Can you hear the difference between a $200, $2,000, $20,000, and $200,000 guitar?

i didn't expect to be that blown away by it wow like there are pieces you can play where you go hey this is a little bit easier but just to play the open strings and go whoa today's video is brought to you by classical guitar pro that's my brand new online classical guitar course which is six hours 53 videos it's a whole curriculum designed to teach you what you would normally learn in the first six months to a year of classical guitar lessons so if you want to learn classical guitar but are stuck struggling reading music or struggling to learn the techniques check out classicalguitardashpro.com to learn more hey friends i am joined today by expert luthier marshall brene we are in his fancy new showroom and for me this is like uh being in a candy store i mean everywhere i look there's a guitar that's even more interesting and fascinating than the next so i'm sure we'll jam on these guitars a little bit later but actually we're here today because marshall has invited me to try out some guitars but i don't really know what we're doing exactly yet so marshall fill me in because i can't wait to try out whatever it is you have in store okay yeah i was looking at a lot of the comments from the rob scale and video that we did together uh the uh this guitar is worth 275 000 video and there was a lot of comments saying i can't hear the difference so i called you over to see if we can hear the difference okay between a two hundred dollar guitar two thousand dollar guitar twenty thousand dollar guitar there we go and two hundred thousand dollar guitar i hope we can hear the difference we'll find out absolutely as a whole we generally price graded off of the acoustics but this is one where you at home will probably want to listen to it on a good set of headphones uh don't just grab your your aliexpress earbuds yeah i think one apple earbud for this video is probably not going to cut it do two two stereo is always a good idea uh okay well that sounds fascinating yeah i can't wait to try out these instruments let's start off with the 200 guitar okay that sounds good here it is the appropriate way to pick up a 200 guitar problem right that's right yeah this is a protege by cordoba it's a c1 okay you know it's for for the money it's actually a reasonably okay place to start this one was used as a walking guitar well and they did it in style with this color yeah it's a this accessorizes well with everything it goes with your shirt and is that mine you can't go wrong it's a bold fashion statement well it's bold something that's right and we got a maple bridge uh not stained maple fretboard um this i mean you know i used to work in a guitar shop and this is kind of similar to the ones that some of the ones that we used to sell around the same price range i noticed they're by different companies but pretty similar you know laminate tops um and uh very heavy yeah very inexpensive sides and backs over built uh you know it's built to be a durable guitar yeah well i'm excited just let's let's see how this thing uh plays so right off the bat a bit a bit buzzy uh but that's something we can we can fix now yeah this guitar has a truss rod in it and i think looking down the yeah it does a truss rod is a red metal rod that goes inside the neck which you can adjust to change the the angle of the neck yeah well to put relief into the fingerboard okay so it should not be used to adjust the action but to use to adjust the curvature of the fingerboard so that way it doesn't buzz uh this one looks like it was pulled into a dead straight line yeah the neck is like completely flat yeah which we don't want right we want a little bit of relief right you want the surface of the neck to mimic the envelope of movement of the string because it moves more here at the 12th fret than it does at the nut or the saddle oh wow but this thing is dead dead flat yeah oh yeah it makes mid-america look rather uh geographically interesting or geologically interesting unless you live there then it's beautiful that's right let's hear a little bit of how this thing plays here i'll play some uh some mozart variations by swords [Music] so right off the bat uh my impression is that the sound sounds you know it's like this the resonance is really not making it out of the instrument it sounds a bit trapped yeah it's like a guitar with a head cold yeah exactly is it because of the laminate body or the laminate top you think or yeah the the top is probably a very inexpensive well most likely an inexpensive piece of wood sandwiched with another inexpensive piece of wood in between with a very inexpensive piece of wood on the inside right uh probably not the best quality materials and chances are the interior is highly over built for durability not for sound interesting you know as we go through all these different guitars today i was thinking what's my criteria how do i actually judge a good guitar and for me i think it's very important that first and foremost the guitar is really easy to play it's so playability is like got to be my my first thing if if it's a cheap guitar but i can really play it then at least i can i can make music on it if it's fighting me and i can't do what i want to do then it's just like i i don't care how you know famous the guitar is i don't want to play it yeah so playability is one thing then i think about you know the overall timbre of the instrument you have guitars which are baser you have guitars which are brighter um then there's resonance how how much vibration is going on the instrument is it totally dead like this one it's just like nothing's really happening it sounds like it's kind of trapped i like that it sounds like it has a head cold i guess with this one i mean my my first reaction is actually the playability is not so bad the action isn't too high i can play it but i really feel like it's it's not doing anything for me it's like uh it just sounds totally flat the sound is not going anywhere the sustain let's just let's test it out [Music] it's not terrible actually no but there's no resonance behind it there's no like sympathetic resonation going on it's all like it's all the fundamental there's no overtone exactly right which is what we want so later i'll be testing it out with a piece by barrios and this one well doesn't sound so great later on in this video we're actually going to do a uh just a back-to-back performance i'll play a few pieces and we'll hear each one right in a row so you can really test what's the difference but but first i want to see what each you know instrument you prepared feels like here so all right i think i think we have a good impression here already we don't need to spend too much more time with a 200 guitar no this one's already beaten like a horse yeah all right let's toss it okay so one down so here's our two thousand dollar guitar okay it's a francisco play-doh there is absolutely no relation to the flatus i was going to ask you i thought plato was kind of a famous name it is a famous name okay but not francisco okay there never was and you know if the flight is smart there probably should never be a francisco because you don't want to get mixed up with this this is an anonymous japanese-made guitar okay imported by a a gentleman who had a creative streak with the naming of guitars for giving them very similar to famous names okay so getting a little sketchy right this one has a laminated sides and back but a solid top it's actually it's it's a nice guitar yeah it sounds for for the price point it actually sounds pretty good it looks pretty too uh you know it's got the exterior woods are really nice uh the finish on it is reasonably good the the top on it is a nice high quality spruce top uh despite the color it's actually been sprayed over pretty heavily but it is a spruce not a cedar okay wow so i'm excited to test this thing out here uh well this now i i feel like i'm really playing a classical guitar at least just holding it and looking at it's like okay this this looks and feels like a classical guitar the first one is kind of a toy you know right i mean if it's the difference between uh not playing the guitar and playing a guitar i'd rather have that 200 guitar nothing if i can afford more i'd rather have something more yeah well let's let's hear it i'm curious here i'll i'll actually get set up to play it properly when i when i play all the pieces back to back but just to get a feel for it let's see what it's like i'll play the same sore uh variation okay there's some resonance at least i hear you know something that really responds instantly [Music] that really sounds like a guitar especially after the 200 window yeah it's got that nice resonance it has a blend of tone colors that are accessible yes the thick base but also the clarity on top that 200 guitar really had no resonance on bottom no it it didn't really have resonance on the bottom it didn't really have resonance on the top and it didn't have too much in the middle either other than that it's great other than that but here i really feel like the instrument when i pluck i i feel the vibration against my chest so already at two thousand dollars we really have something that sounds like a real uh i mean we're getting now we can make some art you know oh absolutely uh there are a lot of people in schools and performing who play on instruments of this caliber yeah you know this is kind of if you want to classify it as a concert quality instrument this is kind of the very very beginnings of the concert quality instrument right i don't think that there's anybody who would play it full time as their concert instrument but you know if you're going to be playing a wedding outdoors or something like that where you know uncle larry is going to drop some wine on your guitar this is really not a bad place to be you know as a concert quality for years i played and when i was in college my instrument was actually a little bit cheaper than this one uh and i learned on it and i survived and i fell in love with classical guitar music you know i think we just need an instrument that doesn't block us at every turn it doesn't fight us at every musical moment and especially an instrument that has good playability because if the action's too high you're just going to be developing tension unnecessary tension so for me again playability is the most important thing everything else is extra you know absolutely yeah and you know i remember your guitar very well and you know this is definitely a step up from where you started out as and where i saw you progress uh in your earlier years we've known each other forever it's been a long time well yeah my first guitar was uh something i bought at guitar center it was very shiny it looked like it was sprayed by 10 different layers of shellac and then they went over a couple more couple more probably so i could see my face and i remember thinking like oh this is a good guitar it's like super shiny it had mother of pearl everywhere so i mistook the beautiful look uh for a good guitar and it was also very high so you know high it must be just good right of course so be careful uh don't be you know um swayed by a beautiful looking instrument it's gotta sound good and feel good most importantly and this one i do i really like the sound so i mean in the 2000 range i mean this thing actually like you say i think you could go through college degrees and even play some professional gigs on this and and you can make good music oh absolutely this is a fine musical piece if you only have two thousand dollars this is a really great place to be uh you can get a new guitar for you know that's maybe not quite as good for right around the same price but this one actually is musical i was just also getting lost in this beautiful um these beautiful like wooden pegs and actually some kind of nice designs here and the machine heads too so it's got it's got its uh you know charm this guitar i wonder if maybe i was thinking since it has this nice base range i'm saying you can take it down to drop d and hearing some um your baby [Music] beautiful sound i think the timbre is really lovely but uh playability wise because that action i'm not having a good time because it's uh especially when i got up here everything is too difficult you know yeah yeah no this also has a very old style set up right and it can be changed although at a guitar at this price point it's not necessarily worth the work that goes into it and we highly often recommend putting those resources to a better allocation that makes sense more expensive get taller cool okay well i i do dig the sound of this one and later on we'll hear again more pieces on each one but uh i'm very interested if this is what two thousand dollars feels like the 200 to 2 000 was a huge change i'm very curious now what is a 20 000 guitar feeling a guitar a guitar oh what it's not a bass or something well we'll get davey in here okay david5 before i'll have to let us know all right so at 20 000 this is an r.e brunei 37 houser copy he hasn't done too many of these so your dad made this yeah my dad made this the 37 hauser this is based off of the iconic guitar that segovia played right and uh he's the only person who has made drawings of that 37 houser so anybody who offers a 37 hauser they're all built off of the plans that my father drew wow so uh here it is that's beautiful it's a beautiful guitar it's got brazilian rosewood sides and back oh yeah wow it's got a bear claw spruce i tell you wood like that just doesn't grow on trees anymore i love the top this is so beautiful would you call it their club yeah this is called bear claw or hazelficta uh if you're a german hustler yeah households and baron victors okay wow well i'm now very excited to play i don't know i was going to play one of your dads [Music] you know like a few notes and the quality difference for me i'm not sure how much of that is coming across but the feel of it the timbre the ease of playing is really uh a night and day it's got a lot of overtones yeah that's exactly right [Music] listen that's a stain also gorgeous it's still going yeah yeah let's just wait yeah you want to go grab lunch while it does its thing and i saw a pizzeria okay let's go it's really beautiful let me try that mozart variation thing is that we'll hear a little bit on each instrument [Music] beautiful [Music] [Music] wow the clarity [Music] is like so incredible i even have like pinissimo [Music] it's like super clear it's precise yeah wow [Music] is this is what i meant when i talked about guitars that do have the playing for you i mean [Music] i feel like it's guiding me anyways [Music] beautiful resonance i mean some of this i know is not is hard to come across on on a recording but i can tell you with my experience playing lots of different guitars the jump from the last guitar to this guitar might not be as objective over uh by audio but the feel is as much difference as from the 200 to 2000. well they say that the first five thousand dollars is for the audience and everything after that is for the player that's exciting but it and it does it makes perfect sense with that everything beyond that translates a lot or not everything but a lot of it afterwards translates into the response into the player which allows a player to express their musical thoughts a lot easier it frees up mental bandwidth so that way when you are playing something like this you don't have to worry about is my finger going to be in the right place how hard do i have to hit this note it becomes instinctive it becomes an extension of you well said that's exactly my experience uh and the freer you are in that moment on stage to then just let the intentions flow from your mind to the audience's ears you know all the mediums this is just a tool right at the end of the day these are tools but we want the tool to be as invisible as possible we want the immediacy of the intention to reach the audience uninhibited you know and i feel like when i have guitars like this that's what's happening oh yeah so it's just i think you said it very nicely let's check the sustain up here [Music] so what i love about this guitar is compared to the first guitar is we hear the fundamental the actual note you're perceiving after we hear that we get all this extra overtones here check this out [Music] so the fundamentals gone but i still hear this halo of overtones that it's sympathetic resonation right yeah well you yeah exactly you get this beautiful evolution of sound as a transitions from the fundamental because when you're dealing in that range and that octave the fundamental goes away fairly quickly yeah as you heard on the 200 guitar exactly i mean that thing is all fundamental and it goes tink and it's got the grace of dropping a wrench onto a piece of concrete uh this one it has this evolution of sound yeah where it goes it transitions from fundamentals to overtones and then all the overtones flow in around to support the note that isn't there in a way that enhances the non-existent well said i think we can isolate this and make it more obvious if you're having a hard time hearing it i'll play the e then i'll immediately stop the fundamental so everything you're hearing after i stop the note is all extra overtones so [Music] all of that is just what's ringing it's the overtones we're hearing it's just a beautiful sound it's gorgeous it's incredible yeah so that's what's happening all the time when you're playing you produce different overtones depending on where you are and so you have this background halo around all the notes you're playing that are producing those sounds [Music] well this is a really incredible instrument i'm looking forward to trying it out uh back to back with all these uh the pieces at the end here but let's just let's talk a bit more now about uh about our last guitar because you know 200 dollars dollars 20 000 that's already pretty extreme i haven't i haven't bought a 20 000 from it before but yeah 200 000 yen actually just one on sale for you i'll throw in a case all of our guitars come with cases i'll do it if you throw in a capo you got it okay so i mean it's just a work of art you know and same with your instruments uh that you've made that the recent instruments you've that i've seen you make i mean are of the same quality just they're it's really incredible to to look at and to interplay marshall so thank you thank you for for letting me play this one now i don't even know how how can you get better than this i'm so interested to see what well let's add a zero and go from there no big deal instead of zero what we're going to do is we're going to go from a bench copy of a 37 houser to an actual 1936 houser wow okay well so we're going to go from our modern exact copy to the real deal let's do it all right so we have the next guitar two hundred thousand dollars ready you ready [Music] 1936 house that's beautiful and this is this is the guitar it's got a few scratches on the back uh as my old boss used to say that's just character right yeah those are love love bites uh and it's got uh two cracks on it oh and that's it they've been expertly repaired uh minor minor playing where uh this is pretty close to as pristine as you can get i've had a couple without the cracks and they're obviously a bit more expensive because you know at this point we're grading based off of structural condition and basically it's cumulative life up to this point so this is not the most perfect one i've had but it's really really really close it's really good oh man super excited to play this it's light it is but it's actually not all that far off from the other guitars in terms of of the weight but what you're feeling is the balance of the guitar oh interesting it's it's a north south east-west balance right and when you put it up to your chest you'll actually notice that it settles into your body it doesn't want to fall away from you all right and when it's up properly the weight tends to disappear off of them that's incredible i've never experienced that before i was also just enjoying the i know this name herman hauser i i you know know about luthier just to see the original label is also a beautiful thing herman hauser guitar in munchen incredible 1936. wow um well let's see if we're in tune sweet sounding e [Music] okay so just in tuning this thing i'm kind of blown away i didn't expect to be that blown away by it wow like you know there are pieces you can play where you go hey this is a little bit easier but just to play the open strings and go whoa yeah and beyond that you know this is with this guitar you can actually hear the guitars behind us resonating with it and that's because the way that he built he created this inertia of sound they're not loud guitars yeah super loud but wow there's this energy and constant push behind the sound yeah [Music] it's got that clarity of your dad's guitar but with a different feel that's wisdom [Music] well i think the thing about that i'm really feeling with this is like like we were saying that playability thing it's like i i feel like i'm doing maybe 25 of the work i was doing with that 200 guitar so that's the main reason uh i i the main thing i look for guitar but i mean obviously i'm not going to be buying a 200 guitar in time soon but i mean wow the the difference is again night and day [Music] let's try that yobet piecing i'm really interested to hear what it sounds like in drop d [Music] it's so sweet it's like i feel like it's asking me to play softer more dolce well there's a reason why yeoman played on a hauser did he yeah i didn't know yeah it was like a homecoming for that piece so you know this is history this is beyond just a musical instrument there are no more hauser ones being made and there haven't been for a long time there can only be less of these right you know hence the value right well i could just keep playing these instruments but i am so ready to play them back to back so you guys can get a chance to really hear uh you know the same pieces back-to-back and how they how they sound so get your headphones ready if you can i want to thank you marshall for uh setting me up with these beautiful guitars to try out today and uh is there anything that you wanted to mention to to my channel absolutely my pleasure and thanks for coming uh yeah uh please feel free to visit me me brunei dot com uh you can call me visit me uh i make guitars i'm sure as you've seen elsewhere very good guitars and uh you know there i'll have a promo code of brandon on my website that will give you 500 off of a deposit for a guitar uh so feel free to take advantage of that and uh just come on by give us a call we're happy to share these instruments with you at any time as well you know there's a lot more that we haven't touched on and you know whatever your budget is uh we'll help you find something great we'll leave a link in the bio so you can check out his website well thanks marshall my pleasure thanks brandon all right let's get to playing [Music] do [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Laughter] [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: Brandon Acker

Views: 2,785,222

Keywords: guitar, classical guitar, rob scallon, segovia, john williams, acoustic guitar, spanish guitar, fingerstyle, guitar tip, luthier, guitarra, chitarra, electric guitar, price guitar, cheap guitar, beautiful guitar, meditative music, bream, adam neely, rick beato, brandon acker, Xavier diaz latorre, acoustic, fingernail

Id: EPY9Mxg3OJQ

Length: 34min 23sec (2063 seconds)

Published: Wed May 04 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Que_est]

to be fair, that is one of the worst $200 guitars I have ever heard

[u/Blackberry1687]

Well I don’t wanna waste my time and watch this, sure …there is also difference between a $200 guitar and a $200 guitar. As for the comparison, does the difference in the sound worth $199800 ? NO

[u/Mngwa_X]

I feel like I could spend whole day in that room in the video trying different guitars. Nice video tho, great explanation of price classes I was always wondering about. In general that channel is super interesting for anyone who is interested in classical guitars, I just subscribed.

[u/AnEpicDoor]

They didn't do a fair comparison for the $200 dollar guitar. They had one that was built for durability with a laminate soundboard. For the same price you can get one with a solid soundboard and that makes a massive difference to the sound.

[u/zippyspinhead]

The video sounds heavily processed to me. Way too much bass from the eq.