New Ronciswall Guitars Production Line! Tell me your needs!

[GabeR]

Hey everyone! here is Gabriele from Ronciswall, a guitar company based in Italy, someone could already know my work but for those who don't, I build modern guitars! yeah lol

Btw, we are approaching for the first time a production line of guitars. As i needed recently to raise the prices of the custom work i also wanted to provide guitars at a much more comfortable budget.

At 90% these guitars will be produced in Indonesia, at a factory that also produce ESP, Schecter and other big brands so i'm confident to work with experienced people and of course all the models will be 100% checked and probably painted at my workshop in Italy before shipping. For me it's the very first time that i approach to production lines of guitars so as they are really, really picky on options we are discussing models/configurations and all the details to first run prototypes, then release the lines (probably in 2025)

As these guys works on volumes they do request a very high minimum order quantity so i need to be as sure as possible about options and especially models. So i wanted to ask to you what do you think about production guitars and what are your needs in terms of options, woods, material and craftmanship.

My first thought was " Ok, superstrat is the thing" so probably a rebrand of the Miasma model it will be the first one to be created.

The idea is to build 6 and 7 strings (this one later) and providing these options:

Swamp Ash Body, Carved
Roasted Maple Neck
Ebony Fretboard
SS frets.
New Headstock
Then work on a tremolo and fixed bridge together with a HH HSH and HSS configuration

Here are some mockups my webmaster is working on for me.

What do you guys think?

 

[Chri]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I would imagine that having a fixed bridge model that's either H-H, or H-S-S would probably sell more than ones with a 2 point trem. Given the market that's interested in your guitars so far this is just my guess

Are you trying to gauge interest to request the volumes of both fixed and trem models to have built?

Also, why Indonesia vs Korea? I'm assuming price and their willingness to take on work was a deciding factor. Again, I would imagine more people would be willing to buy in if you were to get what most people consider to be a more "reputable" factory.

 

[GabeR]

Thanks for your reply! Yes the plan is to make both a tremolo and a fixed bridge, probably hipshot. In terms of volumes the options of having a tremolo or a fixed bridge is not an issue for the same model as i can just provide the cad files and they can mill a tremolo cavity or a fixed bridge easly, the "issue" come when you want different models with different options. I'm really trying to obtain feedback from players to understand their needs. In fact tremolos have not been asked to me so often as custom orders, but, for example, as a player it's prefearable for me. Other then this if i look at production lines of other brands the majority, at least for this kind of guitars, they mostly have tremolos.

Find out those factories it's an hell of a job, you can't really find them on google if you don't know how to search or have any inside contact. The Korean factories, from my experience, charge too much in order for me to provide these instruments at the price point i would, while indonesia generally have a much lower price point. i can't tell the quality yet, i'm waiting for the final quotes and prototypes. Based on that, and also based on my work on these guitars in terms of finish, frets, and general QC, having a factory that already produce for other known brands gives me hope.

 

[ExMachina]

It's a crowded space, I think the best chance for a differentiator is going to be QC. Of course, if you're very picky on the QC, and/or doing work on site to get the guitars into perfect workhorse condition, then you start eating into margins and scalability becomes a concern. But I could see a niche where you undercut WMI but people pay a premium over solar because they know they're getting a "flawless" instrument.

 

[crushingpetal]

What do you guys think?

What do I think? It's a bad business move to ask a forum for ideas.

Every 6 months we get a thread exactly like this.

 

[Ordacleaphobia]

Like others have said, you're stepping into a very saturated market; and one where cost is a huge factor at that, especially if you're doing final QC in Italy.
Not sure what markets you're targeting, for example these look interesting to me but as a resident of the United States, after the shipping cost of Indonesia -> Italy -> US, there are probably better options available to someone like me. Not to compare a big brand to a newer manufacturer, but I can get a rock-solid Indo guitar by PRS here for sub $1000. That's tough to compete with.

I also don't think a trem would be especially sought after on a guitar like this but that's just my opinion. This design is, to be blunt, clearly lifted from the Blackmachine, which just screams fixed bridge, HH pickup config (though, I suppose there's always merit in trying something different). I would look into a multiscale option before a trem option. Love the decision for SS frets. What are you looking at for pickups? Are you slotting in name brand pickups or a house brand? Only other thing I can think of that I personally care about would be locking tuners but as long as the stock tuners you're using are decent enough I'd probably just leave those be and let the folks that care enough about them worry about swapping them out to keep cost lower.

Best of luck with the venture man your work looks pretty cool and I've always been a huge fan of this design so I'm always down to see more takes on it out there.

 

[SalsaWood]

I have one of Gabe's guitars and he is working on another custom headless for me right now. He's not here to drum up interest for his guitars, he's one of the nicest and most straight up dudes I have dealt with so far, and he's genuinely interested in what yall might have to say about these things.

Except the HSS with non-recessed trems people. Nobody should be interested in hearing from those people. (kidding)

 

[nightsprinter]

What I'm most interested in when it comes to buying a guitar is having a stable well built neck made out of properly dried high quality lumber with a good profile that isn't just a pre-fab chonker, excellent fretwork, and easy upper fret access. anyone that can promise and deliver on that will get my money. I don't care about what electronics are in it or what the headstock shape is or any of that. I just want excellent structural bones and playability built to last that isn't made out of wet green wood with frets barely banged in.

And my #1 ultimate pet peeve - ensure that the bridge is perfectly centered/aligned with the neck. This is a problem I encounter way too often and it drives me crazy. It doesn't always pose a playability problem, but sometimes it does.

 

[crushingpetal]

I have one of Gabe's guitars and he is working on another custom headless for me right now. He's not here to drum up interest for his guitars, he's one of the nicest and most straight up dudes I have dealt with so far, and he's genuinely interested in what yall might have to say about these things.

Except the HSS with non-recessed trems people. Nobody should be interested in hearing from those people. (kidding)

Cool, that's a nice compliment.

I still think it is a bad business move to ask a forum. We are not a statistically representative sample.

>As these guys works on volumes they do request a very high minimum order quantity so i need to be as sure as possible >about options and especially models.

Absolutely, seriously, 100%, don't listen to anyone on this forum or any forum about what "they would buy".

 

[Rubbishplayer]

H

Hey everyone! here is Gabriele from Ronciswall, a guitar company based in Italy, someone could already know my work but for those who don't, I build modern guitars! yeah lol

Btw, we are approaching for the first time a production line of guitars. As i needed recently to raise the prices of the custom work i also wanted to provide guitars at a much more comfortable budget.

At 90% these guitars will be produced in Indonesia, at a factory that also produce ESP, Schecter and other big brands so i'm confident to work with experienced people and of course all the models will be 100% checked and probably painted at my workshop in Italy before shipping. For me it's the very first time that i approach to production lines of guitars so as they are really, really picky on options we are discussing models/configurations and all the details to first run prototypes, then release the lines (probably in 2025)

As these guys works on volumes they do request a very high minimum order quantity so i need to be as sure as possible about options and especially models. So i wanted to ask to you what do you think about production guitars and what are your needs in terms of options, woods, material and craftmanship.

My first thought was " Ok, superstrat is the thing" so probably a rebrand of the Miasma model it will be the first one to be created.

The idea is to build 6 and 7 strings (this one later) and providing these options:

Swamp Ash Body, Carved
Roasted Maple Neck
Ebony Fretboard
SS frets.
New Headstock
Then work on a tremolo and fixed bridge together with a HH HSH and HSS configuration

Here are some mockups my webmaster is working on for me.

What do you guys think?

View attachment 147149View attachment 147148
View attachment 147150

How about a sevenstring.org free from 22 page flame-wars? Can you do that?

 

[SalsaWood]

We are not a statistically representative sample.

Yea, forum hobbyists in general are a flock of odd birds compared to the more pedestrian walks. And even still, then there's SSO, lol.

 

[crushingpetal]

Yea, forum hobbyists in general are a flock of odd birds compared to the more pedestrian walks. And even still, then there's SSO, lol.

Take the following with a grain of salt (this is capitalism, after all): Reverb lists best selling guitars of the year and sweetwater will give you sorting by "most popular". I'd go by numbers like that any day over what a group of cranky forum-ites fire off as what they would buy.

 

[Ray-T]

The design is very good looking to my eye. Better than 90% of super strats out there. I don't know how Chapman for example sells guitars when they all look like shit.
But also there are a lot of choices for superstrats out there and I already have a good one so it would be very difficult to convince me to actually buy one.

 

[Ordacleaphobia]

Take the following with a grain of salt (this is capitalism, after all): Reverb lists best selling guitars of the year and sweetwater will give you sorting by "most popular". I'd go by numbers like that any day over what a group of cranky forum-ites fire off as what they would buy.

Yes and no, there's also reach and marketability to consider. These searches will lead you to figures skewed by name recognition and market dominance.
Fender, Gibson, and the like will likely show up on these searches because if you're making and moving the most guitars it stands to reason you're also selling the most guitars. You can copy those instruments to a T but you couldn't hope to come within an order of magnitude of their sales because you don't have the name so you can't reach those buyers. You aren't competing with mass market manufacturers on your first run of import guitars.

On the other hand, there are smaller brands that have launched very successful product lines targeting a specific niche type of consumer. Look at Ormsby's import line, for example. The whole thing was clearly aimed at the type of demographic that would lurk SSO and it paid off in spades for him, because he could reach those consumers. A Blackmachine derivative is pretty clearly aimed at this crowd.

Hair splitting aside, I do agree with what you're saying though. When the rubber meets the road and it's time to put cash down you'd probably be lucky if 1/10th of the people saying "I'd buy X" actually do it and our friend here must know that already.

 

[SalsaWood]

Guess I'll throw it out there.

24 frets
25.5" scale
Compound radius ~16"
Thin neck profile and string spacing
Oiled back of neck
Ebony board
Mahogany body w/ Maple top or Ash body w/ no top
Solid gloss paint
Locking tuners
String through Gotoh/Hipshot

 

[Shawn]

Those are really nice designs! I really like the HSS configuration.

 

[nightsprinter]

The body design on those prototypes remind me of something Caparison might do and I love it