THERE'S A STORM A'COMING

Rising prices are everywhere, including on our cherished guitars. VWWe discuss the background to the ongoing price hikes with the head of PRS Europe, Gavin Mortimer

- Dave Burrluck

After some years of relatively flat, consistent prices, 2022 has seen numerous guitar companies pushing up their prices and we can expect more. What’s driving these increases? Or have guitar companies just gotten greedy?

“The biggest driver has been Covid,” states Gavin Mortimer, emphatically. For example, there was the price of a shipping container that ended up costing four times as much as it did pre-Covid. And during the height of Covid you were lucky to actually get a container on a boat because there weren’t enough people... because of Covid! Now, expand that one illustration across all the parts necessary to make a guitar either in the USA or Indonesia. Literally, the logistical costs fuel costs have doubled and raw material costs have all sky-rocketed. Magnets for pickups, for example, went up hugely because there was a shortage, just like any raw materials. Wood? The cost of maple rose, for example, because people weren’t able to fell trees; the cost of shipping mahogany from Africa or South America, on a boat rose to] four times as much to ship. Every which way you look, the cost of making a guitar has rocketed exponentially.