The thing with these larger instrument manufacturers, though, is they have price scales that vary a lot even in the 1-400$ range. In the case of Ibanez, they don't own a factory, or didn't until within the last year. What they did was source their name/design/brand to several manufacturers in various parts of Asia. The highest end guitars they make are made by a handful of their own luthiers in Japan. Their best production models are made by the Fujigen factory in Japan, who also makes higher end import models for other companies (Like Jackson's Professional series from the mid 90s). Their next highest end stuff is made by Cort & Samick's various factories in Korea. The cheaper stuff (sub-500$) is now generally made in a factory in Indonesia, with their cheapest stuff coming from China. Even though it all says "Ibanez" on the logo, you've still gotta compare which factory it came with to even know if its worth your time.

Price & availability are important factors. I guess more kids will start playing if tappers were available to try in a music store and cheaper (the question is how many).
I believe that most professional guitar players didn't start on a 2K+ signature series but on a 1K- entry level (but playable) guitars. The same applies to every other instrument.

Things that might help to make an instrument cheaper:
- 10 strings
- Shorter scale (29/30 inches) in a baritone range
- Off the shelves components
- Guitar frets are OK, yes they might lift so what? a visit to your local guitar technician will solve that; how many times do you have to do a fret work on a standard guitar anyway (every 5+ years)?
- Setup is the key, but it's not rocket science. How many of you changed tuning / string gauge and re-did your setup? You might not have ended up with the 'perfect' Emmet setup but you got a good enough playable instrument. What I want to say is that this can be learned so it's just a matter of training and any of the workers in a guitar factory can learn it.
- Outsourcing.
- Wood work -> today most wood instruments are build with CNC machines.
- String spacing & standard guitar bridges? I'm sure that any saddles manufacturer will do narrower parts if you command a large batch. On the other hand standard guitar spacing will be OK for crossed playing on a 10 string instrument.
- Flaps? They are great but the old screws did a pretty good job too and I'm sure they were cheaper.
- Pickups, if you restrict yourself to a baritone range, I'm sure that you will find suitable & affordable standard guitar / bass pickups.
- A single model, no choices of wood / pickups. You want choices? then go the the higher end instrument models.

The Ziggy is a nice instrument that plays OK and cost less than 1K euros and they don't have big production yet; I'm sure they could make it cheaper in large numbers and with some of the other compromises stated previously.

The real question here is if there is a demand that justifies this kind of investment (money + time + effort). Unfortunately I don't think that the demand exists.
Would the demand be spiced up by a sub 1K instrument? Many attempts were made in the past: Warr had their Austin Douglas brand and their cheaper "standard" Raptor model (I own one and I love it); Megatar tried with their low entry models and now with the Zen tapper and it doesn't seems to pick up.
I think we have to admit that the instrument and the playing method are absolute niches that are well covered buy the current manufacturers: S.E is the leader with the lion's share of the market, Warr covers most of the "boutique" segment with custom exotic wood combinations (by the way beautiful instruments IMHO) the rest of this market segment goes for independent luthiers doing custom 1 of a kind instruments, finally the rest is covered by Megatar, Tenayo Ziggy, etc.
I think that if there was a big business opportunity here we would have already seen a mass market tapper by a big guitar manufacturer This doesn't prevent smaller companies to do a decent living with a smaller operation / production.

My conclusion here is:
- I'm sure that a cheaper tapper could be build. It won't be as cheap as an entry level guitar and I think it will still be considered as an expensive instrument (from a teen parent / poor student perspective).
- Putting a tapper in the hands of enough kids is a VERY long term (and uncertain) bet and I don't think anyone has the will or the financial backup to take such a risk.

My 2 cents
Cheers, Daniel.

Ten Strings is plenty
The one place where I think you definitely have it right is on the number of strings. There's absolutely no reason why 10 strings isn't enough, especially if you have 5ths in the bass, but even if you want to take a bass+guitar approach and use 4ths in the bass, it's still plenty. The fact that it makes for a narrower board is great for young learners with smaller hands.

I love the 10-string. I think if I didn't have so many students using instrument with different tunings, I would probably not play the Grand, but it makes teaching on all the various 10-string tunings much easier.

All of these records were made with 10-string Sticks:

Parallel Galaxy (Classic)
All of Tony's Stick recording until the mid 1990s (Classic)
All of Cides's recordings (Classic)
All of my recordings up to and including part of Ether Ore (Baritone Melody)

You can make a lot of music with a 10-string Stick.

The problem with Megatar is the price. They're Korean made, mass manufactured instruments(which isn't necessarily a bad thing mind you, but they aren't generally going to be the same quality as a US Made instrument) marketed at a price that's intended to compete with the stick. The cheapest Megatars are around, what? 1400? Why do that when for a few hundred dollars more, you could get a hand made, customized instrument made by the dude who invented the entire 'genre' of play/that type of instrument? It doesn't make sense.

If Megatar was REALLY wanted to break out, they'd have to knock about 600-700$ off their instrument. I think if they cheaped out on their pickups and nixed some other proprietary crap, they could slice the price down to aorund 700$. If they did, I'm sure there'd be a bit of a boom from it, since at that point, it becomes 1/3rd the price of the next cheapest option.

I think that for the last couple of years Traktor is making his instruments in his own shop in California (I remember seeing a video where he presented his new shop although I cannot find it now) . Originally the bodies and necks were CNC in Asia (not sure where) and the whole thing was fretted and assembled by Traktor again in California (please correct me if I'm wrong). Although they are not my cup of tea, all the Megatars that I've seen are very well build and the finishing is very good so I have nothing bad to say about the quality of the instruments (YMMV).
Could they be made cheaper? Sure, but again you have the scale economy problem, you need to sell thousands to make it work at that price point. AFAIK this will never happen, tappers are a niche.


Cheers, Daniel.