Cool! I have two Fenders (so far). The “bang for the buck” is amazing - great playability and great sound 
Here’s an interesting article from the Washington post subtitled The slow, secret death of the six-string electric. And why you should care. It’s got the folks at Reddit riled up, and I post that specific link here as the author is participating in the debate.
I just read it and am not sure what my take on it is, but there’s a couple obvious takeaways. First, now that virtually anyone with any time of laptop or tablet already has what would have been a pro-level DAW not that long ago. The number of ways to make and capture sounds with just a few inexpensive or free downloads is something that’s hard for me to entirely wrap my brain around. So a guitar is no longer the most straightforward, most likely to be around method of expressing musicality.
Second, part and parcel of that is that guitar sounds are no longer the dominant force in a lot of new music out there. Whether that’s a true shift or simply a cyclic trend is not something I’d care to lay money on, but I have a suspicion that it’s a permanent change.
There’s an interesting comment made by the author (I think) in the Reddit thread saying more or less that the guitar may come to occupy the same mind-space as the mandolin one of these days. Still an interesting instrument with a dedicated player and fan base, and still used as ‘flavor’ in many compositions and even in the forefront of others, but unlikely to ever be the backbone instrument.
Thoughts?
I’m skeptical that guitars will ever lose their place in modern music.
The soaring guitar solos like Greg Allman did may go out of style. But as a rhythm instrument I see a need for a guitar in the band.
The new digital effects also add to the guitars appeal.
There’s just not that many stringed instruments that can set the rhythm for a band. Violin is a lead Instrument.
Even during the big band era, Tommy Dorsey they had a guitar in the orchestra.
https://goo.gl/images/iwqXWC
Ed Sheeran is hugely popular now.
He’s one of the first major artists to routinely perform live with a looper pedal. A custom Chewie Monsta looper.
Keith Urban is a very skilled guitarist.
aceplace, you’re missing the point. There’s great cello players around today but it doesn’t hold the place it did in pop culture.
Pork Rind I can’t read the article; it’s behind a paywall for me. But I get the gist and yes, guitar and guitar based music will become even more niche over time. But it’s accessibility relative to other physical instruments and the abundance of great guitars out there should keep it one of the most popular physical instruments.
FWIW, the author is helping people around the paywall in the Reddit thread. It’s worth figuring out for the Vernon Reid videos and (among others) George Gruhn’s comments. And for that matter, Neil Schon’s thoughts on Henry J. and Gibson’s direction.
Great, I will dig into the thread and appreciate your helping me access the article.
You just broke my heart. It was Duane Allman who played lead guitar.
I think you’re right though. The recorded catalog of guitar music is so big, with many offshoots and fan bases. Mandolin? Not even a little bit close. All of the reasons why guitars became important still exist. I think it’s more that guitars may become a totem of authenticity. I don’t think the idea will go away in our lifetimes.
Okay, I have read the article and dug a bit into the Reddit. I mean, this is my world of geekery. If you have specific stuff you want to discuss, that would be cool.
Gibson, Henry J., Neal Schon: Yeah, Gibson is a fascinating Harvard Business School case and Henry J is, by most accounts, an acerbic whackjob who got some things right. He has poor relationships with artists, so Schon’s comments are not surprising. But HJ revived Gibson on a Harley Davidson, Get the Icons Right approach. Their Historic Reissues of 50’s Les Pauls, 60’s SGs and the whole model line are what enabled them to catch the wave as youtube and a Baby Boom echo in the Millennials increased demand.
But Henry J has invested so much into trying to crack the code to the future: See Robot Guitars, The Firebird X, the Dusk Tiger (really), and their MAGIC system (some fiberoptic/digital thing, I think???). More importantly, his treatment of dealers, setting huge quotas to qualify for a Dealership and decent inventory - it drove out most Mom and Pops.
Gruhn - yeah, he’s right. It’s a golden age to be a guitar buyer right now, because the instruments of generally high quality and the market is saturated.
As is commented on in the Reddit, the used/secondary market for guitars is VAST. I haven’t bought new in 20 years. Now, granted, I have ended up paying premiums for very old guitars, but nonetheless, they aren’t straight from the manufacturer.
I do believe guitar-based music will continue to become more specialized. I think we’re looking at it incorrectly: in the realm of musical instruments, guitars will continue to be the dominant player, likely for hundreds of years - like the violin, piano, sitar, accordion, etc. in their categories. But yes, physical instruments are losing ground to digital sound creation and production.
I honestly don’t know if I care. The musician in me respects and cares that music stays fresh, so I am happy to listen past guitars.
The guitarist in me knows a secret: playing guitar feels good. It is an accessible-yet-not-easy way to tap into something very special that is physical as well as musical in nature. True of all physical instruments, but the versatility of the guitar - see post discussing KK above - really does keep it at the forefront. But that physical component matters because music is fundamentally physical in nature.
So yeah, whereas physical music is now a subgenre, up until recently, guitars were the apex predator when physical music was the *only *genre. T. Rex indeed. But we still have birds and they are still hugely prevalent millions of years later 
My $.02
I have a lot of thoughts I’d like to pursue, but sadly, I also have clients that neeeed stuff before the weekend. So skeletally, a couple of things that have been rattling around in my head:
I think it’s uncontroversial to say that we’re seeing the results of removing a giant bottleneck in music production and delivery. It can be hard to wrap my head around sometimes, but I do realize the island of stability I think of when I think of the music business through my formative years is not how it’s always been. The Labels, Studios, Radio triangle that’s dissolving seemed so immutable that it’s eye opening for me to think about how it only predates me by a decade or two at most. And now it’s going or gone depending on who you listen to.
The relevance here? That bottleneck that all popular music had to flow through corresponded with the rise of the electric guitar, and ultimately created a feedback look that kept the guitar-heavy (not heavy guitar) sound in the forefront. Now that the barrier to entry is shrinking, we’re seeing a diversity of styles and sounds that feels like a genuinely new thing to me.* Maybe no one instrument or style will dominate like we’ve recently experienced.
Secondly, I was struck by this quote:
I will say that my choice to pick up the guitar was certainly influenced at least in part by what I thought might be the positive social aspects of the deal. I’m in a field where I work with a lot of younger folks, Millennials I suppose, in a creative field. I get the impression from talking to some of these folks (and a lot of them have various musical projects going) that my guitars and guitar playing set me apart as being, um, ‘older’. When I started in this field, it sure felt like all of us played guitar and wanted to be in a band. Just my own anecdotal observation.
*As a personal example, I was your stereotypical midwestern metal head in high school. And that was a long time ago, and I long ago stopped really paying any attention to the scene, so my observations benefit from not experiencing the changes by way of a long, slow, continuous shift. Perhaps my memory is shot (who am I kidding, not perhaps) but the breadth of styles of metal that we had available was not that wide, and despite all of us at my school having individual preferences, we were always flying in at least loose formation, so to speak. Recently, because why not, I spent a bunch of time exploring the metal ‘scene’ via Apple Music. Holy crap are there a million sub-genres there now. Wildly diverse and divergent stuff.
Gone?
Slow Death?
I know a buncha kids via my son being a player justbout of HS. It still is a cool thing socially.
Your small-font anecdote about metal is telling. There are still a ton of players and they find each other outside pop culture.
I wonder what this means for people with collections of guitars?
I’ve bought several nice acoustics. Nothing crazy expensive. I always buy used instruments. New Guitars are like cars. They lose a lot of value after you take it home.
I’ve got more $$$$ tied up than I like to admit. Thinking of them as investments and that I’d at least come out even when I get too old to play.
I guess the joke will be on me or my kids if I’m dead.
Guitars bring me a lot of pleasure. I don’t regret buying the ones I have. I don’t plan to buy any more.
That’s good to hear about your son. The younger crew I wok with is all about either hip hop (which I’m totally down with) or various flavors of EDM (not so much).
Sorry about the small font. Was just organizing my thoughts and it stuck.
The slow, secret death theory is based on new guitar sales, huh? Yeah, they’ve been saturating the market for a couple of decades. It was bound to happen. As mentioned in the Reddit thread, new guitar sales have taken hits in the past, and there were moans about the impending doom of the industry then, too.
They were wrong then, and they’re probably wrong now. The used marked was still very strong when the new market had popped its bubble. Used prices continued to go up, and they continue to go up now. Even if guitar players are a smaller portion of people playing music, the crowd of folks playing music continues to grow, and I haven’t seen anything that makes me think there’s fewer guitar players today than yesterday. Could it become like the violin, still be ubiquitous, but not absolutely central to several styles of music? Yes, but I’d bet that there are more violin players today than there were in 1800, too. That’s kind of the opposite of death.
The Supros in the linked article are a prime example. Very few people valued those guitars back in the day, and you could get perfect ones cheap. Today, even rough ones are pretty pricey. Even Squiers from the '90’s and other Korean made marques of that time are starting to get collectible.
Oh, and Anamorphic Fender seems to be one of those companies that does most things right these days. My band currently uses nothing but Fender amps live, and they’ve been awesome so far.
Quick question.
If you’re stuck strumming the same chord, for several bars.
How do you keep your place?
A friend suggested 1234, 2234, 3234, 4234 if I have to strum the same chord for 4 bars.
Is that the most common strategy?
I used to keep up with it better. 
I guess the years are catching up with me. I tend to zone out strumming the same chord for awhile.
Normally the words can cue me when the chord changes are coming. We were jamming without singing.
By any means necessary.
Sing the words - out loud or in your head.
Count - out loud or in your head. I have no shame in saying “One!” and so on at the start of each measure.
Talk with your jam mates - “we’re coming up on the change, right?”
Body language - make direct eye contact, lean in, and sell the fact that you think you’re coming up on a change. If your jam mates aren’t expecting it, they’ll check in.
Music in groups is about communication. Do that.
I have played in a group for awhile. I’ll try eye contact and counting off the measures when I’m on a chord for awhile.
Thanks
I watched a recent episode of Bourdain’s show “Parts Unknown” on Netflix and the place in question was Nashville. It was, of course, a pretty music-centric episode and my favorite part was Bourdain cooking at and attending a house party at Allison Mosshart’s house (who’s quite attractive, by the way) where The Dead Weather were the house band.
I had never heard of them and I had also forgotten how good a drummer Jack White is. Mostly though, I really enjoyed Dean Fertita’s guitar work on his drop-dead gorgeous Gretsch White Falcon axe. I really like his super fuzzy tone he gets from that thing and his Fender Twin. What a cool band! So I wiki them and I learned that Fertita was also in Queens of The Stone Age. Interesting!
Also: I was surfing around YouTube last night and came across this kid, Jacob Deraps, all 16 years old of him playing these AMAZING Van Halen covers. It also looks like he’s shared the stage with Dweezil Zappa, amongst others.
To me, watching his cover of “I’m The One” and the smiling enthusiasm he clearly has in addition to just being damn good to make me want to stop playing forever, suggests that the implied “death of the guitar” is pretty far away as long as kids like this keep cropping up.
If I was this good when I was sixteen I would have NEVER wanted for a girlfriend!
