In the late 70’s, the pressure of corporations to show a profit to their shareholders caused the big guitar manufacturers to go overseas to places like Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea to lower their manufacturing costs. Initially, guitar players felt betrayed by the companies they had supported for years. Imagine the high quality guitars they had grown to love now carried little stickers that said things like Made in Japan and Made in China. The stigma of low quality and “cheap junk” was now attached to their favorite musical instruments. Sales slowed and new American guitar companies were opening up to compete with marquis nameplates. Would Jimi Hendrix have played a Stratocaster that was made overseas? Would it have made a difference in the way he sounded? I would imagine that if he played a cigar box he would be an inspiration to guitar players all over the world.

In the 90’s, more corporate pressure and declining quality had all manufacturers, not jus in the music industry, adopting new quality procedures that included buzzwords like “Sigma Six” and “ISO 9000”. People working for large manufacturers knew that not much had changed except that the quality procedures they had been using for years now included more paperwork to prove that they were complying with these “new” quality standards invented by consultants that convinced companies that this would save American manufacturing. Unfortunately, more paperwork also means higher costs that the average musician wasn’t willing to pay. All of these costs were being passed directly onto the consumers.

What most people failed to realize is that these companies that were making instruments overseas were trained by the American manufacturers how to make high quality instruments to the standards that they had been using all along. They taught them how to make high end marquis instruments with foreign efficiency. The downside of this system for the American manufacturers is that these foreign companies took this knowledge and the extra manufacturing capacity and started to create their own lines of high quality instruments. Engineers from these foreign companies are not constrained by the old notions of how things are supposed to be made and are making improvements in the way things used to be done. This proved to be a huge windfall for the foreign manufacturers because they could provide instruments with the same quality standards at lower, more competitive prices.

Musicians benefit the most of all from this. Companies like Arbor and JB Player were partnered with American distributors to bring their high quality products to American musicians at competitive prices. Beginners and pros alike can now walk into a store or go to online music stores like BoutiqueMusic.com and purchase instruments that sound just like instruments costing three to five times as much. These beginners are also accustomed to the fact that most of the products they use are manufactured overseas so the old stigmas of “low quality” and “cheap junk” are relatively unknown to them. All they know is that the guitar they are playing is great. This increased demand of the foreign manufactured products has served to fuel the efficiency engine of the overseas manufacturers and driven them to create even better and more affordable products.