MANILA, Philippines?Like many homegrown ventures undermined by globalization, the decades-old guitar-making industry of Guagua, Pampanga, gently weeps.

Craftsmen, particularly in Barangay San Antonio, home to the town?s oldest workshops, have been losing their market mainly to cheap Chinese imports since 2003. And dwindling job orders have driven hundreds of artisans out of work and into backbreaking toil as subsistence fishermen, farm hands, or construction workers.

But an initiative made late last year by a popular Manila-based musician and businessman seems to strike a hopeful chord for Guagua?s struggling, if not dying, trade.

A company headed by Ramon ?RJ? Jacinto?reputedly ?The Guitarman? of Pinoy rock ?n? roll?has reworked an old partnership with its Guagua suppliers, enabling the latter to produce guitars that are touted to be technically superior to, yet still labor-intensive and much cheaper than, the Chinese-made instruments.

The resulting prototype is a ?hybrid,? or a versatile model that can be played with high sound quality both as an electric guitar or an acoustic (without amplifiers), Jacinto, chair of the RJ Guitar Center, said in an interview last week in his Makati office.

It goes by the name ?GT Series,? which stands for ?Gitarang Tipid? (loosely, ?cheap guitar?).

5,000 quota

But perhaps more significantly, the new product has allowed at least 120 craftsmen in San Antonio to return to their workshops, said Rosauro ?Bong? Morales, Jacinto?s partner in Guagua and a civil engineer by training.

And more workers will likely be hired in the next few months to meet an initial production quota set by the company at 5,000 pieces, Morales said on the phone.

Jacinto said he expected the workers to deliver on the quota in seven to eight months. This means they will have a stable source of income for the period, at a time when the global economic crisis is leaving millions of Filipinos jobless here and abroad.

?We (the company) helped them innovate without really changing what they do best,? Jacinto said. ?We said, ?We will give you the technology, supervise your work for quality because it will carry our brand, and then we will order a lot [of the product] so you can have your jobs back.??

Inquirer report

Jacinto said his decision leading to the development of the new guitar model was largely inspired by an Oct. 20, 2008, report by Inquirer Central Luzon correspondent Tonette Orejas on the plight of the Guagua guitar-makers.

The report told of how the number of guitar factories in San Antonio had dropped from around 50 in the 1980s to less than 20 today, and how monthly production in the barangay had shrunk drastically from 20,000 pieces to 1,500 in the last three years.

?We were really going down, and up to 75 percent [of the skilled workers] were out of work,? recalled Morales, a third-generation guitar shop owner and a longtime supplier of a line of RJ acoustic guitars.

?I myself could have been out of business by now and looking for another job,? he said.

Jacinto said the flow of cheap Chinese guitars into the country had gone unchallenged in recent years, so much so that even traders in the ?non-music business,? like appliance dealers who may not have an ear for quality, began displaying the imports in their showrooms.

?And with a little markup [on the pricing], they just dumped them on the market, until our local manufacturers could no longer compete and began losing their jobs,? he said.

A Chinese-made electric guitar usually sells here for at least P3,000, ?but you will hear complaints about its quality,? said Jacinto, who has been in the guitar business as manufacturer, assembler and importer since 1987.

?Umiiyak dapat?

Under the new arrangement with Morales, the RJ Guitar Center provides the electronic components while the Guagua workers make the hollow plywood casing and hardwood neck based on a design approved by the company.

?If they have been making low-cost acoustic guitars, with a little innovation why not go ?electric??? Jacinto said, summing up the proposition he had made to Morales.

The electronic components, including the ?pickup? (or the device that serves as a microphone for the strings), are installed in Pampanga. Final quality-control checks are done on every guitar in the Makati company, sometimes by Jacinto himself.

According to Jacinto, he usually tests a piece by plucking away with the upbeat riffs of ?Johnny B. Goode? (Chuck Berry) and ?Pipeline? (The Ventures).

?Umiiyak dapat (It should whine or scream),? he said, smiling, drawing from the Pinoy musician?s lingo. ?There should be no dead spots, no off-key intonations; every note on the scale must register.?

Sold out

The first 300 pieces that the workers finished in time for Christmas were immediately sold out, according to Jacinto.

Morales said that in order to deliver on the 5,000 quota ordered by the RJ Guitar Center in the early part of the year, his main shop was now employing 40 workers, each earning daily some P220 or more, depending on their skill level.

About 80 others share the workload as subcontractors who have their own backyard shops.

?And we may soon need up to 200 workers just for this,? Morales said, noting that some overseas workers who recently returned to Guagua had offered to ?invest? after hearing about the huge job order.

With such signs of hope, perhaps the guitar-makers of Guagua can still strum their way out of the blues, starting with those who now get by with a little help from a friend named RJ.