Richard Hoover talks about the “Vault Guitars” for NAMM

Thanks for the appetizer! Looking forward to the main course! 😉

OH MY The Bling….THE BLING !!!

tasteful! and whoa, RH is “playing it!”

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by pto.

Yep, looks like a C7th. 🙂

Looking forward to seeing more of the four!

good catch on the chord.

I’ve seen SCGC guitars as high as $40 k these days. Ancient Kauri, 3,000 year old Spruce, 45 style inlay,$14,000 Brazilian add ons.

The high end is beyond my reach.

re: pricing… the thing that jumps out at me, and i think it would be reflected in the pricing of these legacy (true legacy!) instruments for Richard, is indeed the provenance of the wood, the provenance of the trees. (not even taking into account the spiritual connection with the trees). so the dartboard that i would start with is: as noted, the scgc kauri om-45 currently at Down Home is 48.2K. Dana Bourgeois’ 2023 number 10,000 om-45 with, to me, his most spectacular wild “private stock” Brazilian (I’m typically only a fan of vertical non-stump) and solid 14K Gold-bar RIBBON in place of abalone/ablam for all the seams, was 95K (Dana bought the gold for something like 18K).  Bill Collings’ #20,ooo D-45 using his most precious private stock of vertical-to-the-last-drop old-growth Brazilian was 75K in 2015 (albeit in the days when Collings still allowed 10-off.) so… upward of 100k, easy.  hope i’m wrong for my sake, but not for scgc! Still a small shop…unbelievable.

Small Shop companies like SCGC with a building, 15-20 staff, inventories of materials located in area where the cost of living is 86% higher than the national average (https://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/california/santa_cruz) need to charge premium pricing to exist even with a moderate profit. Because they work through brick and mortar resellers, that further adds to their pricing structure. One area of opportunity for profit is in the area of wood upgrades. The purchase price, time value of money and what the market will bear all go into that. Individual luthiers do not have the same overhead structure of SCGC + its retail network and tend to charge less even for seasoned, quartersawn, flitch matched Brazilian Rosewood. Sets like that become rarer and rarer as each year goes on. I wish them well on the project. I suspect they will end up with “collectors” but hopefully as tools will be played and enjoyed.