No love for J/C's at Guitar Expo?

[BLOOD SPLATTER]

Have collected Charvels & Jacksons for many years....IMO....has always been a niche market....Charvels & Jacksons (no matter which era) will never have the collectability of Gibsons or Fenders....some w/artist associations (original San Dimas era VH striped Charvels or Rhoads guitars) may hold value but....they'll never be accepted into the "vintage" market by mainstream collectors!!

[xenophobe]

Has there every been love for heavy metal cheese logs, NO. For those of us old enough we can remember when stores couldn't get rid of pointy or pointy headstocked guitars. Granted older higher end metal guitars have gone up in value SD era charvels and Jackson's, Hamers, deans and BCRich aren't as cheap as they once were but given their rarity and the fact they were all basically handmade customs they are very under valued when compared to gibsons and fenders and always will be. To most dealers it's still a niche market and they buy accordingly.

Remember how much SD Charvels were selling for a decade ago? There was so much interest and prices were artificially high before the whole Charvel Jackson rift formed. There are probably still a handful of people that might pay $5-$10k for undocumented pre-pros, but those numbers have dropped, not increased. A lot of people who bought them because of the hype they were generating aren't really into it that much anymore. A few of those collectors made out like bandits, but most of the people who got sucked into that had their asses handed to them when they found out their geniune pre-pros were just fab fakes.

[j2379]

Xeno I remember it well. IMHO those prices were caused by a handful of guys all fighting over the same guitars and everyone wanting an elusive strat headstock charvel. It became more of a pissing match than collectors setting a market price.
C/Js and BCRs have been my main guitars forever and in the time the SD CJ sky rocketed in price and now seem to be back down to a more normal level. The BCRs kept going up slowly and continue to.

[Chiefgroover]

Lots of people who have never owned a Charvel or Jackson thinking they are metal only guitars, mind you Jacksons marketing doesnt help, I cant see their logic, Mr. Jackson would not have gone this narrow focused road.

[WYLDCHYLD]

As someone who has about 120 '80's shredders in his collection, (BC Rich, Charvel, Kramer, ESP, Ibanez, and Jackson mostly, all either bright flashy colors like pink, or wild graphics), I personally hope the market stays low, because I'm not done buying...
I don't want to lose out on buying an axe I like to some white collar golfer who just wants to shove them in a storage unit...these babies need to be played, seen and enjoyed...!

While it may not inspire folks to bring out many new ones out of their closets or under their beds if prices aren't high, I don't buy these as investments, I buy them because they are pure joy to play, the way they look reminds me of a time when music was truly guitar driven and fun, sluts were plentiful in concert parking lots, and I love the quality they were made with that is rare to see today.

Buy what you like to personally play and enjoy, and you'll never make a bad "investment"...

[xenophobe]

Xeno I remember it well. IMHO those prices were caused by a handful of guys all fighting over the same guitars and everyone wanting an elusive strat headstock charvel. It became more of a pissing match than collectors setting a market price.

Someone could write a book, or at least a good essay on how the segments of collectors/vintage/antique markets can be manipulated and crashed to a point that they never really recover.

C/Js and BCRs have been my main guitars forever and in the time the SD CJ sky rocketed in price and now seem to be back down to a more normal level. The BCRs kept going up slowly and continue to.

BCR is an older company with a much wider group of collectors. Mockingbirds and Eagles and Biches were popular in the 70's with local folk/popular music around these parts. Those hilltop hippies loved those guitars like crazy over here. Even though they made popular metal guitars back in the day, that's not how I mostly remember them. Hippie stoner with a high end guitar with a thousand buttons and switches to play with. lol

Yeah, there's no doubt that older BCs continue to rise. They were nice, custom guitars that weren't perfect but played well and had a lot of personality.

[FloydRose4Prez]

I hold on to my Fusion Special and Dinky Rev Pro because I hope that one day - soon - the value will increase. But still, I have NO intention of ever selling them. These will be passed on to my son. I will teach him how to play but also the history of metal "shredder" guitars from the '80s and '90s.
I want to buy a few more J/Cs the next few years while they are still affordable, and, maybe some by other companies. Japan and USA only.
(My Indo-made Nuno is the exception.)

[RobRR]

Me and my buddy almost ended up going to this show... Glad we didn't, I would have been real disappointed!

[Axegrinder87]

I went to a show and saw one RR3 and a broken DXMG. There was a guy there at the show rocking a Charvel shirt. That would be our beloved Cyg.

[RR05xx]

Have collected Charvels & Jacksons for many years....IMO....has always been a niche market....Charvels & Jacksons (no matter which era) will never have the collectability of Gibsons or Fenders....some w/artist associations (original San Dimas era VH striped Charvels or Rhoads guitars) may hold value but....they'll never be accepted into the "vintage" market by mainstream collectors!!

Hey Chuck, your back (and I guess I am too LOL!). Ahh the memories.....

[pro-fusion]

Let me drop in my standard rant about collectible guitars:

Apart from the a few iconic guitars or rarities, the whole collectible guitar thing is a bunch of horseshit.

There are approximately one zillion old Strats around, and the odds are that the average USA Standard Strat hanging on the wall at GC is just as good as the pre-CBS Strat that some investment banker paid $20k for. The new one certainly is more playable and has better designed hardware. They all vary from guitar to guitar, so the collectability factor has nothing to do with that. It's all hype and hot air, as well as a bunch of idiots who think Clapton and SRV were good because of their choice of axes.

As for Les Pauls, sure, the actual '59 bursts are probably always going to be collectibles. There aren't that many of them around. But to see how idiotic things got, look at what happened to Norlin guitars. I grew up on those, and was shocked/horrified to see them selling for $3k+ a few years ago. If you go to eBay now, however, you'll notice that prices for Norlins have quietly dropped back to just over $2k, which, in inflation-adjusted dollars, is probably about what I paid for my old '81 LPC back in the mid '90s. Some of them are great and some of them suck, and there's no way I'd buy one at any price without playing it first.

PRS has crazy production levels for a US guitar maker. The world is now awash in them. The tops are nice, but--news flash--the set neck ones often don't sound that great. The bolt-ons are wonderful, though. I predict used PRS prices will plummet (they might be, already--I'm surprised to see setnecks not selling for as much as I'd thought).

Now to the shredders. I agree that the Jackson vs. BC Rich comparison is instructive. Jackson made things "custom" in the '80s, but the reality is that most of them are very close to the standard features. Great guitars for actual musicians, but not a lot of fun for collectors. The old BC Riches are all completely unique--largely because they were incapable of making two that were the same. Their quality control was abysmal. Great for collectors, but that's another guitar that I wouldn't buy without playing it first.

Besides all the other stuff people have mentioned, a problem plaguing Jacksons in this way is their very success in inspiring imitators. Go into GC, and you'll see a flood of cheap imports that look just like a Soloist. Sure, they're not as good, but they've had the effect of making owning a Soloist "feel" less special than it did back in the '80s, when it was like owning a Ferrari compared to the dowdy Strats and Les Pauls out there. It's not rational, but then there's nothing rational about paying $500k+ for a '59 Les Paul that was just another production guitar.

[Cygnus X1]

Explains what ESP is reported to have done about their branding?
Dilution, and delusion!

Axe87, that show seems like a million years ago now.

[Gartron]

Great post Pro-Fusion