Ok... I think I should say something or add more detail and be a bit more long winded before things get out of control.
A lot of people thru out the years know me as a champion of Japanese made guitars. In fact, my boutique amps came first before any of my boutique guitars. However that changed when I met my Baker#55. It was the first US$5K guitar that I bought and of course, the first question that entered my mind and I think anybody's mind is -- is it MARGINALLY worth it? Unfortunately, I had difficulty trying to identify the MARGINALLY and arrived at the conclusion that nothing I had tried or owned in the past was like it. But siyempre may honeymoon period. And as time passed, it was truly difficult to find something to equal it -- I was not discounting the possibility that I should find something superior to the Baker firemodel#55 in the future. Siyempre gusto mo rin mukhang ESP, Jackson, Dean or Ibanez with the properties of the Baker. Pero wala. Gusto mo rin mas cheap rin na name brand kasi gusto mo dalhin sa gig and to belong with the "boys club". Again, you can ask even my luthier friend Arie Hipolito, and he will ascertain that nothing he has tried has all the properties that Baker Firemodel#55 has. If there is one guitar that Mr. Hipolito believes that goes on auto-pilot, thats the Baker Firemodel#55 which as I said before does 30-40% of the work for you in terms of effort and sound. It just seems to sound good and respond on its own naturally as if it can read your mind. A truly magical guitar that we -- both of us -- cannot explain -- how and why and how it came to be as it is. By the way, it really shines beyond expectations on my boutique amps. If there is one guitar that can show the difference very well between a production amp and great sounding and designed boutique tube amp, this is the guitar. Personally, the joke between us is... are the firemodel 55's days numbered when the Gil Yaron arrives? Either which way, in my personal assessment, it will be a zero sum game. There will only be one winner and one loser.
Can there be something cheaper to rival firemodel55? I don't think so. There seems to be a minimum amount of TLC and quality that goes into a magical guitar that costs money with the final sprinkling of magic dust from God.
On the other hand, I have tried more expensive guitars and guitars at the same price of my baker that don't sound as good. Even, similar bakers. Can they sound better than average epiphone? Yes. Will an outstanding Epiphone beat an average sounding Baker? Maybe. The question though remains, how many outstanding Epiphones are out there? Maybe a handful or so.
There are two extremes when it comes to buying guitars which I personally observed:
a. The guy who believes that tone is in the hands and believes that great tone can be had cheap. Yet the funny thing is that he has more than a dozen cheap guitars that if you total can buy a single or two great sounding guitars. Worse, these guys cannot buy a guitar without testing it and being finicky about it despite their profession that tone is in their hands.
b. The guy with tons of expensive guitars but does not know or hears what sounds great. They usually flip their boutique or vintage guitars and end up round robin with the same type guitar after two or three years. Worse, these guys have to technically cite a specific quality about the guitar to justify keeping them in their inventory. Unknowingly, it reveals that their guitar ain't good because the really great sounding guitars excel in almost all aspects of guitar playing.
Something closer to home... I can pick out great sounding American Standards from a fresh batch of arrivals in Perfect Pitch. Its easy for me. One in twenty is the success ratio for American Fender today. Yet compared to a hand picked classic suhr picked by the suhr factory, it does not hold a candle. Despite it being at least 2.5 x more expensive than an American Standard, ang layo pa rin. The question is NOT whether its MARGINAL... rather it becomes a question of which one to use. And the Suhr wins out all the time. So, its not a question of whether Suhr can produce duds, they do.... but those that they produce with exceptional mojo ain't cheap by asian and even by average american standards.
