Lee Anderton Shares his Secret to Better Budget Guitars

previously on guitar geek, look who it is, lots of lovely

guitars

, bass room, yeah, so I went to visit Anderton's and in the first part we did the tour of the store, this part two Lee Anderton and I We sat down and talked about

budget

guitars

, specifically east coast guitars. and Lee dropped some absolute gold nuggets, enjoy the East Coast itself, yes, it's a range of own-brand guitars not unlike all the familiar styles. I don't claim any credit for designing them or anything, but it goes back maybe five or six years. where we began to realize that the basic guitars we were selling from famous brands like Squire and Yamaha filled the gap between what they would cost someone who wanted to learn to play the guitar and what the bigger competitors were doing. with their own brands and I'm talking about competitors like Amazon or t or whatever Gap was just getting, you know, it was almost like you could have one of their starter guitar packs for £99 an hour. the Squire or Yamaha deal would be £199, right, and it was like this is crazy, you know, if you're a parent and you know you're not sure how long your kids will stick with this, I can understand the attraction of £. 99 guitar package so I bought a few and again I'm not going to name the package St purchased.

I bought some big ones for £99, okay yeah, and I thought, "These are awful, they're fair and what do you get?" in a starter package you get a guitar, an amp, a cable, a strap, a pro pick, yeah, that kind of vibe, so there were no cases or stands or anything like that, but the things that were me, the guitars, They were some kind of guitars. They were probably no worse than the kind of guitars I learned to play when I was a kid, but you know you can do a lot

better

now in the Far East and the amps were horrible, the amps were the ones that were like This is thick, so ya you know, and big enough for a loudspeaker, yeah, full of wasps and a Jam Jar kind of thing, and we'd had some manufacturing experience in the Far East during the whole Chapman thing, I admit not in this moment. kind of price, but I have to do it.

I knew there were some big factories out there that, you know, if you hit the minimum order quantity, they would basically tell you that they had a catalog of designs and stuff and I was looking at these guitars. and I thought it was crazy how much

better

I could make the guitar compared to these 99s just by telling the factory what would happen if we spent $5 more, so no, not $50 more, $100 more, something that would really inflate the retail price. If we've just spent $5 more then maybe we'll only increase the price of the guitar by £10 or £20 after it's gone through all the various import processes and so on, what are the differences?

Hardware, do you get more attention to detail or do you get more interesting colors? It's mainly, I would say it was the attention to detail, so you know, this is the cheapest guitar, it's £109 just for the guitar9, yeah, so we're still not talking about bundles or anything like that and that's an example . I imagine the cost price is probably only $5 to $10 more than the guitar that comes in the package for £99, but it's like it's like twice as good it's not a little better it is and this is what we were talking about this before these diminishing returns you know this doesn't apply when you start spending £500 or £1,000 on a guitar another $5 doesn't get you anything really I know a different strap button or something but at this price $5 is because, relative to the cost of building a guitar, it's a fair percentage anyway, so to be fair I should also say at that point that the minimum order quantities are up to trying to make your own brand, something that was much bigger than anything Anderton could really afford to do, so we did it, there were actually three British retailers at the time that we would have gone to if we all merged and then we can catch up the minimum amounts of utum, so actually the East Coast was um, it probably doesn't matter if I say their brand, so PMT, yeah, the East Coast was a brand that they used for I don't know 20 something years or something.

Like that, but when we agreed to do things together, everything changed, there were new factories, new specifications, everything, so we just went, you know what it's like to try to choose a band name, don't you? It's like Oh my God. Yo, no one, it was like East Coast sounds good, it rolls off the tongue and then ironically PMT actually changed hands about two years after the East Coast project and when was this? This was in 2019, something like that, so we've been doing it. east coast probably since about 2017, something like 2019, I think they changed hands and the new owners said um, actually we'd rather do our own thing, it's strange that the people who really created the East Coast brand are now no longer involved and So , actually for the last two or three years, Anderton and Guitar Guitar, who were the other original retailer, are doing quite a bit on the east coast independently now that we're all doing our own thing with it, so you'll see some models in colors that Andertons want to do that, they don't and vice versa, but anyway, uh uh, that's called uh, a bit, uh, with an unromantic name ST1.

I wonder if you can guess why and it's the entry point. There is a T1. I guess it's a similar type of build quality, but. obviously T style, same type of dough and then you know there's an HSS version for another 10 bucks, uh 10. I should keep it. I am very Americanized when I talk about prices and I feel that I also try to be international, but they push me away. I'm very sorry and we have guitars like the yellow one which is designed to be a bit more contemporary, secondly a lot of different colors considerably lighter so to be honest that's one of those things at this price it's a bit a little bit like it weighs, as much as that piece of wood that's used in that piece of guitar weighs, you know, we're not specs, the only thing we're probably specifying on this is that it's a Canadian maple neck and it's a board. rosewood um the body origins are FSC approved hardwood um anyway uh so we updated the trm system so two trim systems we don't have the trim.

I'm there right now, yeah, no coils. Taps, I don't think about that. but it's still like a 150b um 149 guitar pretty close, so of course you know you have your see if you can guess if that's a first and the other one is a T1, see if you can guess what the model number might be called. could be L for Lee maybe and a p Just for us we're not even allowed to go there it's just L1 L1 yeah just L1 as soon as if you put the p you might upset someone um we made a Barone in a t The style we have, this is the one I have to learn, let's get excited about guitar for a moment, there's semi-acoustic, there's everything that we haven't even seen, there's a whole range of amazing traditional acoustic guitars, um, starting out. from £79 uh actually lower again if you use nylon thread, but all in this spirit and this supposes that brings me back to the original point.

All in this spirit that what I wanted to try to do was tell customers look, you could go and buy the £99 one if you want, but we're not going to sell it to you because it's below what I consider the right instrument to try. get someone excited about their G guitar. Do you still offer it like andon, you still offer the chapter, so now this is the cheapest way to get into the guitar world commercially speaking, we should probably mhm, but that one no It's the point for me to sell the first guitar, you know, look, I'm not even going.

I don't even think it's going to be a big surprise if we sell you this guitar with an amp and I think it's £129, it's the cheapest package we do with this. Anderson maybe gains 20 pounds. I don't know 25 pounds, right? No one is going to retire selling 100 of these and making 25 each, to be completely honest with you, so the goal here is for you to actually learn to play with it and then over the course of your 50 year guitar. playing the lifestyle, buying all your Anderton stuff, you know, and then being brutally unreleased commercially, that's how I'm going to retire, alright, I want all guitarists to start with an instrument that gives them the best chance of making it through first.

Six months where learning is hard, your fingers hurt, you know, and having a guitar that doesn't stay in tune has bad fret edges, so you know it's uncomfortable to play those sounds or it looks horrible, it's like and and I literally knew it for not long. plus another 5 or $10 with that factory I can get a guitar that ends up being not much more expensive you know 203 PS more expensive than the garbage and you know and I and I and I am convinced that this is a better start on your journey you should try one. I mean, we haven't really talked about the amp, so you did when before we started this video, when we got into the topic that you mentioned, the very superficial amps that I've played with, but this thing you have here, which is 79 9, reminds me a lot of my first amplifier, the square sp10.

I think it was okay, this is a slightly larger amp than an sp10, so it's actually the one we make underneath this one. It's probably more like a sp10, so it's 15 watts with an 8 inch speaker, I think, and Reverb. Anyone who follows Anderson's YouTube channel will know that amps without Reverb are to me the most horrible sound that has ever destroyed my soul. To be fair, this in particular, uh, when we started doing this, this is kind of like before all the inflationary kind of Covid Rises that we have, this would have been our entry point amp and you would have been able to get it in a package of guitar for sort of Under £150 in the last few years we couldn't meet the price with this amp now in a guitar package for under $179 so we introduced a 10 watt version of this which if I'm honest , it's not as good as I'd like it to be, you know, it's got shades of that, it's not very good, but it still has all the depth, it's mains powered, it's fine, and it also looks sturdy because as a parent, You know they're going to tear it down. stairs, we haven't decided to do anything with the modeling or this is a super tried and tested amp, this type of amp with this type of technology has been sold forever, yes the return rate on these is because it knows faults or whatever is insignificant next. to zero um so anyway so yeah our packages now with this guitar and this guitar's little brother are back to that point 129 so again and again we're really championing this idea of ​​a similar look just don't go down Route 99, all included, yeah, like another 30 pounds.

I mean, to be fair, you don't have to buy it from Anderton. You might like that any 130 140 pack is going to be a lot better than the 99, but we, yeah, we made a very conscious decision to go for, this is our starting point. I would love for everyone to start with this amp, but you're up to 179 as sort of a starting point. To be fair, you get a lot of stuff with it. so you understand I was here I have a cable I have a cable thank you very much I have to refer to uh I should plug it into Oracle here um Shall we connect this to the mains?

Let's find out what we haven't done. What we haven't done is tune anything, we took it straight from the store, but I would say it's tuned, so the 179 packs yeah, do you have your stand and your case, as well as the strap, the picks, the cable and everything that kind of thing, the 129 package which is actually us trying to get as affordable a price as possible, so it's the same mhm guitar in a variety of colors, plus the smaller amp and just the cable, strap and photo, so there's no bag or stand, but yo, 129, man, it's crazy.

I took my family to the pub for Sunday lunch and it cost me £150. We were also talking about the lessons themselves. How much did they cost? 270, did you say well, again? Me, my daughter, when I was a little bit younger, I'm obviously trying to indirectly live my life through my kids, like we all do, so she played guitar for six months because I made her do it, but yeah, I got her a period of individual lessons. Her lessons at her school only last half an hour, but I think a period of lessons cost £200, you know, which they don't.

I'm going to say a huge thank you to everyone who is giving free online classes, but especially to Justin Sandico at justinguitar.com because that's where I would go to learn now if I wanted to learn. I still go there and I still learn things and I'm amazed at what he can do and it's like 99% of what he does is free, right? In fact, that's one of the things we sell as an optional extra with all of their learned game books, they're fantastic, yeah, well, look, I mean, you've chosen the L1, which is probably the most expensive on the east coast. uh range because we have a uh yeah and again I had a choice there.

Could have made a neck slab bodyBolton. You know, I could have made a lesort cheaper. Oh, excuse me. Could have made a cheaper L style copy. Because these. they're not copies at all, they're all originals um um couldn't have made a cheaper style uh really missing something, but those features are the bow too, you know, the maple veneer, they're iconic M, the rosewood board, you they could have gone with two two knobs yeah what you've done here is offer a real alternative and it's actually worked out quite well because epone themselves who make amazing guitars are exercising the really low price market so epone really doesn't. they want to make to hit guitars, you know they want their brand to be elevated and perceived as more premium and so they just go, you know, let's stop making the cheaper ones, let's just make better and more expensive guitars, so actually you know that this guitar style seems similar, okay, you know, it's Actually, this isn't going to set you back 19, so it's the most expensive, like you said.

I think there is a semi-acoustic that could cost another 20 credits more than that. I should say we've set the price. entire East Coast range so maximum savings are on bundles rather than individual. I was trying to figure out the 129 for that and the amp, if you buy it individually it will cost you more, but as a bundle, yes, so there's probably you're saving 10-20% if you buy it as a bundle instead of individually and It's intentionally, you know, I guess the pricing is like that because the packs are obviously what most people want to buy, but yeah, I mean, Look, we have two channels, yeah, and of course the magic reverb, so, if you manage to sound good, you might need a day of stretching strings and tuning a tun right on the table behind you, since you know, that's good, okay? a tuner in the package, that was my next question, if you don't even know we should, you should, or again you have a bunch of apps that have free guitar tuners, but let's take a look, do we give something that we do even in the cheaper so for 129 you9 you also get a tuna clip um there you go it's phenomenal let's see how the guitar and this amp sound when it's in tune but this is straight from the store.

What I really like Le is that you, you and I went to the store, grabbed a pair and walked into this room, one of the things we do and again we incorporate the price of east coast guitars - they all come unpackaged . Getting here is a pretty busy time because we'll get them in hits, you know, 6 or 700 at a time or whatever you know, not all of that style, but you know, of course, our quality control team that we have. or five four or five guys that basically that's their job is to inspect, so hopefully you know nothing gets through, nothing slips through the crack, so every east coast guitar should come with a decent neck, frets decent and anything. what doesn't have it will be removed and go through a separate process, you know, if you want it before it can be sold or, if it can't be sold, then it won't be sold, you know, so we're trying to avoid that shit .

The experience of you know, my first guitar was horrible, yeah, but we're not talking about spending, you know, guys aren't doing an hour-long setup with them, it's just about getting it in so someone can make some music and you know if this. Do you know that if you are looking at a new guitar, any steel string guitar with new strings will require some tuning before it will stick no matter how much money you spend? Yes, exactly. It's not the guitar's fault, it's the new transmissions, that's all, so look, I mean, look, if you want, you have a gaming channel, get some um, he says looking for it, where's a little knob?

I mean, what more do you want? I mean, literally, that is, there is always a certain appearance for me. I'm living the dream. You know, my dad and my grandfather opened a music store. Everything I've done. My whole life is hanging around the music store, then I worked there, then I managed the guitar department, then I ran everything, you know, I'm just a guitar, people will know I'm just a I just like guitars, you know, no I am, I'm not a failed former professional musician who didn't know what else to do. I would never do it.

Half of me wishes I'd had the chance to do that, but all I've done is work in a guitar store my whole life and, um EV, I know the profound impact playing guitar has had on me throughout the world. confidence it gave me as a teenager, the friends I made, the experiences I've had doing concerts. I think the biggest gig I've ever done is probably in front of 200 people, you know, so I'm not a professional like Pete or anything like that. You know, uh, I can't, I can't. I can even imagine what an adrenaline rush it must be, but I know what a profound positive impact playing guitar had on me and yet, every time I see, I don't know what, I don't know what it is about red guitars, it's something. about the red guitars I still get a strange tingling feeling down my spine every time it happens, obviously a lot at Christmas where you know the kid is coming to you, it's great now because there are probably as many girls as boys who come to buy their guitars at Christmas and the parents are with them and ask: what color do you want?

Can? It comes off and the cellophane comes out and this is a moment and the kids' eyes light up and you're literally sitting there, if you practice a little bit, you know, put in a little bit of effort for the first six months, this will change your life, yeah. you know, and it's even now that I can feel myself thinking and it's a wonderful thing to feel like we can be a part of that, yeah, Journey, you know, I said look, I wish everyone in the world would buy their guitars from andon and I know, of course, obviously they won't, you know, I don't know, the market share will be minuscule, but it should be the same in all guitar stores, you should take the same thing, you should feel the same sense of responsibility, you know you're doing something really important magic, yeah, you're not putting tons of money in the till, at the time you only have 120 quid or something, but you know how you handle that, what you sell to that person, how you treat them in the store.

It's something that's really going to influence whether they decide to continue with this or not. I think the word you mentioned was responsibility, it's a pressure like I had taught guitar in the past and I gave up because I felt like I wasn't the guitar teacher these people needed, yes for various reasons but it's the responsibility of thinking, like you said, that something big could be happening right now and just showing someone how to play a riff or something on a guitar that works. and see that light in that fire inside of them, yeah, um, and I have to say I walked into the store this morning and all the things were really very nice for everyone, that's good and maybe you know I'm going to go, but they were very kind. for me, but I could see that everyone was there having a good time and spreading a positive vibe and I mean, just in those little things, so the whole time I was in charge at Anderton's I never paid an individual commission to the Salale staff, it's the RIS, the job is bigger than just closing the sale, you know, the job is to create customers for life, it sounds a little cheesy, but yeah, the guys, as you walk in, they're There's no point in the guys saying "oh , if I don't sell something to this guy and they're not going to pay me today or not, it's like it really isn't, you know it makes no difference to them if you buy something." look around for 3 hours and don't buy anything, you know, all they have to do is make sure they had a great experience in the store and that they didn't steal anything, that's basically it.

He was looking at my backpack, um, you know, but beyond that, so you know, you should smile whether you bring something back or buy something, for sure because they don't care about all the stuff they have to do. It's making sure you're very happy. I applaud you and the Anderton team for bringing these guitars to life. this kind of dough, you know, or the yellow CU, it matches your eyes, thank you, so let's put it back in the headphone jack, of course, for instant support, Eric Clapton, I mean, look, the reverb is like , who wouldn't?, it should be the legal guitar. amps shouldn't be allowed without Reverb sorry, talk, play, talk, so you gave me a guitar, I'm going to have to play it, um, yeah, I'm not going to let you put words in my mouth, but I will say that The playing experience In this he is absolutely brilliant.

Everything Lee said he intended to do is assuming these haven't been planted in the store, which I highly doubt. They've even been through the cold too, so we haven't adjusted it. uh, look again, I don't want to make ridiculous claims like you know this is the best guitar you can buy or you know this guitar isn't designed to do anything other than get you through that, which is probably the hardest part of learning. . Playing the guitar is just helping you get through that first part and you know I'm not the same. I'm not saying this guitar will somehow fall apart after 18 months, but I'm sure that inevitably once you reach that 18 month and two year point, you're going to want something else, you're going to buy in a range. higher.

I'm sure you already know what we get from some of the more unusual models, like the baritone and the hm1, that's where we see people end up. I might want to do a modification project or something like that. I would take that and, as a baritone, the things that are most important: tuning stability, the feel of the neck, and whether everything works and quickly review this guitar. Yes, that switch is very good. feel switch that can sometimes be turned off on these lower priced models. See, that's the kind of thing we talked about again. What makes that extra $5, like 25 cents, buy you a better Swit?

This is what I complain about when some brands do that. And I think again if you have the mentality of going well, we're going to make 50,000 of these, so really, if I can save 25 cents on each one, I'm going to save how much that 15,000 is. You know, whatever. I get it, I get it, but that's not the case. You know we're not at that level of volume, so those considerations aren't important to us. What is important to us is the opposite of that. If I spend 25 cents more, can I really feel like I've improved this guitar with such a different mindset again if you're a brand that makes 50,000 of these guitars a year.

I understand you know we're probably making a thousand of these guitars a year. I know whatever, so it's not a different thing, it's a different mentality. I'm sure you know that again. I think the challenge for Anderton over the next two or three years is to continue working on the East Coast brand and, in a sense, leave. Do you know what will be next? How can we make other improvements? We just saw some guitars from the same factory as these guys, which have higher specs, so at this point I can say this. I probably will. So there's a brand that you'll see popping up at Anderton's just before Christmas called Solo King MH and it's the same factory as these, but it's kind of like we started putting out brand name pads and better caps etc.

Right now we're going okay, let's try to maybe leave it as just King, maybe come back and say, can we make some adjustments and make it part of a high-end East Coast Range or whatever, but these are guitars that are It's going to be where this range ends at sort of 2250, that range will start and go up to maybe 400, we could leave it. I quite like the name Solo King, you know, but I don't think there's much information about it and it's certainly not a brand, you see, you know, it's literally another one, it's like it's Factory's own brand, if you like, or for that style of guitar.

I think my headless guitars come in there, I don't remember, but it's that kind of Much more contemporary, uh Vibe, but the same kind of concept actually, which is like you're not, you're not pricing the range to pay a big marketing effort, artists, blah blah blah, you are literally asking how much it costs to build the guitar. that's the price, you know, uh, what it is, you know, I guess that's where all this private label stuff offers great value, absolutely anyway, it seems quacky. I'm not interested, no, I really am and I just want to make it clear to people who might think this.

Lee didn't ask me to do this. I asked Lee if we could do it because a lot of you asked me to take a look at these guitars and if you're thinking about buying one, just go ahead and do it. It's absolutely phenomenal. guys the Andersons are making for future guitarists and guitarists who might want something to entertain themselves on the weekend. I would happily play that well and I can also say that I know Anderton probably does something like that, um, what's the right word? We stay a little bit away from the kind of people that you already know, the YouTube influencer community and some of that is just, I think we're trying to say ourrole, you know, we're definitely YouTube. channel to promote our retail operation MH MH is slightly different to an influencer um and that's why we have kind of a TR but I have to say uh in the last couple of months I've met a few more of you and you guys are completely nice guys and Rob Chapman when I spoke I said that Andy was coming in and said you know which one is the nicest of them all, so there you have it.

High praise, thanks Rob, so I'll do the checks in the post. Yeah, well, I love you all. I guess so, in fact, thanks Pete for being there and pushing buttons for us and generally making me feel like a good person today. Yes, there are buttons you can click and stuff and there are andon links there. I'll mention that I'm in the Anderton Affiliate Program and put links there because why not? But I think we've covered everything. If you are a parent, don't be afraid, make sure you buy two and then have another child and then have two guitarists at the base of bu.

I do east coast bases I also do bass, there you go, but no drums, maybe that's what we need to do next, east coast drums, maybe I don't know, thanks for watching, bye.