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Originally Posted by BEBF#BEb-man
Would it be fair, or even obvious to some, to put an amount of price difference in a single company's ranges down to not just the materials but the tiering of the skill level of the workers involved, in the factory setting?
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Well, yes and no, All the assembly line guitar factories I've visited have work stations for each step of the guitar's construction. There are some tasks that are definitely require more skill, with the application of the finish being one of the most challenging work stations.
But it's not as though the cheaper instruments get their frets installed and their nuts slotted by novices - typically, all the guitars go through the same stations, regardless of the price of the instrument.
At Martin, for example, there's a lady who has been installing frets for something like 40 years. That was a work station she was assigned to early on in her employment by the company, she found that she liked it, and she's stayed there ever since. As you might expect, she's really REALLY good at her job.
Not every guitar company is going to have a gung-ho frets installer who's been at it for decades, of course, but a lot of these folks get very good at a very narrow set of responsibilities, and that's what they choose to do, day in and day out.
But, no, it's not like the low end guitars get worked on by half-passed employees who haven't quite figured out what they're supposed to be doing quite yet. The whole point of having an assembly line is to break down the guitar-building process into small, simple steps that are easy to learn and easy to teach, precisely so that unskilled new employees can be taught very quickly to do that one task.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BEBF#BEb-man
I can see the necessity of having new staff in and their being trained up working on guitars that will be sold. I can think of at least two brands where the guitars are overall great, and the materials also, but things like the placing of the nut and pickguard might make you tut, that sort of thing. I've seen for example a few fingerboards that have skew-whiff ends so that the nut might not be fully flush even if seated as well as could be or where the neck meets the body will make you glad you can appreciate wabi-sabi. The key, precision jobs wouldn't be in the hands of new staff but less critical things. Maybe this is stupidly obvious but I wonder if someone can confirm it. And lucky you if you've not seen such variation...
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Sometimes the quality control folks miss some instruments. You're correct that more difficult tasks are given to experienced employees who know what they're doing. But sometimes things like sharp fret ends occur in transit or at the dealerships, if the guitars get too dry and the wood of the fretboard shrinks a little bit.
So some of the aberrations are not necessarily things that occur at the factory itself. If you've seen poorly slotted nuts on Martin and Gibson acoustic guitars, as I have on rare occasions, that might be an indication that the folks in the set up room were really slammed the day when that guitar came through.
It's hard to say. But as a general rule, new hires at that guitar factories are typically given the simplest tasks to perform, and work their way up to more critical jobs.
Hope that makes sense.
Wade Hampton Miller