What we're up against

What the hell makes you think luthiers in small shops want to be like Taylor guitars? They don't for the most part. The day a small shop has to tool up like the big boys is the day we see nothing but same old- same old. There will always be big factories cranking the stuff out, doesn't mean we have to add to that. Screw that!

Anyone remember Taylor Guitars 'Factory Fridays'? I learnt so much watching them... rather than ridicule and whine it woudl be well for us to watch and learn.
 
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There is an old saying that sausage tastes great but just don't watch it being made... This to me is an example of mass production on an industrial scale and that is OK. But I agree that making guitars like sausages is just bit jarring. But hey, it is a business and always has been. And you know what? Some of these mass produced guitars don't sound half bad. Well... not that great maybe, but they are affordable and bring music to people who can't afford high end stuff.... Anyway, yes, a disturbing video on some levels. ..... I think maybe as someone pointed out, that it is not so much the manufacturing processes that are suspect but the wood and how it holds up over time. Only time will tell. That being said, I learned how to play on a 70's Yamaha 6 string and you what? the the thing didn't sound to bad at all. Eventually it just fell apart, but hey I had fun.
 
I enjoyed this very insightful thread and interesting video. In a past life I was production manager of a medium size woodworking shop. We had a lot of automation but we also employed a lot of highly skilled cabinet makers. Marriage of technology with hand skills is very common in many industries.

The first ukulele I bought was a Gretsch G9120 all laminate tenor for $135.00. On the label it said "crafted in China", it played well and sounded good, I still own it. Fast forward to today and I have owned or still own ukes by Howlet, Collings, Compass Rose, Mya Moe, Ono, LfdM, Kinnard, Ko'olau, I'iwi and others. It is because I was able to start out easily and cheaply that the passion for ukulele grew.

The point being that having inexpensive musical instruments available to those just starting out is a GOOD thing. I can't see what is wrong with making music accessible to the masses. It allowed me to do something new and extremely enjoyable, playing an instrument. I then became a customer of high end instruments and custom luthiers. This is the usual progression of a hobby, be it golf, fishing, tennis or guitar.
 
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Historically speaking the masses could never afford so called 'luthier instruments', that was always the preserve of the well off or the rich. The huge increase in demand that happened in the mid 19 th century/early 20 th century was filled by so called factory or trade instruments. They weren't factories as we know them now but they were more akin to the set up in the video that I linked to previously. The difference was that it was rarely done under one roof - it was a cottage style industry. The actual number of instruments that were being produced under these cottage style industries was astonishingly high. They were produced to meet the demand, quickly and cheaply. The people that made them had no notion of it being a high art or a high craft. They weren't in the least bit concerned with all that nonsense. They were much more concerned with making enough money to feed the family.
 
In the end, it's all market-driven business. Factories don't make thousands of anything on speculation. Wholesalers who order the stuff don't take too many risks or they won't be in business too long.
 
I'll learn from anyone - factory or individual...

It was a pleasure meeting you at Mike's shop on Oahu Pete, I hope you are doing well!

I do love factory videos, and it is crazy to see the volume. The only parts of the video that kind of gave me pause was the stringing and the shot of all of them going back and forth on the hanging conveyor.
That stringing segment - I think about the amount of care I use when re-stringing my instruments and I was just blown away, hammering in all six bridge pins at once, using a mechanized winder, just cringing!

I guess beer purists might have a hard time touring the Anheuser-Busch brewery, same type of thing.

The waste and competition for ordering does make sense though. How much wood is wasted by instruments that do not pass QC and are tossed?
Does it make it any tougher for Pete and Sven or Beau to get Rosewood when these folks buy an entire shipment?

I know that they will never compete on the sales side, completely different customer base.

All that being said, I do have a Kala concert ukulele that lives in my car.
It has always been there at the ready for when I need a decent ukulele to play and don't want to worry about one of my more expensive ones.
And I have heard Kimo Hussey play it, and you know what? It sounds pretty good when he plays it!
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SvfNhMlnBE

The antitheses of the earlier video. Hardly an electron in sight. These workers are highly skilled at their particular task and their speed of execution is amazing. Stentor violins are at the cheap end too.

Thanks Michael. Interesting video... One wonders why Stentor moved their factory to China. Because of labor obviously. No way Westerners are going to work that hard for that long and do that kind of quality work monotonous hour after monotonous hour. But hey, if your previous job was walking behind a water buffalo knee deep in mud and dung under a hot sun for 12 hours a day 6 days a week and you had a chance at this job you would jump at it.

Verring dangerously off topic here, but here is a video of a test on a $99 dollar Chinese violin. Disturbing in other ways. How can you compete against that kind of price for that kind of value and quality? Well, you can't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFaCpYRMKB8
 
Anyone remember Taylor Guitars 'Factory Fridays'? I learnt so much watching them... rather than ridicule and whine it woudl be well for us to watch and learn.
I agree with Pete.

Also none of you fulltime luthiers would be in business if it wasn't for the low and mid price factory ukes. They create an interest and a user base of players that then can start lusting for a custom built instrument by a luthier. Be happy that they exist and provide you with future potential customers as well as spreading the joy of music.

As for materials, they have the same rights as us to buy them, so either we adapt or we change what we work with.
 
How can you compete against that kind of price for that kind of value and quality? Well, you can't.

You can't, but you also don't need to. Even if the materials and quality are the same, the prestige isn't.

People aren't always buying only the product, they are also buying "feeling good". There's probably a wide range of what "feeling good" is caused by, from the intrinsic to the extrinsic, but it's probably safe to say that a $10,000 violin is more likely to achieve this for the average player than a $99 one, even if they sounded and played exactly the same.

The difference in how the buyer (and sometimes as important: others) perceive the two violins is already strongly present before either instrument has made a single sound. The price tag alone probably impacts perception strongly.

Luthiers sell more than the instrument. Chinese factories sell just the instrument.
 
Maybe it's just the luthier's lament that something we put so much care, precision, and heart into, could be pumped out without any connection to the instrument.

Flooding the market with crazy cheap goods not meant to last, just seems like greed. Even tho there's a place for that in the world too, it's hard to look at.

So we steal their high productivity ideas!! That will show them. :eek:ld:
 
While this sounds good and fairly correct, at this point in my career (coming to an end soon), I'd rather just sell the instrument because you can't eat and pay the bills with prestige. I don't think my prices are too high for a hand made instrument, but it is getting harder to sell anything with what we compete with.

You can't, but you also don't need to. Even if the materials and quality are the same, the prestige isn't.

People aren't always buying only the product, they are also buying "feeling good". There's probably a wide range of what "feeling good" is caused by, from the intrinsic to the extrinsic, but it's probably safe to say that a $10,000 violin is more likely to achieve this for the average player than a $99 one, even if they sounded and played exactly the same.

The difference in how the buyer (and sometimes as important: others) perceive the two violins is already strongly present before either instrument has made a single sound. The price tag alone probably impacts perception strongly.

Luthiers sell more than the instrument. Chinese factories sell just the instrument.
 
Wait. What kind of flag decal is that? Nice touch. Haha
There were some cool processes in the there but this video makes me even more proud that I do things by hand. Mass production like this only lends more value to what we do. The world will always seek good, honest handcrafted art.
 

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I hope you fellas aren't missing the point - factory production methods can be scaled back to the individual luthier and adapted. I certainly learnt a lot about binding in plastic, a completely 'honest' hand process from the Taylor vids and their sunburst spray video is a masterclass. What I did find fascinating was it took them almost a year to work out the necessary compensation of springback in their bending machines - or maybe a year to refine the entire process. This was because they used 'trial and error': the process that most of us use. The much ridiculed on this forum, Mathias Wandell showed how this is done mathmatically and he did it in a day - they should have hired him because he would have saved them a shed load of money!

I am optimistic about the market for high end ukulele. With AnueNue charging $1500+ for instruments and Kala elitegetting in the the game things can only get better for us boutique builders. Like Duane Iam looking t retiring from full-time building in the next 2 years and willconcentrate thereafter teaching the next generation of builders. I am fortunate to have achieved much at the right time and now, after many years of being wagged by the tailof the dog, get to make what I want. The market for highend ukulele will only strengthen. We have to be pro-active in promoting it in our own countires and communities. Rather thans ee CITES as a threat to my future income stream it is a bonus because it will have the gradual effect of localising purchasing trends...

Despite having to manage PD life is good and the outlook, optimistic!

i would also say that I bet Taylorconsiders their proucts 'honestly' produced... not all companies are sharks in the pool :)
 
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You can't, but you also don't need to. Even if the materials and quality are the same, the prestige isn't.

People aren't always buying only the product, they are also buying "feeling good". There's probably a wide range of what "feeling good" is caused by, from the intrinsic to the extrinsic, but it's probably safe to say that a $10,000 violin is more likely to achieve this for the average player than a $99 one, even if they sounded and played exactly the same.

The difference in how the buyer (and sometimes as important: others) perceive the two violins is already strongly present before either instrument has made a single sound. The price tag alone probably impacts perception strongly.

Luthiers sell more than the instrument. Chinese factories sell just the instrument.

Emperors New Clothes and Materialism.
 
Most of the mechanization in that film seemed nothing but positive. It all looks like it would do a superior job, and most of it was invented in US small shops, or has been around for ever. Gang drilling is certainly not second rate, compared to jigs, or hand work. Nice machine for sanding dished backs.

It isn't that they can't make better, more unique, or personalized instruments, it is that the market isn't large enough. If they want to, they can easily target any market. And it has been done to some extent already through partnerships with custom luthiers, like Kenny Hill.

The problem I never figured out when playing with the idea of being in the business full time back about 20 years ago (compared to other people who were smarter), is that at the time the custom freak show makers were just winding up. The Kasha inspired guys, the guys making guitars that looked like shells. Creative stuff. The call was to just make higher quality versions of existing Martin guitars styles, etc... Yet the industry couldn't seem at the time to make a compelling case that they could actually do that. The Responsive Guitar being an example of the problem. One guy we all know, tooled up to make responsive guitars that he figured had a lifespan of under a decade. Then the internet hit, and any secrets there may have been were spread absolutely everywhere, with all kinds of interest and new entrants.

So it seemed the market didn't care or believe that standard forms could be improved through radical new strategies, partly because those instruments don't sound like what people are looking for, and all get amplified anyway; Everyone thought they could make a better guitar "by hand" but couldn't really explain why; Most makers are pretty much into jigs and standard models anyway, just not as much stuff as the biggies. Hard to figure out where the honest business lies. Of course you can lavish more attention on every detail, which is the luxury approach, and that is good, but it doesn't make much difference as to whether you are making handbags or instruments at that level. Who is your client at that point, and what is the output from that person that made the more expensive guitar productive.

By the way, the last custom guitar expo I went to in Nashville, was attended by Bob Taylor and a few of us hung out with him at the end of one evening. It was just one of those chance meetings in a lobby. He didn't have any idea who any of us were. Nothing gets by that guy though. He knows the business from the smallest beginning, to where he is now. I went right back home after that and re-read all his articles in Guitarmaker, went out and bought a welder.
 
Wait. What kind of flag decal is that? Nice touch. Haha
There were some cool processes in the there but this video makes me even more proud that I do things by hand. Mass production like this only lends more value to what we do. The world will always seek good, honest handcrafted art.

And you should be proud.

As a group though, luthiers are pretty hand work avoidant. Lots of jigs and production tricks. It's hard to really honestly sell hand work from most shops. Is buffing a spray job hand work? I'm sure it does qualify. It is certainly the sainted workmanship of risk. Building two piece, without hand bending, with forms, and using radial dishes, etc... Just compound the use of non-hand methods, and build in a production mentality. And there is nothing wrong with that.
 
It is a fraught subject isn't it? If I can build a jig that can be operated with a hand held or table router I will; it makes sense to me. I will never, however, abandon hand bending for machine bending or buy in CNC craved necks as most production Hawaiian and some mainland shops do. I have a CNC but that is principally used for cutting my pin bidges, logos (most outsource this to places like Gurian and Precision Pearl) and curved ablam. Our 'local' Gurian here in Europe is in Germany and does not have the sophisticated on-line design tools of Gurian so I make up my own purflin if I need something new like coloured lines against a wood binding. It's a skill that I would descibe as 'shop made purflin and binding' and it will involve machines!

I think we have to face it that there aren't that many makers who can hold their hands up and say they do exclusive 'honest hand work'. I do honest work, some of it by hand and some of it using jigs and tools I have built. I'm often pleased with the results of the question I always ask myself when something takes to long to execute, "There must be a better way of doing this". Sometimes the reply is, "No there isn't!" and we have to face it that hand work is sometimes the only way...

I think we have to be very careful if we claim to work with integrity how we describe what we do and how we personally define the term, 'hand work'. I admire the work of Collings guitars. Bill openly admits that a machine will be used wherever possible so the bulk of the time can be given over to detailing and finishing - stuff that is probably best done by hand...

Often when I have posted a long reply like this I get pretty much shot down for my views. As a caveat: these are my views and are not the views of all luthiers. I hope you respect my right to express them as I do yours to challenge them without getting personal about it :cool:
 
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