The slow, secret death of the six-string electric.

I'm too broke to buy another electric, even though I actually need one. I believe it has been about 5 years since I bought a new electric and 4 years since I bought a used one. I do see a lot of younger people taking up guitar - just not in the numbers you used to see. And a fair amount of that is the hit music on the radio. Even up through the 90s you had a lot of guitar driven music cracking the pop charts. Today it is all pseudo-R&B and keyboard/sample driven. Or acoustic guitars. The one exception being country, which while the songs are god awful at least there is still a guitar driven element to them.

Actually - I just looked at the Billboard pop charts. Not a single guitar driven song on the list. In fact almost all of it is lame, forgettable, weak ass R&B flavored ear shit. What little guitar is there is buried.
 
I don't think electric guitars are getting less popular. There is another obvious answer for why retail sales would be declining: there are already more than enough electric guitars in the world. If treated with even a small amount of care, an electric guitar will last forever. While one that is played regularly will eventually need frets, I'd venture to guess that the vast majority of electric guitars out there don't get enough playing time to ever require new frets. They are bought, played, and then interest wanes, or they are a second (or third, or fourth, or...) guitar that doesn't get much playing time.

There's just no compelling reason to buy a new guitar. It isn't like electric guitar technology changes. A 1958 Les Paul or strat is virtually identical to ones produced today. Innovations in the electric guitar field are usually not successful.

With craigslist and ebay, it's just too easy to buy used. And electric guitars are simple enough that you don't have to worry (for the most part) about buying used. It isn't like there are lots of potential hidden problems waiting to bite you. Five minutes looking over an electric guitar is generally enough time to know if it is in good shape or not.
 
The guitar will make a comeback.

My older son grew up playing guitar and bass, and gave them up to produce electronic music on his laptop. That lasted about 4 years.

Per his request I rebuilt a Strat copy for him and fixed up his 6 string bass and will send both up to him in Portland. He plans on learning Hendrix's full catalog as well as work on all his favorite Frusciante era RHCP songs. If this is any indication, I wouldn't give up on guitars for the next generations.
 
335clone said:
The guitar will make a comeback.

My older son grew up playing guitar and bass, and gave them up to produce electronic music on his laptop. That lasted about 4 years.

Per his request I rebuilt a Strat copy for him and fixed up his 6 string bass and will send both up to him in Portland. He plans on learning Hendrix's full catalog as well as work on all his favorite Frusciante era RHCP songs. If this is any indication, I wouldn't give up on guitars for the next generations.
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I agree with this, and like Mark said, trends come and go. For a while there it seemed like every new hipster band had a banjo in it, and that has worn off.
 
335clone said:
The guitar will make a comeback.

My older son grew up playing guitar and bass, and gave them up to produce electronic music on his laptop. That lasted about 4 years.

Per his request I rebuilt a Strat copy for him and fixed up his 6 string bass and will send both up to him in Portland. He plans on learning Hendrix's full catalog as well as work on all his favorite Frusciante era RHCP songs. If this is any indication, I wouldn't give up on guitars for the next generations.
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Yeah, I agree. I think for the reasons I stated above, we are in a lull. It will come around again. Who knows if it will be in the same numbers as when GC was expanding. But it will come around.
 
There was a period when penny dreadfuls were collectible and then all the collectors died and they were worthless.

Baseball cards and sheet music and codpieces and corsets and pinball machines and Wurlitzer jukeboxes and Kodak film and Polaroid cameras and operetta and debutantes and elevator operators and plenty more are evidence that what goes around doesn't always come around.

Guitar is still big in KEXP alt.combos, rootsicana, metal, worship bands, country and various other exclusive exclusively American forms of awful, but it isn't really a major player in international pop.

They still sell Squiers, though, and they still sell Suhrs, and we all have too many of everything pretty much, so there isn't much of a problem anyone is actually having here.

I just lent my Squier Affinity strat to a colleague's 12 year old child while they acclimatise to shop for themselves. No idea what they're emulating, if anything. (I threw volume 1 of Stetina's metal leaf and rhythm books because it is after all not my kid.)
 
vonbladet said:
There was a period when penny dreadfuls were collectible and then all the collectors died and they were worthless.

Baseball cards and sheet music and codpieces and corsets and pinball machines and Wurlitzer jukeboxes and Kodak film and Polaroid cameras and operetta and debutantes and elevator operators and plenty more are evidence that what goes around doesn't always come around.
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Now I'm sad because you reminded me that the world keeps insisting on getting boringer and boringer.

Fucking Apple and Baby Boomers and the international corporate casual sensibility.

Beige restaurant-quality pleasantness forever.
 
“John Mayer?” he asks. “You don’t see a bunch of kids emulating John Mayer and listening to him and wanting to pick up a guitar because of him.”

True, but it seems he's influenced a lot of young guys to sing like him, and that's even more disheartening.
 
Mark Wein said:
I saw that article earlier today.

All things go in and out of style. Shit, folks were selling accordions door to door in the 1960's and plenty of amps came with accordion inputs as well as "mic" and "guitar".
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I wanted to play music when I was a kid. So oh no.... I couldn't play anything that was socially acceptable. My parents signed me up to take accordion lessons. They were big fans of Lawrence Welk, and I would turn out to be the next Myron Floren. So I played and practiced my ass off untill I was about 12.... and I got sick of playing the same stuff. My teacher was too exacting... play to the arrangement in the sheet music... done. No added nuances, miss a crescendo or drop a chord button and she would say I wasn't concentrating. And of course the music school wanted me to buy the best accordion on the shelf. Why did I want to do that when I couldn't stand playing what I already had? It was not fun anymore. So I quit playing for a few years.

Then one of my hooligan freinds introduced me to his older brother Dave. He was a 4th yr music student at the local college, and had started attending Berklee in Boston. And he had an electric accordion. Played better than my old teacher too. That accordion could do some stuff I had NEVER heard before. Anyone up for a volume swell doing an arpeggiated chord progression? Great stuff to hear, and murderously hard to actually do. So I took lessons with Dave untill I was about 17 or so. I used my own accordion to practice on, but then Dave ended up meeting his future bride at Berklee and he couldn't do the tutoring gig anymore. At least he made it fun and interesting.
 
WilmerTheWhite said:
The reason is that guitar music is not developing anymore, it´s just retarded. People playing guitar are still talking about Jímmy Page and blues, that happened some 50 years ago. The only guitar music still developing is death metal, but how many are interested in it? There are also some few freeform guitarists around who try new things, but you can never post a freeform clip at a guitar forum - I have experience with that and will not do it again. No one is interested, people are happy with Jimmy Page and blues.
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well said and I agreewhy would i want to listen to a second rate jimmy Page of Buck Dharma or Ted Nugent or whoever...if I want that kinda rock then I'll listen to the real deal, not interested in "in the style of" musicians or perhaps entertainers is a better word. If I want the three chord rock then there's tons of back catalog stuff. Guitar as a background piece or in the context of noise machine, drones, etc then fine but some up and coming band trying to be three chords and the truth or the next Jack White ....not interested....
 
After getting a nice acoustic guitar a few years ago, I've hardly touched my electric's.
I still have no GAS for electric guitars. Amplifiers? Oh, yes!
 
Great article.

Music like instruments is cyclical. I thought that there was a demise over a decade ago and then Rock Band and Guitar Hero comes out. I hated those games but later realized that it had an impact in the resurgence of the instrument that was on a slight decline back then as well. Music in general has grown into so many styles, so many genres. I believe that yes the market is saturated but in a different sense. From the first time that I attended NAMM (1993) to this year, the show has expanded leaps and bounds.

Shoot I remember when there weren't very many pedal companies and now, yikes :eek: !!!
 
WilmerTheWhite said:
The reason is that guitar music is not developing anymore, it´s just retarded. People playing guitar are still talking about Jímmy Page and blues, that happened some 50 years ago. The only guitar music still developing is death metal, but how many are interested in it? There are also some few freeform guitarists around who try new things, but you can never post a freeform clip at a guitar forum - I have experience with that and will not do it again. No one is interested, people are happy with Jimmy Page and blues.
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In Western popular music, sure.

But I don't think that innovation is limited to free-form music by any way, shape, or form.
 
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Funny, almost every new song I hear in rotation on the "local" rrrrrrrrrrrrock station seems to have a pretty prominent geetar in it. Or am I not listening to the hip stuff?
 
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