I'd love to find a used Thunder Jet at a reasonable price.
BTW...I put the rounds back on my orange Gretsch 5123 and it is a bit more audible in the mix now. It's never going to be really "forward" in sound unless I do some tweaking on the EQ specific to that bass.
I just don't understand why the gretsch basses made in Japan have to costs so much! You could buy gibson CS for the same price in many instances.
Isn't Japanese labor cost almost as much as US now? Also it has genuine TV Jones pickups, not the cheaper ones designed by him but made elsewhere.
You are pretty correct I believe, but even US made j and p basses don't cost this much unless I missed something. Either way, for those prices they ought to move the manufacturing back home!
They don't, but they're solidbodies with pickups made in-house. Even though the Thunder Jet is chambered rather than hollow, with the laminated arched top I'd say it's closer in labor cost to your Gibson 335 bass.
True, but I don't believe for a minute that human hands are routing the cavities or carving the tops. In fact, I doubt a lot of human hands are involved at all, but I'm just speculating.
Why should stuff made on Asian machines be cheaper than stuff made on American or German machines? I used to sell furniture to Japan, their buyers were much more quality conscious than American buyers. Even more so than the Germans I dealt with.The Japanese factories outsource a lot of their product to Korea, Indonesia, China etc. The good stuff they make in Japan and they charge for it. BTW, their factory workers make as much or more than Americans.
Besides labor cost differences, there's the cost of operating the factory. In Japan that may be as expensive or maybe even more so than in the US. In the outsourced countries, cost of physical plant, land, insurance and utilities may be quite a bit lower than in Japan. Not so much in Korea, though.
