Perceived Value in Guitars

When people talk about value in guitars, the conversation usually centers around the things that are easiest to see. Exotic woods. Fancy inlay. Elaborate visual details. And to be clear, I am not against any of that. Rare and expensive materials do add objective value. Beautiful work adds value. Aesthetics matter.

But I think a lot of real value in a guitar is less obvious.

For me, perceived value and actual value are not always the same thing. I try to build objective value into my instruments wherever I can, and a huge part of that comes down to resilience and ease of service. At every opportunity, I use the strongest glues I can reasonably use, the most environmentally resistant finishes available to me, reinforced parts where reinforcement makes sense, and construction choices that make the instrument approachable for the average guitar tech. I want a Bezard guitar to not only perform at a high level when it leaves my hands, but to keep doing that for a very long time under real life conditions, in the hands of real players.

A lot of the most important parts of guitar value do not reveal themselves right away. Anybody can be impressed by figured wood or ornate details. Those things photograph well and catch the eye. What often matters more is what you notice years later, when the guitar finally needs real maintenance, repair, or modification.

That is where I think builders and players often part ways in how they define value. I do not just want to build a guitar that looks impressive when it is brand new. I want to build a guitar that is still a good instrument to own decades later. I want it to be stable, durable, and serviceable. I want the next person who has to work on it to not be cursing my name while they do routine maintenance.

This may be controversial, but just about anybody can start a guitar company. That is not automatically a bad thing. New people can bring fresh ideas, different aesthetics, and genuinely useful innovation. But not everybody who starts building guitars comes from a background that prepares them to build truly great instruments out of the gate. Repair work, service work, and long term exposure to what actually happens to instruments after years of use matter. If you do not have that experience, there are things you simply may not consider in the design and execution.

It is not uncommon for somebody to make a fortune doing something else and then pivot into the guitar industry. Sometimes that leads to great ideas. Sometimes it leads to beautiful instruments. But it can also lead to short sighted design decisions, because the builder is focused on the guitar as an object to be sold, not as a tool that will one day need maintenance, repair, modification, or rescue.

And the future owner is the one who pays the price for that.

A guitar can be stunning and still be poorly considered. It can be innovative and still be a nightmare to service. It can be meticulously made and still fail to account for wear, environmental movement, fretwork, electronics work, or the fact that players almost always end up changing things. To me, those oversights matter a lot. Part of building a truly high value instrument is understanding not just how to make it, but how it will age, how it will be worked on, and how it will survive. If those questions are not part of the design process from the beginning, somebody down the line is going to inherit that cost.

A good example is fretboard inlay. There is a lot of beautiful fretboard work out there, and I understand why people love it. I do too. But I have seen boutique guitars with elaborate fretboard designs, and I have even seen some of those details colored in with marker. Yikes. That may look cool in the moment, but I do not believe it should take precedence over the long term health and serviceability of the instrument.

Traditionally, inlays have often been done in shell, usually around .060" to .080" thick to start. On a fretboard, by the time you have done proper fretboard prep and a fret job, you are left with very little. That becomes a major issue later when the instrument needs maintenance.

Any time I inlay something into a fretboard, I want it to be around .125" thick or more if possible. Because of that, I primarily use novel materials. I think that is crucial. If you have ever had to level the fretboard on something like a vintage Gibson, you know why. In some cases, you have to remove the inlays, retain them, and then reinstall them before doing the fretwork. Sometimes the pockets need to be recut. And that is assuming the fretboard is even in good enough condition to be leveled in the first place.

What should be routine maintenance can become invasive, expensive, and risky very quickly.

I do not want a luthier working on one of my instruments to even have to consider the inlay when leveling a fretboard. There should be enough thickness there that sanding through the inlay would be about as likely as sanding through the fretboard itself. That is intentional. That is a design choice made in service of the life of the instrument, not just its appearance on day one.

The same thinking applies to electronics cavities. It is very popular for builders to make neat and tidy cavities with only exactly enough space for the electronics that were installed. And to be fair, that can look incredible. It shows care, precision, and restraint.

But if a guitar like that came across my bench for an electronics modification or repair, I would be reluctant to even touch it for fear of messing it up.

That is not a criticism of the craftsmanship. It is the reality of service work. A cavity can be too optimized for one exact configuration. If there is no room to work, no room to move, and no margin for future changes, that neatness starts to come at a cost.

And if there is one thing I know for sure about electric guitar players, it is that they like to mess around with their guitars. They change pickups. They change wiring. They experiment. They add things, remove things, refine things, and personalize things. That is part of the culture of the electric guitar.

It is also one of the reasons the Stratocaster has been such a monolith. That pickguard is easy to modify and easy to replace, and so by extension, so are the electronics. That kind of approachability matters. It is part of why the instrument has endured the way it has.

I want my guitars to acknowledge that reality instead of pretending it does not exist.

None of this is me arguing against beauty. I care deeply about aesthetics. I care about design, refinement, elegance, and making instruments that feel special. Pretty details do add value. Rare materials do add value. But I do not believe those things should come at the expense of resilience, longevity, or ease of service.

To me, the best boutique instruments are not just impressive objects. They are dependable tools. They are built with enough thoughtfulness that they can survive real use and real time. They can be maintained. They can be repaired. They can be adapted when needed. They are still beautiful, but they are not fragile in the ways that matter most.

That balance is incredibly important to me.

When I build a Bezard guitar, I am doing my best to consider all of these things at once. I want the instrument to be beautiful. I want it to be inspiring. I want it to feel special. But I also want it to be resilient, straightforward to service, and durable enough to survive several lifetimes, even if it is mistreated along the way.

That, to me, is real value.

Not just how a guitar looks when it is new, but how well it stands up to time, wear, maintenance, repair, modification, and the realities of being owned by a player.