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Post by ken1953clark on Feb 4, 2010 19:38:00 GMT
Just been on the Busker site and noticed that all the prices have gone up, Ouch! Maybe the prices went up yonks ago and the website was out of date.
MM Lightning from £545 to £576
MM Blues from £495 to £545
I'm still want to get one, its just gonna take a little longer.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2010 21:43:44 GMT
....don't forget the shipping charge of £25......still a bargain yes?
Jay
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Post by subtoxin on Feb 4, 2010 23:24:30 GMT
Looks like price rises across the board - in the US, National Resophonic's lowest priced metal body (Triolian) just rose from $1840 to $1955.
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Post by andys on Feb 5, 2010 12:33:22 GMT
The price of musical instruments (along with many things) has gone up. Fender increased their prices last year, the price of even budget far east instruments has gone up, and to be honest the gap in price between really budget instruments and mid/top end ones has actually narrowed.
Take the new Classic Vibe Squiers. For not that much more than their new price you can get a Meixican Fender.
Busker guitars have gone up in price, but so have the prices of things like Ozarks and Vintage. Busker guitars are still really good value for money IMO, because of the personallised service you get, which you dont get from similar priced guitar makers.
Also some of that price increas is a result of increased VAT isnt it?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2010 15:02:28 GMT
Just ordered a MM blues 12 fret with a slight cosmetic paint defect for £500 + £25 shipping.
Do what I did - beat the price rise by ordering a (just slightly) beat up guitar!
Call Robin, he's got other 'seconds' in stockj right now
At least the first scratch on it won't be my fault!
I like the 'worn' look anyway!
Regards Zwit
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Post by Michael Messer on Feb 5, 2010 16:03:46 GMT
Hi everyone,
Like so many businesses these days, we have had no choice. So much has changed in the world of business since we ordered our first guitars in the Spring of 2008. We held out for as long as we could!
Certainly a good way to keep the price of an instrument down is to buy a 'second'. We usually have a few in stock.
Subtoxin, thanks for your offer. We will get some photos up very soon.
Shine On Michael.
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Post by Stevie on Feb 5, 2010 18:32:41 GMT
No one has mentioned the StewMac "Golden Age Restoration" tuners that are now standard.....
Any offers for a set of standard machine heads taken from my Blues? Sorry, wrong part of the forum ;<D
Seems as though we're actually getting a very good deal indeed!
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Post by ken1953clark on Feb 6, 2010 10:28:31 GMT
Thanks for all the replies. I got the 'old' price for the Lightning wrong in the original post, it was £525, sorry. So both Blues and Lightning have gone up £50, around 10%. I should have also mentioned that Busker have increased all their prices so that their brass bodied guitars are the same price as the Lightning, their steel bodies the same as the Blues. In fact there seems to be a defacto price range forming (don't even whisper cartel . I notice on Google yesterday that most sellers of the brass bodied Ozark 3515 BTE (and I'm not even suggesting they are equivalent) are selling at the same price as the Lightning is now. There's not anything in the replies that I would disagree with. I wasn't suggesting the quality, service, or spec had gone down, that MM was supping with the devil or anything else. The Lightning is a great guitar and I still want one. I suppose I was surprised by ... a) the size of the price hike. In normal economic conditions a 10% hike would raise eyebrows. We are not in normal economic times however and until this recession is over I guess a firming-up of prices is happening. b) the way I found out. I mean here we are on this forum generously opened up to us by Michael where we sit and chat with like-minded souls about all things slidey. Sure its a marketing device for Michael, and good luck to him, but its more than than that, I see it as a community, (an old fashioned concept I know). So much so that 2 weeks ago a 100 or so of us collected together at Percyfest. MM was there, Busker were there, we were there, maybe I missed it but I didn't notice any "Buy now! Prices going up next week" signs. I'm assuming that if the specification has improved then they must have known the price was going up before the guitars left China. Anyhow I hope it all works out. For many years I worked for a shy, self-effacing guy called Alan Sugar. Whatever you think of him he knew the market and in particular pricing. Loads of really good products never got to market because they couldn't be got down to a magic £X99 price tag (or in old-speak 19/11½d). He knew pricing is psychological, we are all intelligent guys but we don't make purchase decisions based on logic alone. You know that £499 is really £500 but your mind sees the leading 4. Same with these guitars, last week, to my mind, the Lightning was "just a bit over £500" i.e. affordable, this week its "nearly £600" (with the delivery charge which I hadn't even considered last week). So although the price has gone up £50, the perception is that its gone up £100. That quite a jump.
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Post by robn on Feb 6, 2010 16:25:54 GMT
Hi Ken,
The price rise is, as Michael has said, for a number of reasons. Firstly, we are now fitting the stumac restoration tuners to all our guitars (because about 90% of musicans were asking for them). We have to buy these, retail, from the US in $ and then fit them here in Wales. For many months we have been charging £37.50 to fit these tuners. Secondly, we have had a 2.5% VAT increase (that's £14 of the price increase on a Lightning!). If you add those two factors up (the tuners and the VAT) you get the jump between the old and new prices for our guitars.
The pound fell from $1.95 when we started to $1.40 last year (now at $1.60), which we have absorbed. Shipping costs went up 15%,which we absorbed. And we are having to spread the extra global cost of brass and steel across all our guitars.
We keep our fixed costs down by keeping the business small. And that means that we can offer the value that we do (these are the best reso guitars you can get for the price!) But this also means that the variable costs (exchange rates, parts costs, shipping etc) are closer to the surface and so changes in those make a real difference to us.
There is no cartel - the fall in the pound, and increase in shipping prices are the primary reasons that prices have gone up across the industry. We have absorbed those costs - but the additional parts price and VAT we have had to pass on.
Robin
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Post by Michael Messer on Feb 6, 2010 18:54:00 GMT
Hi Ken,
Your points are well put and certainly deserved a detailed answer, which Robin has done very clearly.
To answer a couple of your points;
We really did hold out for a long time before making this price rise. We are also aware of the psychological effect of a £499 or around £500 price tag and when I went into this with Robin my soul intention was to create a real resonator guitar for under 500 quid. We did achieve that, but so much has changed since the Spring of 2008 when we started that we have no choice.
I agree that we could have made an announcement at the Slide Festival, but the truth is that we had not planned as Busker & MM Guitars to be there on a sales stand. It was something that was arranged at very short notice and I think that the display guitars were actually being delivered to customers at the festival. Because the festival was predominately MM Forum members I did not see the need to promote MM & Busker guitars and had not even considered a stand. It was only when Robin said he was coming that I brought the two display screens and we ended up with a Busker MM stand. Apart from being in our warehouse, I have never seen so many MM guitars in one room!
Thanks for your comments Ken. We do take these things seriously. I am always interested to know how people feel about what we are doing. Making records, playing slide guitar and negotiating my way around the music business, is second nature to me, but running a company producing and selling guitars is a whole new world to both of us.
Shine On Michael.
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Post by snakehips on Feb 6, 2010 20:34:57 GMT
Hi there !
As for the price rise, you guys should have bought a Lightnin' when it was £495, like I did !!! Mind you, I've spent money on it since - Stewmac tuners, NRP hot-rod cone + Highlander pickup.
I think the MM Lightnin' (with neck binding, Stewmac tuners and proper maple biscuit bridge and smooth perfect fret ends) is easily worth £700.
As for the MM Blues - I'd have thought the painted steel idea should have cost a good bit less ?
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Post by gouranga on Feb 7, 2010 12:55:18 GMT
Thanks for the nice guitars and nice prices Michael and Robin, and thanks for the personal caring after-service. As other MM/Busker owners have said on the forum so many times, 'They are satisfied with the product' They sound great these beasts and that is for me the main thing. Getiing the sound you can feel and be with, is the real big thing. I am certainly far from being expert or even good in this subject. But like most, I know what I want, what I feel, and the music and mood I want and these guitars assist in that so much. So for me, you can't put a price on that... But the price that I have found it at, is a good one. Thanks Michael and Robin. Robin Hood... Robbed the rich to give to the poor (coneheads).
Take care. From a happy novice...
Gouranga
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Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2010 8:41:58 GMT
Gents remember that these are very very good guitars.
I played an acoustic gig a while ago and took my Busker Deco and a Fylde Goodfellow. The Goodfellow will today cost you about £1,500, or more with the Headway pickup.
Nobody at the gig, and there were several players there, thought that the Goodfellow was the better guitar.
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Post by eholst on Feb 9, 2010 10:24:41 GMT
Hi there....
As Robin explains, the price rises are something they can't avoid...I myself think that Robin explains very clearly and deeply about why the prices goes up...
All over the world, prices go up...you see it every day in different kinds of stores....the fatal economy storm in last part of 2008 surely did it's work....
I look more at what I get for the price, rather than just compare to competitors' offers...and if that ends up in a thump up, then I buy it....(if I can afford it)...
I would not hesitate to buy even if it went up with 75 £ rather than 50 £....Robin and staff should also get their portion....they also get the increased costs in their private economies....
Robin and staff surely do offer a service that is top, I'm sometimes appauled when I visit stores here in Copenhagen, sometimes it feels as if you should not have entered the store at all......:-)
Best wishes
Eholst
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Post by thebluesbear( al) on Feb 9, 2010 11:58:29 GMT
Hi everyone at the slide festival i know that one of the guitars was robins personal guitar , 2 for delivery to me and one to someone else as i understand..... while in this day and age with less money price rises are difficult IMHO i think we need to look at what we get for our money lets ask ourselves " how much would a similar sounding instrument cost if busker or MM didnt exist "? .....on that basis ..consdering There are automatic upgrades with the tuners etc .....it doesnt seem unreasonable
Others may disagree but thats my honest take on the matter ......
Al
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