[mmedeiros14]

Has anyone ever come across a guitar luthier in the Philippines or the rest of SEA. I'm planning on going over there for a few months next year and hit Vietnam and Cambodia before I head to Manila. I've heard that Luther's down there do some pretty nice work for maybe Half the price of US luthiers.

[Onto]

I would love to know this too.

The guitar selection/quality here in the malls is absolute shit. Since it's a poor country there just isn't a demand for it. You can find a Martin or Taylor in the Glorietta mall in Makati, but the premium you pay is very high and they only have a few and they aren't cared for in the store.

I just bought a parlor style from an RJ store in the mall. This brand is made in Manila and has a decent sound. The tuners suck on it though. Cost me 6,000 pesos so I won't complain too much.

[iknowexactly]

This isn't much help, but I saw an article and interview in a newspaper online somewhere about a local maker here from a few years ago, but when I went to the address mentioned the page was down.

Heres a forum for Filipino musicians.
http://talk.philmusic.com/index.html?topic=253575.0

By the way, these suckers can sing. And the middle aged women lounge pianist at the Marco Polo Cebu sounds like Liberace and kills it, to an empty lounge with about 5 people. It's amazing.

[mmedeiros14]

I heard you can score a lot of fake gibsons, prs, ect. In those malls. Just swap the hardware and the pups and it's basically on par with a real gibson for a fraction of the price. (Gibson has gone way down hill in recent years I'd rather have a les paul made by a real luthier in my opinion). I'm sure this is more prevalent in china though.