But rather than pare the savings off the retail price for a truly rockbottom deal, the instruments took a different route, maintaining a moderate rather than extreme low budget price, and throwing in luxury features. Made in India, and featuring solid ash bodies, the Encore Vintage Standard, Vintage Custom and Vintage Custom Deluxe guitars conformed to the above. So even the low budget guitar ranges were reverting back to solid wood, tending to save the money by shifting production somewhere less expensive instead. Plywood construction, which had driven down costs in the ‘80s, was now widely being deemed an unacceptable compromise in guitar building, and buyers had been made very wary of it. ![]() The mid 1990s saw massive amounts of jostling in the market, with every last measure taken to bring guitarists previously unimaginable value. Market-busting cheapies like the Marlins and the Korean Squiers presented the ultimate, unprecedented challenge to Encore, but Encore undercut them, and did so without losing playability or appeal. The fact alone that Encore endured through that exceptionally tough 1980s decade, when so many other budget brands barely made it past the starting line, was a testament to the guitars’ eminent fitness for purpose. Tokai, Fernandes and Fender (under the brand of Squier) put professional quality guitars into revolutionary price territory, and once it was possible for a player to go out and get the superb quality of Tokai or early Squier for £150 – albeit secondhand, there was no longer any way that entry level manufacturers could get away with offering rubbish – even in sub-£100 instruments. As the 1980s progressed, that fact became evermore entrenched in the market. It became clear that obvious compromise was no longer acceptable, and that cheap guitars didn’t just have to be cheap – they had to be seriously usable. ![]() Back when Encore first hit the market, the likes of Columbus, Satellite and Kay were the go-to brands for novices on a tight budget, or of course youngsters who could manage to persuade their parents that they really, honestly, weren’t intending to get the family evicted.īut as the ‘70s morphed into the ‘80s, a lot changed in the world of budget guitars. ![]() Established in the post punk era of the late 1970s, the Encore brand of guitars has, over the years, stood for value in beginners’ instruments.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |