When you got onboard with
JHS and the Vintage brand,
what was your first order of
business?
I took about 57 models and
kind of went through each one,
spec’ing it and putting what
I considered to be the right
pickup with the right guitar,
and choosing the right vibratos,
tailpieces, and tuners. I went
through all the body shapes
and all the body designs. Some
obviously are paying homage
to past classic designs and some
are unique to Vintage guitars.
What would you say is behind
the success of the Vintage brand?
They just offer so much value
for money. They sound so
good, play so well, and perform
so well, that sometimes people
look at them and go, “Wow!
What a fantastic bargain—it’s
too cheap—why don’t you
make it more expensive?” And
we say, “Why should we?”
Everyone should have access to
a working guitar.
There are manufacturers
who have very, very high dollar
instruments and are obviously
interested in creating aspiration-al consumer brands. But then,
as you come down the dollar
chain from, let’s say, a guitar at
$3000 or $4000, you have to
take features out because obviously if you’ve got everything
in a $4000 guitar, you can’t put
everything in the $2000 guitar,
because then your customer
wouldn’t have to buy the $4000
guitar. We’ve always taken the
philosophy of, “Why don’t we
build it in at $299, rather than
take it out at $299?” We can do
this because we’re not trying to
protect a very expensive guitar.
There came a point in our
industry where prices came
down so low it was actually
impossible to make a reasonable guitar cheaper than what
the big brands were doing. So
the sensible distributors—the
In addition to its Distressed
Sunburst finish, this Vintage
V6HMRSB has a pair of
Wilkinson single-coils,
a WHHB humbucker, a
distressed WVCD trem, and
Wilkinson EZ LOK tuners.
people who were in control of
their own destinies—looked at
the situation and said, “Well,
we’ve got to change. We can no
longer compete on price, so we
have to compete on quality and
features.” And I think that was
the key for the Vintage brand.
We concentrated on the quality
of the product and the features.
It’s part of a long-term plan and
probably the most important
way that we went from a “me
too” guitar to a brand that
people ask for by name because
they know it’s a quality product.
