimsical expansion of a market segment, which in its expansion completely ignores the significance of intrinsic value, is largely due to the unsatisfied feeling of the consumer, of having paid the price and received less than value for one's honest sacrifice. It's more than economics that drives these feelings. It's the feeling of being chumped by a consumerist culture into trading fair and dignified labor for goods with less intrinsic value than that labor merits.

In Adam Smith's time, there was a dream of a leisure class expanding to enfold the majority of the American people--this was the "American Dream". It has been derailed in our own lifetimes by a polarization of wealth brought on by the corruption of politics and business with cynicism and disregard for the general populace, who retain these dreams but have mostly lost the ability to realize them, as more and more wealth (and power) is accumulated by fewer and fewer individuals.

This dream of nearly-blind acquisition as a force for good, carried on through Thorstein Veblen's time (ironic that he died 3 months before Black Friday and the Depression, and thus missed the obsoletion of his work), escaped both scrutiny and disproof, thanks to the Second World War setting the stage and providing the capital spoils for our Flamboyant Fifties. The '50s was the last Great Party, perhaps for all human time.

It's all been downhill from there, leading to boring posts such as this in a guitar forum...

But, believe me, charging more and giving less will always come back to bite the manufacturer in the hindquarters.

Except in one case--religion. And, it's tax-exempt to boot.

[coolhandjjl]

I had an odd thought.

Wouldn't all Les Pauls, by definition, be signature guitars (I mean we're talking about a guitar named for Les Paul with his signature on the headstock)?

I believe that would make a Clapton or Slash Les Paul a double signature guitar .....

But don't blow that for Gibson or they'll put you under 'double' secret probation.