I can believe that.
Someone put it in perspective for me the other day. Not everyone works at companies like Google and Meta that pay entry level personnel hundreds of thousands of dollars. Problem is that staffers at these companies have so much disposable income that they don’t blink at the cost of groceries or transport or indulgences like guitar amps.
It skews the playing field for everyone else, especially daily minimum wage earners. So the crème de la crème has no problem with it, it’s just the bottom feeders like me.
That said, over the years, there has been a general decline in amp sales, and the amp manufacturers will be the first to tell you about it, because of the rapid improvements in modelling and profiling technology. A guy sees a huge band like Metallica or Megadeth using modellers and thinks to himself, “Why not?”
It’s only boomers like me who still maintain that there’s nothing like a cranked amp in the room. Most of the kids are dreaming about Axe FXs and Kempers. And why not? Even in a live situation, stages have increasingly grown quiet and modellers are praised by sound men for allowing them to get a good mix.
So yeah, totally agree about the cost of living crisis. Yesterday I paid $6 for a plate of chicken rice (there were options for $4/$5/$6 plates) and at the end of the meal I was still hungry due to shrinkflation. A couple of days before that my brother was in town visiting and we thought we’d get some rosti at this nice restaurant we like. Price was still the same at the $25.90 per plate. But the rosti had shrunk in size by one-third by my estimate.
Everything is more expensive and products are shrinking in size. You buy a bag of chips and there’s more air in it than wafers.
But at the same time, amps have been declining in popularity. That’s why the manufacturers are charging huge amounts for them nowadays, since the volumes are small.
