Workshop relocation and change of direction

I have been busy these last few years, collecting obscure left-handed guitars and improving my personal luthier skills. As the world changes, so one must change with it.

Offering 100% custom shop left handed guitars in today's world has not been sustainable. There are simply too few people with the money to spend on guitars at this level. Times are tough. The younger generation coming through are worse off than my generation. They have been robbed. And we thought it was tough for us. The "good life" we used to take for granted in Australia is being destroyed by toxic leftist ideologies designed to derail and hijack our culture and weaken our national identity. The victims are the young people who have been brainwashed by the nonsense and are encouraged to be mediocre and identity-less: the model of Communism. Fortunately, there are good young people amongst them who are smart enough not to fall for this agenda. I hope a few of them are also musicians!

In recent times I have been doing more and more of my own work and finally I have decided that the arrangement I had before is no longer workable. It comes back to a few facts:

1. Only 1 in 200 guitarists is a lefty.

2. Of those 1 in 200, only a very small percentage have any sort of financial freedom.

3. People are doing it tough. For us here in Australia, what we now call "the John Howard Years", are long gone. This was a period in Australian history where everyone had money, everyone could buy a house, everyone had work, and there was a unified national identity. It was a good time for Australians and Australia. Not so, these days.

4. Premier guitar brands like Gibson and Fender have destroyed their premier image by coming down in quality and price to try to stave off the flood of people buying cheap guitars from China. In the process, they are making crap products. No one in their right mind these days would buy a Gibson or Fender. Hell, I have a 16-year-old "entry-level" Monterey Les Paul that is built better and plays better than a modern Epiphone. My own guitars utterly smoke Fender and Gibson.

5. Chinese manufacturing has matured and now they are selective about who they want to do business with. They have been establishing their own reputable brands, no longer riding off the coat tails of the foreign businesses who taught them. "The student has become the master." This is the next step in cutting everyone else out of the industry and hogging it for themselves. That's Communism. That's China.

6. Guitar music has been died for quite some time. People are saying it's coming back. I don't know. I think people are too caught up in their struggles to be thinking about being creative. And if they are, they are doing it on computers now. Where are the REAL instruments?

7. At the end of the day, most guitarists want instruments that their heroes play. Like it or not, those instruments are usually Stratocasters or Les Pauls. What guitar idols are playing Vs, Explorers, or Warlocks, these days, for example? Too many times, I have heard "not really my thing."

As a result, I have decided I will build left handed guitars that I want to build.

Waiting for someone to come to me, in these times, is a tiresome exercise. I already know what you want. I already know that you can't spend a lot of money, not because you are don't want to, but because there isn't enough of it. Especially in Australia, where the current incompetent government is robbing you blind.

With this, I will no longer be offering 100% custom made guitars as my main offering. The guitars I produce will be built by me personally, using parts and components sourced from multiple sources. These will continue to be excellent guitars, still made in Australia, but not from scratch.

The good news? No more $5000-6000 guitars. I can build guitars using body blanks and premade necks, with high-end hardware, and produce brand new, high quality guitars from $2000. That's not a lot of money in today's money. I am happy to put my name on them. And they will be made by me personally this time. These will still be left-handed guitars that you cannot buy elsewhere.

Remember: Kramer never built their own guitars, they used ESP to build them. Charvels were built in Japan. Now they are made in China. Fernandes used many different factories for its guitars over the decades. Jackson, Epiphone, Schecter and Ibanez guitars are made in China, like most brands these days. Even premier Japanese brands like Tokai, ESP, and Bacchus are made in China these days. There is nothing wrong with that, but I am not having my guitars "made in China." I may source some parts and components from China, but Gaskell guitars will never again be "made in China."

It's like when you bake a cake. The ingredients needed may come from all over the world. But the result once the ingredients are all brought together, if the chef is good, is a well-made cake. One that people will enjoy EATING.

And so it is now with Gaskell Guitars.

With this, my workshop is coming back to my home and I am establishing a showroom that prospective lefties can come and try a guitar or two. The guitars will speak for themselves. And I will be making what I already know you want. I can still do custom colours, using the same painter that painted my custom guitars, and I might even focus on that as a benefit. That will be additional money. We'll see.

That's the plan. More news to follow.