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Author Topic: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?  (Read 37661 times)

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Eoin Mac

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #40 on: February 06, 2012, 07:20:51 AM »

My first beer in 1977 was a pint of Everards Tiger and it was the princely sum of 26 pence, so very nearly four pints to the pound!  :|glug
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Mike Hirst

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #41 on: February 06, 2012, 08:38:19 AM »

My first melodeon, a Hohner One Row in G, cost £67

My second melodeon came from Mameloks in Manchester - Summer 1979. I was working as a casual labourer for manchester City Council. We had to queue up at the town hall to get our wage packet. Two wage packets = 1 melodeon. Or to put it another way two weeks pushing broom = 1 melodeon.
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Guy

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #42 on: February 06, 2012, 09:17:57 AM »

My first melodeon, a Hohner One Row in G, cost £67

My second melodeon came from Mameloks in Manchester - Summer 1979. I was working as a casual labourer for manchester City Council. We had to queue up at the town hall to get our wage packet. Two wage packets = 1 melodeon. Or to put it another way two weeks pushing broom = 1 melodeon.

I spent my last pay packet before going to University as a mature(!) student on a Dobro....and the whole of my first after I qualified on a Lowden acoustic guitar. I don't quite know what I lived on, but I still have them both, and lovely they are too. Then I discovered melodeons....oh dear, I'm beginning to see a pattern here....
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Lyra

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #43 on: February 06, 2012, 10:41:54 AM »

I can only compare to flutes - a decent beginner/student metal flute will cost you about £500, although you can get a cheap Chinese horror for less which will play but not nicely. My flute which is still nothing special costs about £1400 and I have a hand made head joint that cost me £600 second hand. A flute with hand made elements will easily set you back six to eight grand without venturing into more exotic/precious metals or woods. A new Irish flute from a reputable maker will come out at a couple of grand-ish IF you can find someone actually taking orders and are prepared to wait anything from one to two years.
Strikes me that melodeons compare pretty favourably actually.

I'm now pondering the beer equivalents ...
entry level beer
cheap Chinese knock-off beer
tipo a mano beer
hand made beer
...
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dahlberg

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #44 on: February 06, 2012, 12:03:20 PM »

I'm now pondering the beer equivalents ...
entry level beer
cheap Chinese knock-off beer
tipo a mano beer
hand made beer
Cheap industrial lager
Czech pilsner
English Ale
Micro brew ale  :|glug

Well i guess melodeons are like everything else, you got what you pay for. But i was shocked when i saw the price for a new pokerwork last week. And thats like the beginnermelodeon, on other hand its good that italian instruments are becoming more common, wich means that they appear on the market so you can buy a used one just sligthly more expensive than a new hohner. I sometimes got paid gigs, wich i see as a way to finance my instruments condition. But i dont think its possible to break even on this, and busking these days...well the romanian gypsys with their beaten up Pa:s have ruined both the busking and the accordions reputation forever.
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IanD

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #45 on: February 06, 2012, 01:29:23 PM »

For almost all musical instruments the materials costs are a small fraction of the selling price, the vast majority of the cost is labour (wages) and things that go with it.

Since average wages have gone up faster then inflation or the RPI over the years, instruments are one of the few things to have tracked them.

So if you want cheap instruments, they'll be made in China for the same reason (low wages) that your TV/DVD player/mobile phone is.

But they're not made in automated factories, there's much more skill involved, so until these skill levels improve in China cheap will equal nasty to some extent.

And better hope that this doesn't happen, or the European squeezebox "industry" will be in the same shape as the European consumer electronics industry.

So you should be glad that your made-in-Europe melodeons seem quite expensive ;-)

Ian
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SteveC

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #46 on: February 08, 2012, 08:54:33 AM »

I'v already contributed to this thread stating that though expensive my box has given so much pleasure it was worth it...
...and I understand all the arguments of labour cost and Euro exchange rate but...

was recently researching the cost of upright pianos in my day job and found we could get one for under £2,000 new. Over £600 less than my Salterelle, that made me sit up and think.
But then they are made in China, but still a lot of labour and parts and shipping.
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mory

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #47 on: February 08, 2012, 10:06:07 AM »

Be interesting to know the retailers mark up these days on a high end box, or low end for that matter. I know of one handmade instrument maker (no names) not boxes, where an instrument that he supplies to the retailer at £3000 sells at £4000 +vat from the retailer. Also when I bought a Tara, a while back, one supplier was able to supply it at over £800 less than another larger dealer, admittedly I paid up front, but that was more about avoiding the vat increase, it was a special order, but there was still £800 between there advertised price for the standard item, of which neither of them had in stock so no out lay for them there. It just makes me wonder if there is that much room for manoeuvre what the mark up actually is. AtB mory
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Tom

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #48 on: February 08, 2012, 10:47:26 AM »

10 years ago Standard markup in music shops used to be 50% plus VAT on most items and much more on smaller items (markup on plectrums was 5000%). The Internet has driven this down hard. As others have pointed out; retail is in a state of change now where shop owners with overheads need to compete with supply-only Internet shops who don't even carry stock, just pass the customers order to the supplier who dispatches direct.
Problem is, for a lot of stuff this suits the consumer- breville toaster is the same no matter who you buy it from. It's only when we're talking about something hand finished like a melodeon you really need someone to let you try before you buy.
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oggiesnr

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #49 on: February 08, 2012, 10:54:11 AM »

I'v already contributed to this thread stating that though expensive my box has given so much pleasure it was worth it...
...and I understand all the arguments of labour cost and Euro exchange rate but...

was recently researching the cost of upright pianos in my day job and found we could get one for under £2,000 new. Over £600 less than my Salterelle, that made me sit up and think.
But then they are made in China, but still a lot of labour and parts and shipping.

You could also buy the equivalent melodeon to that piano which would be a couple of hundred pounds.  If you start looking at top end piano prices then it gets scary.

With modern machinery there's actually not as much labour in a mass produced piano as you might think.  Now a Bechstein or Steinway is a different matter (I do know where there's a restored Steinway upright for sale at the moment, seventy years old, casework still a bit tattty but you'd just have change out of ten grand!)

Steve
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michik

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #50 on: February 08, 2012, 11:32:04 AM »

You could also buy the equivalent melodeon to that piano which would be a couple of hundred pounds.  If you start looking at top end piano prices then it gets scary.


And it's quite a lot of work to make them to sound good ;-)
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IanD

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #51 on: February 08, 2012, 03:31:48 PM »

I'v already contributed to this thread stating that though expensive my box has given so much pleasure it was worth it...
...and I understand all the arguments of labour cost and Euro exchange rate but...

was recently researching the cost of upright pianos in my day job and found we could get one for under £2,000 new. Over £600 less than my Salterelle, that made me sit up and think.
But then they are made in China, but still a lot of labour and parts and shipping.

Shipping around the world is ridiculously cheap nowadays -- not only is it cheaper to make a piano in China and ship it to Europe, it's even cheaper to make different bits wherever they're cheapest in the world, ship them somewhere else for assembly, and then to the end market.

http://www.congressexchange.com/container_shipping_china_from_uk.php

A 40 foot container China to UK costs about £1200, and I guess you could get 24 grand pianos in, which is £50 per piano -- probably £20 per piano for uprights, which is 1% of the selling price. And I'd bet the actual piano manufacturing cost in China is no more than £500 including materials and labour (maybe $2/hour?) -- it's ludicrous how cheap these really are...

Workers in an accordion factory in Europe probably get about 10x this wage for mass-produced instruments, and an instrument maker 20x this for handmade ones (and will probably take twice as many hours as a production line).

So if half the cost in China is labour, a mass-produced European instrument should cost 5x as much and a handmade one 20x as much. This means that if a Chinese Hohner is £400, an Italian factory box should be £2000 and a handmade one-off £8000 -- not too far wrong, except maybe Chinese ones are too expensive, and handmade ones are *much* too cheap :-)

Ian
« Last Edit: February 08, 2012, 07:43:53 PM by IanD »
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SteveC

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #52 on: February 09, 2012, 10:17:12 AM »

Quote
Shipping around the world is ridiculously cheap nowadays -- not only is it cheaper to make a piano in China and ship it to Europe, it's even cheaper to make different bits wherever they're cheapest in the world, ship them somewhere else for assembly, and then to the end market.

http://www.congressexchange.com/container_shipping_china_from_uk.php

A 40 foot container China to UK costs about £1200, and I guess you could get 24 grand pianos in, which is £50 per piano -- probably £20 per piano for uprights, which is 1% of the selling price. And I'd bet the actual piano manufacturing cost in China is no more than £500 including materials and labour (maybe $2/hour?) -- it's ludicrous how cheap these really are...

Workers in an accordion factory in Europe probably get about 10x this wage for mass-produced instruments, and an instrument maker 20x this for handmade ones (and will probably take twice as many hours as a production line).

So if half the cost in China is labour, a mass-produced European instrument should cost 5x as much and a handmade one 20x as much. This means that if a Chinese Hohner is £400, an Italian factory box should be £2000 and a handmade one-off £8000 -- not too far wrong, except maybe Chinese ones are too expensive, and handmade ones are *much* too cheap :-)

Ian

Golly Ian, you know much more about this than I do.

I think you are absolutely correct in all you say and don't regret or even question how much I've paid out.
I think I was looking at it from the point of view of a consumer that the differential just looks massive, like I said, it made me sit up and think.

But this differential is often the case when people who know little about hobby don't relate to the costs involved. As a cyclist with friends who never spend more than £100 on bikes from Halfords, maybe £300 if they were really rash I find I'm often met with amazement when I explain my bike cost £1300 several years ago and would be nearer £2,000 know. But it's a great bike and given much pleasure, much as my Saltarelle has done likewise.
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squeezenplease

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #53 on: February 09, 2012, 12:33:49 PM »

Seems to me the deal is you either buy a mass produced toy from a Chinese production line or if you are a musician you pay the price for a real instrument,made by craftsmen who care about quality and are mostly players themselves...simple choice-no contest.....Chinese and eastern European boxes do however provide a cheap platform for beginners though...TomC
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Owen Woods

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #54 on: February 09, 2012, 02:12:00 PM »

My take on this is that the craftsman produced boxes are underpriced for what they are, whereas the mass produced in china boxes are more expensive than they deserve.
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Earbrass

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #55 on: February 09, 2012, 05:05:35 PM »

Seems to me the deal is you either buy a mass produced toy from a Chinese production line or if you are a musician you pay the price for a real instrument,made by craftsmen who care about quality and are mostly players themselves...simple choice-no contest.....

So those of us who haven't spend thousands on a posh box aren't even musicians, and have "toys" instead of instruments? This kind of gear snobbery is just sad. It's not what box you've got that counts - it's what you can do with it. 
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Lester

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #56 on: February 09, 2012, 05:17:24 PM »

So those of us who haven't spend thousands on a posh box aren't even musicians, and have "toys" instead of instruments? This kind of gear snobbery is just sad. It's not what box you've got that counts - it's what you can do with it. 

What he said ^^^^^^^^.

I have spent many 1000's on psh boxes and now play a Pokerwork to the exclusion of what is left of my box collection

IanD

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #57 on: February 09, 2012, 05:27:16 PM »

My take on this is that the craftsman produced boxes are underpriced for what they are, whereas the mass produced in china boxes are more expensive than they deserve.

Which is why Chinese manufacturers make a lot of money, and craftmen don't ;-)
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Owen Woods

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #58 on: February 09, 2012, 05:50:51 PM »

My take on this is that the craftsman produced boxes are underpriced for what they are, whereas the mass produced in china boxes are more expensive than they deserve.

Which is why Chinese manufacturers make a lot of money, and craftmen don't ;-)

Which is definitely the wrong way round :(
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waltzman

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Re: Do Melodeons Cost Too Much?
« Reply #59 on: February 10, 2012, 02:14:43 PM »

Which is why Chinese manufacturers make a lot of money, and craftmen don't ;-)

I don't think that is quite correct.  Companies from outside China come to China and say 'We want you to make this product very cheaply with your cheap labor so WE can make a lot of money selling it.'
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