Abasi Concepts/Larada Megathread

[MaxOfMetal]

I think the fact that many of the colors are already sold out answers any questions about why these guitars are priced as such. People have been seeing the Laradas selling out in minutes at the 3k+ pricepoint. 2k will seem like a steal by comparison. So why not?

QC issues aside, Abasi has done a bang up job of cultivating demand, waiting for that demand to marinate in our consumer mind, and then dropping Legion at what seems like an apex of consumer interest.

And it's important to note that often the price is decided before the guitar is even spec'd out.

 

[r3tr0sp3ct1v3]

I have no issue with the price. Albeit I have not tried the product yet but I have no issue. It is directly competing with Strandberg imports, new BC Rich, and high end Schecters. The latter of which does not make higher end 8's.
My only issue in that range is it could be compared to Kiesel prices. I'd much rather support a smaller business venture like Abasi Concept. I also say that as a big hater of the drop system. This is a smart move I can get behind.

 

[Jonathan20022]

I have no issue with the price. Albeit I have not tried the product yet but I have no issue. It is directly competing with Strandberg imports, new BC Rich, and high end Schecters. The latter of which does not make higher end 8's.
My only issue in that range is it could be compared to Kiesel prices. I'd much rather support a smaller business venture like Abasi Concept. I also say that as a big hater of the drop system. This is a smart move I can get behind.

I guess my problem with WMI produced instruments being priced near or above 2k is that back when Strandberg had them build the OS7/8's I held that same stance that these are incredibly expensive. This was in a world where Keith Merrow's signature premiered at just about 1k USD, so on paper I found it incredibly hard to justify ordering a Korean Strandberg for twice the price unless I absolutely HAD to have a Boden Shape and Fanned Frets.

And I hardly believe anyone when they say they purchased a Boden 7 for the ability to downtune, because AFAIK a .75" fan with a 26.25" Scale on the lowest string hardly does anything in the way of tension. So functionally speaking, if you didn't want/need a headless guitar or had no need to try the endurneck what other incentive was there to spend virtually double the cost of an instrument that for all intents and purposes was built to the same standards? And speaking now, I have owned Keith Merrow Schecters from all generations and played the Strandberg OS line as well over the years. We can talk all day about varied quality out of WMI, but all of these guitars and even the Ormsby Metal X I have on my rack sit in the same kind of "quality" bracket.

I think the only realistic expectation that someone should have ordering an instrument that originated in WMI and respectively Cort (Indonesia) is the kind of opinion echo'd by other brands producing gear there. There's a reason these businesses are adding their own layer of Final QC/Setup before sending them out to clients, I'm confident that they still reject instruments even to this day.

Price brackets have crept up quite a bit, take Ibanez for example.

The Premium line premiered around 2012 at a under 1k, and offered numerous specs that were visually appealing. But they didn't turn out to be quite that good, I had two that were fantastic but it's pretty well documented that this series had a poor reception.

Now 8 years later, Ibanez has several lines - Gio/Standard/Iron Label/Axion Label/Premium/Prestige/j.custom. I'm not including the Genesis Collection because those are basically just Prestiges from what I gather. But that's not the point anyways, the point is how the prices have increased and in small steps how it's just become something guitar players have grown used to. Iron/Axion Label Ibanez guitars are the new Premium, price wise. Where you would get an Indonesian made Premium, you now receive an Indonesian made Iron/Axion. There are even some Axion Label guitars that break 1k and actually cost 1.4k, which is absurd to me considering that this only pushes the Premium price bracket even higher where you normally see signature AZ guitars and other models price themselves at 1.5k.

Customers are effectively paying close to twice as much as they used to for equivalent products a decade later, and it's become the norm. The time to push back on instrument prices rising has long since past, people are willing to pay cost premium to own a particular design or try select features, that's just what it is nowadays.

 

[coolverine]

pricing of the finish aside, which, the gloss solid finish IMO, isn't all that significant to incur a $200 premium, $100 i could eat. But to me, the totality of the the finish, coupled with it being a bolt on neck and priced at $2k, seems like from a finished end product standpoint, these should be about $200-$300 cheaper to be great values. After all, they're missing that special neck profile. WMI makes lots of great set neck guitars with awesome finishes for like what, a $1500 price point? Granted, the tooling for those products are longer established and for bigger volume than Abasi (i assume), so I guess that factors in here. Are these the most expensive WMI produced instruments now?

I just think if they really wanted to make Legion the accessible everyone Abasi, they could have priced a tad more aggressively. And the jury is out on overall QC. As the new guy posting here, I am not trying to shit things up by harping on price, i've read a lot of people's issues here with the $3k+ versions, so a lot things just seem like a not great start given a price to end product history i've seen. I've got a lot of pricey Gibsons, so price won't usually scare me away, an asia made bolt on for $2k, with "cheaper" body woods, just all adds up to a miscalculated opportunity.

definitely set me straight with objective details on why this pricing seems to make sense relative to other asia made and similarly constructed instruments in terms of materials and specs.

 

[Jonathan20022]

The problem with declaring bolt-on construction as being the cheaper of the choices (Set neck/Neck Thru), is that the logic breaks pretty cleanly immediately as you have the thought. They are different construction methods, not a point of objective value over one or another. Gloss however has been shown to literally require more labor hours to correctly pull off and therefore costs more.

I totally agree with you that at a price of 1500 for the Satin Burl Top model, and perhaps 1700 for the other 3 would have been infinitely preferable. But as I said in my previous comment, they are pretty much in line with what people are paying for instruments out of WMI through the sheer cost of production import guitars rising with time.

Abasi isn't an outlier is I guess the point I'm trying to illustrate, other brands have pushed the envelope price wise and the market responded accordingly by accepting the cost for their products. Abasi therefore has no incentive to price these competitively, there's a huge demand for the Larada design, and they're within the price where these will move.

 

[spudmunkey]

The problem with declaring bolt-on construction as being the cheaper of the choices (Set neck/Neck Thru), is that the logic breaks pretty cleanly immediately as you have the thought. They are different construction methods, not a point of objective value over one or another. Gloss however has been shown to literally require more labor hours to correctly pull off and therefore costs more.

In a production environment, with a Bolt-On, you can be working on necks and bodies at the same time, so it increases efficiency and output. It also reduces losses should you have an irreparable issue with one or the other, decreasing waste and down-time trying to fix an issue.

Set neck has some of the advantages, but then doesn't retain all of them when it comes time to attach the neck and finishing.

There is indeed objective value of one neck construction over another when it comes to the actual costs involved.

 

[Jonathan20022]

In a production environment, with a Bolt-On, you can be working on necks and bodies at the same time, so it increases efficiency and output. It also reduces losses should you have an irreparable issue with one or the other, decreasing waste and down-time trying to fix an issue.

Set neck has some of the advantages, but then doesn't retain all of them when it comes time to attach the neck and finishing.

There is indeed objective value of one neck construction over another when it comes to the actual costs involved.

I should have worded that a little better, no objective value to a customer in the end result. IE: Thinking that Neck Through instruments are the only ones worth spending any significant amount of money on, etc.

But yeah on the manufacturing side bolt-on necks give them way more flexibility with production.

 

[cip 123]

pricing of the finish aside, which, the gloss solid finish IMO, isn't all that significant to incur a $200 premium, $100 i could eat. But to me, the totality of the the finish, coupled with it being a bolt on neck and priced at $2k, seems like from a finished end product standpoint, these should be about $200-$300 cheaper to be great values. After all, they're missing that special neck profile. WMI makes lots of great set neck guitars with awesome finishes for like what, a $1500 price point? Granted, the tooling for those products are longer established and for bigger volume than Abasi (i assume), so I guess that factors in here. Are these the most expensive WMI produced instruments now?

I just think if they really wanted to make Legion the accessible everyone Abasi, they could have priced a tad more aggressively. And the jury is out on overall QC. As the new guy posting here, I am not trying to shit things up by harping on price, i've read a lot of people's issues here with the $3k+ versions, so a lot things just seem like a not great start given a price to end product history i've seen. I've got a lot of pricey Gibsons, so price won't usually scare me away, an asia made bolt on for $2k, with "cheaper" body woods, just all adds up to a miscalculated opportunity.

definitely set me straight with objective details on why this pricing seems to make sense relative to other asia made and similarly constructed instruments in terms of materials and specs.

Bolt does NOT equal cheaper. Keep in mind that this is also a rather elaborate bolt on design, so it's probably not as quick to machine and finish as you regular four bolt designs. Bolt on has it's advantages in a manufacturing setting but it doesn't inherently make them cheaper. The body wood thing also it still looks like a 2 piece body on the trans blue finish one at least on the 7. And it's basswood so they've not gone the ibanez route of cheaper Chinese woods.

As for the finish pricing, I'm no paint expert but the gloss may (and probably does) take longer to reach its final product than the satin, couple that with the fact that although they may be fairly boring colours they may be custom colours for Abasi, I don't know what other brand being built in WMI will be using those colours. If it takes more time, it costs more money.

One point I really like about these is that in the pictures they appear to have blind fret ends to help stop fret sprout (Unless they're just very well hidden). I imagine this is an upcharge by WMI as it's generally a longer CNC operation than just cutting straight through the board with a circular blade. Keep in mind some big companies with CNC's don't even do this, my Carvin for example doesn't have blind frets.

So they seem to be built with all the top specs, and extras that some big companies don't include.

$1899 dollars for the 8 which is what i'd get is about £1450 for me. Is it expensive? Yes. Is it more expensive than the competition? Not really, it's actually cheaper than a Strandberg. Would I buy it? No I'd probably still grab a used RG2228, but that's because I don't really want one. They're still sold out because people want an Abasi, they don't want to shop around cause no one else builds Abasi's.

I think the Pricing is absolutely fine honestly, the Guitars are absolutely loaded imo.

 

[Andromalia]

The one thing I can't fault them with, is they came up with a headstock design that doesn't suck. That's becoming rare nowadays.
Zero interest on the brand since I'm an old school guy and barely even use my sevenstring and I'm into Vs more than anything else, but it's interesting to follow the development.
Interesting to see they have chosen to go the "product-not-available-for-you-yes-we're-banking-on-FOMO" route. That is becoming a real trend in all industries. Will there be a Supreme limited ?

 

[coolverine]

The one thing I can't fault them with, is they came up with a headstock design that doesn't suck. That's becoming rare nowadays.
Zero interest on the brand since I'm an old school guy and barely even use my sevenstring and I'm into Vs more than anything else, but it's interesting to follow the development.
Interesting to see they have chosen to go the "product-not-available-for-you-yes-we're-banking-on-FOMO" route. That is becoming a real trend in all industries. Will there be a Supreme limited ?

their headstock design is, IMO, a derivative of ken lawrence's headstocks. don't get me wrong, i agree the Abasi headstock is pretty damn nice, but i'd also say it isn't really a new design per se. there is precedent for this headstock.

 

[sym30l1c]

$1899 dollars for the 8 which is what i'd get is about £1450 for me. Is it expensive? Yes. Is it more expensive than the competition? Not really, it's actually cheaper than a Strandberg. Would I buy it? No I'd probably still grab a used RG2228, but that's because I don't really want one. They're still sold out because people want an Abasi, they don't want to shop around cause no one else builds Abasi's.

I think the Pricing is absolutely fine honestly, the Guitars are absolutely loaded imo.

I think the pricing is good, and if all I was really paying was £1450, I might even consider it relatively cheap compared to other brands offerings (taking into account I've not tried a Legion). But with $160 shipping, plus 20% VAT, plus customs (around 2.5% I think), the actual price is in the £2000 region. I guess it still makes it cheaper than a Strandberg, but definetely not by much.

The question to me is whether £2000 is the right price for what the guitar has to offer to me in terms of value, not necessarily in comparison with others. For that price I can get a Prestige that probably is higher quality (again, without having tried a Legion), but it doesn't have the Abasi pickups, it doesn't have the same shape, it doesn't have the elements that make the Abasi quite unique, etc. If that's what I'm looking for in a guitar, then £2000 is not too bad as long as a reasonable quality level is there.

I'm very interested in reading people's thoughts and experience when they receive their Legions.

 

[Jonathan20022]

their headstock design is, IMO, a derivative of ken lawrence's headstocks. don't get me wrong, i agree the Abasi headstock is pretty damn nice, but i'd also say it isn't really a new design per se. there is precedent for this headstock.

Hard disagree, personally. There's a difference between inspiration and appropriation.

I think the pricing is good, and if all I was really paying was £1450, I might even consider it relatively cheap compared to other brands offerings (taking into account I've not tried a Legion). But with $160 shipping, plus 20% VAT, plus customs (around 2.5% I think), the actual price is in the £2000 region. I guess it still makes it cheaper than a Strandberg, but definetely not by much.

The question to me is whether £2000 is the right price for what the guitar has to offer to me in terms of value, not necessarily in comparison with others. For that price I can get a Prestige that probably is higher quality (again, without having tried a Legion), but it doesn't have the Abasi pickups, it doesn't have the same shape, it doesn't have the elements that make the Abasi quite unique, etc. If that's what I'm looking for in a guitar, then £2000 is not too bad as long as a reasonable quality level is there.

I'm very interested in reading people's thoughts and experience when they receive their Legions.

The issue is that Strandberg is on paper the very worst example to compare against for any sort of cost value. They charge the same amount for what I assume an equivalent offering would be the Metal 7 series, except it's currently built in Indonesia.

Even fees and shipping withstanding, it's crazy to me that now it's semi-reasonable to think that a $2000 instrument from WMI could be a value. But in reality there is none, if you want a Larada then this is the cheapest option to try one (1799USD + Shipping).

If the question is, can I get a better value for a guitar, then the answer is unequivocally yes.

Now if it's, can I get a Larada from someone else at a considerable value, then no. There's just no alternative depending on what your goal is and why you want a Larada.

Because you can find an Ormsby Hype 6/7/8 from WMI and those all feature 2ish" Multiscale Fretboards. So if the need is functional and you just want a Multiscale, then there's a far more economical choice out there, especially buying used. But chances are if you're interested in the Abasi, you wouldn't buy a Prestige in it's place. And honestly 8/10 times I can say with confidence that the Prestige would outpace any WMI made instrument.

 

[jephjacques]

As for the finish pricing, I'm no paint expert but the gloss may (and probably does) take longer to reach its final product than the satin, couple that with the fact that although they may be fairly boring colours they may be custom colours for Abasi, I don't know what other brand being built in WMI will be using those colours. If it takes more time, it costs more money.

It definitely takes more time. You're putting more coats of paint down, there's more curing and sanding and buffing involved. Gibson, PRS, Fender, Suhr, lots of other builders do or have done satin guitars that cost significantly less than their full gloss counterparts. IIRC the Fender "Highway" series guitars were like $200 cheaper than the normal American Standard guitars of the time, which is even more drastic when you're talking about $600 versus $800 instead of $1800 vs $2000. And then there's Aristides, who forgo the paint process entirely for their Raw series guitars, which are something like 300 euros cheaper than even their satin finish models.

 

[HellaSickTight]

So uh.....

 

[jephjacques]

So uh.....

yessss

 

[TheInvisibleHand]

Ok so, I don't want to derail this thread, but its come up countless times in comparison and I really don't understand why Strandberg has become the whipping post for discussions of overpriced import guitars. I've owned a number, 7 this year alone, amd while I have never been floored by any of them, they all felt well built, played nicely, and has no issues to speak of.

What is the main complaint against them? I ask for a better frame of reference.

 

[Vyn]

Ok so, I don't want to derail this thread, but its come up countless times in comparison and I really don't understand why Strandberg has become the whipping post for discussions of overpriced import guitars. I've owned a number, 7 this year alone, amd while I have never been floored by any of them, they all felt well built, played nicely, and has no issues to speak of.

What is the main complaint against them? I ask for a better frame of reference.

The main complaint is that for the same money NEW you can get a better instrument. The only logical reason to buy one is either you're a fan of the brand or you really, really need to have the Endura neck as a feature. Because other than that, there's no reason to buy one.

 

[Dayn]

Ok so, I don't want to derail this thread, but its come up countless times in comparison and I really don't understand why Strandberg has become the whipping post for discussions of overpriced import guitars. I've owned a number, 7 this year alone, amd while I have never been floored by any of them, they all felt well built, played nicely, and has no issues to speak of.

What is the main complaint against them? I ask for a better frame of reference.

My Strandberg is also great. But you definitely pay a premium for its specs. For the multiscale tremolo at least, there was simply no other option in existence at that price point for me.

 

[HellaSickTight]

My Strandberg is also great. But you definitely pay a premium for its specs. For the multiscale tremolo at least, there was simply no other option in existence at that price point for me.

That’s why I went with Strandberg at the time, it was quite literally the only multiscale trem I could find, I feel like I could have also gone with Skervesen but I feel like that’d be over the $2,500 mark.

 

[bzhang9]

tosin is doing this for one reason, to make money. every guitar puts a few hundo in his pocket I'd guess. so of course its gonna be more expensive than the average WMI guitar.