Made In China: Guitars

Before most shops were stuffed with generic local guitars – my first one was an RMB300 (EUR30) Starsun made in Fujian province in the deep south. Thick neck and head, strings far off the frets - but fine for a beginner. Since then (2003) a lot of the large international marques like Gibson and Yamaha have stared building guitars here. Now you walk into an instrument store and get the best brands for a fraction of EU/US costs because low labour costs allow the big brands to sell guitars locally while exporting the majority to international markets.

 

On a trip to the southeastly city of Suzhou the other day I acted on a good tip off from a local musician. The best instruments store in town, the Blues Music Store, is run by a local blues musicians who knows his stuff, I was told. When I found the small, crammed store I also found he spoke the truth. Proprietor Robin Cao, a pony tailed blues funk enthusiast and band member took me through his guitars and his dozens of real and photo-shopped photos of him and famous guitarists. Cao's infectious knowledge (the shopkeepers I bought the Starsun off, in a state-run department store, didn’t have a clue) meant I ended up trying out a dozen guitars and nearly buying one.

 

A Gibson Les Paul at the Blues Music Store in Suzhou costs RMB2,000. It looks like the real thing but it’s not quite. Some enterprising hands at Gibson’s factory in China have been siphoning off guitar bodies. Cheaper, Chinese pick ups are later added and the guitar sold locally. "But you'd never tell the difference," said Cao, whose Blues Music Store located just off the Shi Quan Lu entertainment strip gets business off the sizeable tourist hordes who come to visit Suzhou's famous gardens (it's only 40 minutes from Shanghai to here on a new bullet train serving the region).

 

The real Gibsons are shipped out of China and often come back in as imports, says Cao. An imported “real” Gibson Les Paul retails for RMB11,000 at his store. Gibson in 2002 chose Qingdao on China’s east coast as the location for its first foreign factory – and the first company-owned plant producing Epiphone guitars.

 

Yamaha acoustic guitars sell  for RMB900 at Blues Music. They're not fakes, rather “produced in China to Yamaha specifications” according to the label. That means outsourced to a Korean company who build the guitars at a factory in Dalian and Qingdao, two cities in Shandong province within easy flying district of Korea and Japan. The brand has an edge in China, says Cao, because Yamaha motorcycles are known and admired here.

 

Chinese music shop owners like Cao are getting a lot more sophisticated too. That’s maybe down to more gigging opportunities. Many of Cao's Beijing counterparts also run instrument shops to supplement gigs they play at the bars that have sprung up in Chinese cities. Their methods often differ however. Yesterday I took an Epiphone Les Paul (Chinese made, RMB2,500) to a place on Xinjiekou, a street in Beijing’s old low rise quarter. To change the strings the technician took a pliars and cut the strings just above the guitar bridge. Messy, though he got the strings on in 20 minutes and charged me RMB10 - a euro - for the job.