Given everything seems to be increasing in price lately we thought we’d round off #GuitarMonth with a piece about our prices.

When doing shows we often get comments about the price of our guitars; in particular those of our Dupont range. Part of the reason for this is that most of the guitars at these shows are mass produced, frequently in south east Asia, from timber that has been treated to accelerate the seasoning, and are therefore priced accordingly. We feel this gives an unfair price comparison with our quality European instruments which are all individually traditionally hand-crafted.

As an example, we thought we’d share with you a picture of Maurice Dupont’s ‘production line’. The guitars shown represent 2-3 months work each (with the youngest tone woods having been traditionally seasoned in Maurice’s wood store for a minimum of 10-12 years and most averaging 20-30 years) and are waiting to be taken down to be finished either in satin (the guitar equivalent of French polishing) or high gloss. After this, there is still work to be done; machine heads to be added, bridge and moustaches to be applied, the tail piece is put on, before finally the instrument is strung. Taking all this into consideration, we believe that the guitars are reasonably priced. As a comparison 12 weeks work, based on an eight hour day and a five day week, at the national minimum wage (£9.18/hr) comes to just over £4400. Still think our guitars are expensive?

What’s more we have held pretty much all our guitars at pre-pandemic prices; increasing them only where it has been unviable for us to absorb the rise.

We supply a free guide to guitar buying at all the shows. This gives lots of tips and hints, as well as some interesting titbits of information, together with some pertinent questions to ask the seller of the instrument. If you cannot get to a show to pick one up please feel free to contact us directly and we would be more than happy to send you one free of charge.