Carcinogenic Gotohs??

[Mr. Jelly]

Originally Posted by pickoid_1

It’s the same sort of California regulations that prevent Martin from stamping “Made in the USA” on their guitars.

Not true. It only means they can't to California. They have every reason to exercise their rights and not send them to California with that verbiage. One could blame Martin for not doing so instead of blaming the government. Your choice though isn't it.

[dwasifar]

Originally Posted by Mr. Jelly

Not true. It only means they can't to California. They have every reason to exercise their rights and not send them to California with that verbiage.

I wonder if they could get away with covering the "Made in USA" stamp with a "Made in USA with domestic and foreign components" sticker for instruments that ship to California? Seems like it would meet the requirements, at little cost.

[tadol]

California law and Federal law are almost identical since 2015 - if a company has problems meeting the claim that a product meets standards that its “Made in USA” based on federal law, then it wont meet CA standards either. To blame it on CA law is disingenuous, especially when the problem lies in the manufacturers choices. While there are some problems with the law (federal & CA) which relate to materials - eg, rosewoods and mahoganies are not grown in the US, so their use alone can make a “Made in USA” designation extremely questionable - many of the individual components included in a guitar - tuners, or cases, for example - are frequently sourced as completed items from overseas.

Its a difficult problem to identify a country of origin these days for most products - we have grown into a diverse international economy, with many items that we rely on almost completely unavailable from domestic sources. The use of a “Made in USA” designation should realistically inform consumers that virtually all of the labor and materials in that product come from the USA - and these days, that bar is EXTREMELY hard to reach - so many companies choose to leave that label off, rather than face potential PR problems when its publicly pointed out just how much of their materials and components are NOT from the US -

[bufflehead]

As long as my guitars are stamped with "Nazareth, PA," I'm cool with that. I can figure out the rest on my own.

[Mycroft]

As someone who lost both parents to cancer, and has a cousin fighting it as we speak, I might note that not everyone finds this subject particularly funny...

[Monsoon1]

Originally Posted by Wade Hampton

It’s because it’s not healthy to smoke Gotoh tuners, even if you don’t inhale...

If you never smoke your guitar tuners, or sprinkle them like bacon bits on your salad, then you should probably be okay.

Hope this helps.


Wade Hampton Miller

And this should go without saying, but I would also resist the urge to microwave them, as well.

[dwasifar]

Originally Posted by dwasifar

I wrote to Gotoh and asked. If they answer, I'll post their reply.

After receiving an initial uninformative reply, I pressed them and they gave me more specifics:

A small amount of cadmium contained in gear brass, hexavalent chrome and nickel contained in plating.

So now we know.