As a guitarist and hobbyist bedroom producer for 15+ years, here's what I think is happening to the guitar market: the middle is falling out. Cheap guitars wer

As a guitarist and hobbyist bedroom producer for 15+ years, here's what I think is happening to the guitar market: the middle is falling out. Cheap guitars were previously way too expensive. I'm talking about things like the no-name starter packs you'd get from Frys, or even the equivalents from Squire. They were riding on lack of competition and brand clout, and they'd been disrupted by companies that are happy to sell guitars of similar quality for half the price. It has never been more affordable to start playing guitar. I think that's great. The high-end guitar market has some fascinating and innovative entrants. Strandberg stands out as king here. They build absolutely stunning guitars and IMO they've got an impressive adoption rate for something so expensive (2-3K). There are a surprisingly large number of high end guitar manufacturers targeting this market. The 500-850$ market feels like it's got a ton of options, but it's flooded with noise. Some dead wood needs to burn off, I think. I think amp companies are at much greater risk. First, the processing you can get out of the box now is just unreal. $100 for a preamp, and something like neural/toneforge (or even impulse responses + free amp sims) will get tones that compete with very expensive gear. A distant second but interesting: millenials are all broke and living in apartments / cities. You can't really have a giant loud amp in that environment. If you're not gigging, you no longer need to own one at all. > Is the garage band going away, to be replaced with the bedroom producer? At least partially, and for the best: the demand for being in a garage band should fall. Lots of people were in only in bands because they couldn't self-serve across as many instruments as they'd like. That's much easier now for a bunch of reasons. There's a middle ground too. I see a lot of "bedroom bands" – with bedroom production but the multi-member aspect of a garage band. ---- Another random thought: guitars are one of those products that strongly requires showrooming. Buying a guitar without feeling and hearing it is tough. This is one of the few things keeping guitar center alive. If a company figures out how to be warby parker for guitars, letting me pick five and mail four back, they could stand to make a bunch of money. This pairs really well with all the up and coming guitar brands trying to break into the market via youtubers.