To my mind a guitar for the masses is not in the $999 to $1400 range. It's a Squier Strat, and Epiphone Les Paul or a Yamaha Pacifica etc and probably somewhere in the $200 to $500 range. A guitar in the range Ben is suggesting is probably your semi pro, regular weekend warrior, or maybe a hobby player with a bit more than the average disposable income.
True but you're not really comparing apples to oranges here. An all american made moderate volume (again, we're not talking about 100's a day, maybe 100 a year) guitar at 1299 or 1400 is very much inline with price wise with a MIA american standard strat or lower end US made Gibson. That's a bargain imo.
Again, we're not trying to go after that market. I'm simply doing this in my mind to see if it's feasible to get a guitar out to people who are fanatical about my brand (which contrary to how it seems on here, there ARE some fanatics about our brand) to give them the option of buying a "Kauer" instead of one of the millions of AM STD Strats or LP Studio's out there. I'm not knocking them but if we can do an original Kauer design at that price point and I was a already a fan of the brand and had the choice, I'd want the guitar that a million other people didn't already have. So think of it as "high volume budget boutique" and that's basically it.
Essentially if I can pick up 1% of the people who follow us to buy one, isn't that better than 0%. 1% of just our Instagram followers is enough to make this sustainable. Personally, if you don't want to spend your money with us that's fine too there are thousands (millions?) of guitars at all price points that are equally good or great and that's just fine. All I can do is try to help the people who do want one of ours out.
Also, if we do a 100 and that's all we ever do, then that's fine too. That's a 100 people more than we have no playing our guitars and maybe a large percentage of them move up to Kauer's at some point. That's a win too.
Regarding pickups, have you tried alternative makes from the lower price points like putting some GFSs into an Arcturus for an A/B test? I've not compared things like Lollars and TV Jones with GFSs but I have used Toneriders as replacements in a couple of guitars and to me at least they stand up against "higher" brand pickups I have in some of my other guitars for a lot less money. Perception of the brand is key I guess.
Given the choice, would you buy a guitar with Duncan's you know or the same priced guitar with pickups that the majority of people haven't heard of. Don't get me wrong, I've had lots of Tonerider sets and I like them but I find from my experience, if I have to convince you something is good (or why we do it a certain way) it's not going to sell. The Acadian is that way for us. Everyone who picks one up and plays it loses their mind. Everyone we tell the specs too first won't touch it.