Tuners - What dictates quality and high price?

[riffmeister]

Amazing how this conversation comes up over and over again. As I look around the room I am sitting in.......the same question can be asked about every object I see.

[Waddy Thomson]

Yep! Seems to permeate society. "Build a better mouse trap......", or a cooler looking one!

[grwagner]

I am too much of an engineer to get past the cost-benefit thing... so it was Gotoh Premiums with roller ends for me. The higher priced ones offer diminishing returns, with the extra price going for performance improvements that an amateur like me cannot make use of, and aesthetics that I cannot justify paying for.

Professional sports people follow some sort of power law for their price, because better performance can make the difference between championship or "also-ran". This makes a huge difference in revenue for their team. At the risk of being controversial, the same cannot be said for manufactured parts for guitars... makes me wonder what kind of tuners Segovia used...

[hyz]

$900 tuners exist because $600 tuners used to be the most expensive tuners you could buy, so someone decided he wanted something even more exclusive. If tomorrow, someone makes a $1200 set of tuners, they will sell to the very same person who was once satisfied with his $900 tuners.

It's really no different than why a man pays $150,000 for a Patek Phillipe.
It's because he wants to set himself apart from the man who paid $25,000 for a Audemars Piguet, who was setting himself apart from the man who paid $9000 for a Rolex, who was setting himself apart from the man who paid $80 for a Seiko, who was setting himself apart from the man who kept time with his cel phone.

This "one-upsmanship" Y Factor is essentially 100% of what drives the high end of any market. Doesn't matter if it's guitars, guitar tuners, wristwatches, the man who insists that only Lie Nielsen tools will do for his workshop, the man who spends $300,000 to buy a 1959 Les Paul, or $3,000,000 for a Stradivarius.

Mans desire to set himself apart from the pack with devices that conspicuously imply his 'superiority' has its basis in hard-wired impulses of human ego. The phenomena detaches itself from rational thought and reason pretty early on during it's evolution.

I am a big fan of Audemars Piguet with the most numbers of pieces in my watch collections. I can tell you it is difficult to explain the different as compare to a $9000 Rolex unless you have a chance to put your hand on one of them. Same goes to me that I cannot appreciate the value of Patek Phillipe may be until I have a chance to own one.

For tuner is the same. If you have a chance to hands-on the top notch tuner like Graf, Rodgers and Gilbert. You will know what the world is like.
hyz

[Guitar]

That's a pretty common 'defense' for the more absurd devices of conspicuous consumption.
That "... once you have one in your hand, you'll understand..." In a way, there's probably more than a bit of truth to that, but it's inspired by irrational behaviors in the human animal, more than it is their ability to objectively discriminate 'quality' from everything else. What separates Rolex from Audemars from Patek has nothing to do with what you hold in your hands.

To wit: If I put a watch in your hands and told you that was either a real Audemars or a perfectly executed, high-end fake, your opinion of that watch wouldn't be resolved until it was validated as being the "real" thing by a watchmaker, in spite of the fact that what separates "real" from "high end fake" is essentially philosophical.

People who get caught up in these sort of irrational consumer patterns- $20,000 wristwatches, $10,000 bottles of wine, $900 tuners- like to circle the wagons and insist that they have some keen insight that others "don't get", that purchasing these things is manifest of their refined appreciation of 'quality' above and beyond the rabble. When you break it all down, that really isn't the case.

I think the reason it gets tricky is that often times, it's otherwise very smart people who get caught up in this sort of thing, so it makes their irrational behaviors a lot more difficult to dismiss by association. In the mean time, the people employed by the modern art, high end wristwatch and five figure guitar markets are more than willing to provide all the emotional support those consumers might need, to keep on believing what they do

[GuitarVlog]

This reminds me of the 60 Minutes segment on "Contemporary Art". You can watch it via this link. It goes for 14 minutes. You'll be quite surprised at what people pay for what they see as art.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id= ... contentAux

[Alexandru Marian]

Come on guys lets not exaggerate all this. A high end tuner is not crazy "art" that snobs pays fortunes on. They operate much more smoothly and precisely compared to a cheap tuner. They are made from higher quality materials and in most cases they are (undeniably) artistically engraved. They are slowly made by a guy who needs to make a living, not poured by machines. If a nice tuner is too much for somebody, I really hope/she doesn't play anything more expensive than a 500$ factory guitar.

[simonm]

Comparing the more expensive tuners to $100k plus or even $9k is total nonsense.

Yes, I agree that tuners cheaper than Rodgers or Alessi or Graf or a few more do a perfectly good job of tuning a guitar. But the expensive tuners are no more than x40 times the cost of the cheap tuners and no more than x3 the cost of good tuners. Whereas the watches people have been mentioning are x1000 to 10,000 more than the cheapest and x50-500 more than pretty damn fancy watches.

High price watches and other consumer goods are marketing driven. The prices are set to be "exclusive" and have no relationship whatsoever with the cost of producing the watches per se. When did you ever see guitar tuners taking full page ads in magazines like Forbes or The Economist?

The "high" price tuners are essential produced by one or two people by hand and the pricing is on a cost plus basis. If you calculate what those people are making per hour once you take overheads out you'll find it is probably no more than a small multiple of what someone in McDonalds earns. The same is probably true of most luthiers.

If the professional luthiers (or the tuner makers) could price their guitars based on their customers incomes their finances would look a lot better e.g. if the customer is a US lawyer who bills his/her time at $200?. $500? an hour then a guitar that took 120 hours to complete would cost 120*hourly rate which $24k or $60k with these rates.

[tddarco]

Tuning up several times in a practice session or live can be a real pain in the a**. The better the tuners (mechanically speaking) the less of a pain it becomes. I don't mind paying for good tuners just as I don't mind paying for a good instrument. Money well spent as far as I'm concerned. -Tony

[bacsidoan]

Come on guys lets not exaggerate all this. A high end tuner is not crazy "art" that snobs pays fortunes on. They operate much more smoothly and precisely compared to a cheap tuner. They are made from higher quality materials and in most cases they are (undeniably) artistically engraved. They are slowly made by a guy who needs to make a living, not poured by machines. If a nice tuner is too much for somebody, I really hope/she doesn't play anything more expensive than a 500$ factory guitar.

+1
Mr. Rodgers, Mr. Alessi, Mr. Graf ... are not "rich" people by any means. They are trying to make a living that they think is commensurate to their skills. If you think that their prices are excessive, then don't buy their machines.

[Les Backshall]

...They are slowly made by a guy who needs to make a living, not poured by machines...

Well so are luthier built guitars, but people won't pay £10,000+ just because the maker needs to make a living. For tuners though, we are talking about precision engineering, in this respect being 'poured by machines' might be expected to produce tolerances and repeatability equal to anything 'hand made'. I've played on instruments with many of the top makes of tuners attached and in terms of functionality, they're all much the same. Some are heavier, and some lighter to the touch which gives a difference of feel, but all are excellent for tuning the guitar. It's perhaps worth mentioning that the guitar can make a difference as well - a top tuner in holes that are out of alinement are a waste - and I've seen that more than once. Aesthetics is another matter entirely, and paying a lot of money for hand sculpted plates is really an 'artistic' decision. The artwork may be beautiful, but it doesn't make them function any better per se.

...If a nice tuner is too much for somebody, I really hope/she doesn't play anything more expensive than a 500$ factory guitar...

That's a remarkably precious comment, Alex. How much should someone have to pay for 'nice' tuners before they qualify for a guitar costing more than $500? I've yet to come across a smoother tuner - at any price - than the bearing ended Gotohs; would they qualify?

They are trying to make a living that they think is commensurate to their skills. If you think that their prices are excessive, then don't buy their machines.

Exactly.

Les

[BlueNo]

I hesitate to enter the tuning machine fray, it's a tad heated, but might I add, in my case, I was happy to pay the cost of his tuning machines to Mr. Rodgers not only for the machines' appearance and action, but also for the time he spent emailing me back answers to my stupid questions (yes I know, there are no stupid questions, only stupid people) about tuners and my dithering about the engraving style, and accommodating a bit of a rush for my Luthier. This time spent away from his work must cost, one way or another, more than a mass producer selling an off the rack tuning machine through a reseller absent bother from the customer. I'm similarly happy to work through a luthier who has spent time accommodating my naive questions and advising me on customization and sending me pix of the build. And I occasionally like steak, even if it is more expensive than a bowl of oatmeal and a vitamin pill, and my Subaru even if a Chevy would suffice.

Blueno

[Alexandru Marian]

Les,

my post was more into comparing under-100$ tuners to high end. 10 or 50$ tuners are still machine poured but they lack the engineering precision. And they look like ....

If you bring the 250$ ones into discussion it becomes quite grey. A deluxe Gotoh might be (arguably) as accurate and smooth as a Rodgers, but I doubt anyone can claim is equals it in beauty. Why beauty matters? Because the tuners are a part of the guitar. I can't look at them outside the guitar. I don't care only about their function, I want them to be beautiful and I want them to match the aesthetics of the guitar. I consider the guitar as an object of beauty not just a sound producing tool, otherwise I wouldn't waste 80% of the building time on making a rosette, purfling, seeking clean and precise workmanship and finally polishing it until my elbows fall.
On the pricing, I make my prices as to allow me to cover the expenses, replenish the wood stock and put some bread on the table and a sock on my feet. At which stage I don't care about what the buyers think of my prices. If nobody is buying I'll have to quit. I thought the same rules apply for most guitar (except the famous or hyped ones) and tuner makers.

[riffmeister]

I like Rodgers tuners. A lot. A whole lot. Extremely well-made. Beautiful materials. Flawless function. Aesthetically perfect for my tastes. Very much worth the upcharge for me. I wish all my guitars had them. Your mileage may vary.

[Robert Webster]

For aesthetics on a Spanish style guitar, my vote in the $250 range had been Fusteros. Hand engraved and thoroughly Spanish. I rue the day they retired. Mechanically, they were rattley as a set of Schaller Hausers but worked quite well enough.

Bob