How long does it take to make a mass produced guitar?

SlopeSoarer

The Exotic Guitars thread got me thinking about this but not wanting to hijack it ...

Typically how many hours would a recognised mass produced brand spend on building and finishing a guitar?

Say with Fender would it be expected that a Mexican built guitar would have much less time spent on it as opposed to a USA built one?

How much of modern guitars are CNC crafted to hand crafted?

Just curious. Oh and I'm not trying to work out why prices vary as there are so many other variables (labour costs, quality materials, etc).

DrBob

Good question, interested to see the answers 

GoldenEraGuitars

Bodies and necks are usually CNC’d and then hand sanded/power sanded. Labour costs in the US will be higher than Mexico. The wood should technically be better in the US models but after refinishing lots and lots of fender bodies I sincerely doubt this is the case. Poly finishes will be cheaper than nitro finishes.

The part that gets me is why everyone lusts after CS Fenders which afaik are not given any special treatment on the production line yet cost up to £2k more than the standard US range. Even more crazy when the “masterbuilt” ones are done the same as above but are then finished by the individual builders yet prior to this are given no extra special attention. Then you’re into £5k. 

A lot of it is marketing nonsense. Add in the overheads of running a massive US based company with a load of employees and the costs soon add up.

There are far too many variables tbh. I’m pretty sure I heard in a video on YouTube that a fender takes 30 days to make. Bearing in mind they all start out the same way there’ll still be some variation the end of the process.

SlopeSoarer

GoldenEraGuitars said:

Bodies and necks are usually CNC’d and then hand sanded/power sanded. Labour costs in the US will be higher than Mexico. The wood should technically be better in the US models but after refinishing lots and lots of fender bodies I sincerely doubt this is the case. Poly finishes will be cheaper than nitro finishes.

The part that gets me is why everyone lusts after CS Fenders which afaik are not given any special treatment on the production line yet cost up to £2k more than the standard US range. Even more crazy when the “masterbuilt” ones are done the same as above but are then finished by the individual builders yet prior to this are given no extra special attention. Then you’re into £5k. 

A lot of it is marketing nonsense. Add in the overheads of running a massive US based company with a load of employees and the costs soon add up.

There are far too many variables tbh. 

Agree with what you say but my question was about time rather than the variables, like I said I'm not trying to work out why prices vary.

GoldenEraGuitars

SlopeSoarer said:

GoldenEraGuitars said:

Bodies and necks are usually CNC’d and then hand sanded/power sanded. Labour costs in the US will be higher than Mexico. The wood should technically be better in the US models but after refinishing lots and lots of fender bodies I sincerely doubt this is the case. Poly finishes will be cheaper than nitro finishes.

The part that gets me is why everyone lusts after CS Fenders which afaik are not given any special treatment on the production line yet cost up to £2k more than the standard US range. Even more crazy when the “masterbuilt” ones are done the same as above but are then finished by the individual builders yet prior to this are given no extra special attention. Then you’re into £5k. 

A lot of it is marketing nonsense. Add in the overheads of running a massive US based company with a load of employees and the costs soon add up.

There are far too many variables tbh. 

Agree with what you say but my question was about time rather than the variables, like I said I'm not trying to work out why prices vary.

I had re edited my post to include info I believe I heard on a fender YouTube video. 30 days is the rough answer I believe. If I get time I’ll try to find the video in question.

Danielsguitars

I bet a full cnc'd slab body f style could be mostly machined out in a day or less so wouldn't expect a full guitar to take that long, if it's a poly finish, one day paint next day polish, i bet even the nitro isn't really a proper nitro, you can correct me on this if I'm wrong

I can make a body on my pin router in an hour or less if it's prepped up

SlopeSoarer

GoldenEraGuitars said:

I had re edited my post to include info I believe I heard on a fender YouTube video. 30 days is the rough answer I believe. If I get time I’ll try to find the video in question.

30 days on a mass produced guitar.... I can't see that. They must have a lot of tea breaks (or coffee in America) : )

Danielsguitars said:

For my full carved top aged builds i allow up to 6 months to complete but that's doing other stuff in between 

Wow! 

Remember I'm asking about mass produced: )

Danielsguitars

SlopeSoarer said:

Wow! 

Remember I'm asking about mass produced: )

Yes i just edited that out and gave my opinion on mass produced 

GoldenEraGuitars

SlopeSoarer said:

GoldenEraGuitars said:

I had re edited my post to include info I believe I heard on a fender YouTube video. 30 days is the rough answer I believe. If I get time I’ll try to find the video in question.

30 days on a mass produced guitar.... I can't see that. They must have a lot of tea breaks (or coffee in America) : )

https://i.imgur.com/Qz2sDFX.png

SlopeSoarer

GoldenEraGuitars said:

SlopeSoarer said:

GoldenEraGuitars said:

I had re edited my post to include info I believe I heard on a fender YouTube video. 30 days is the rough answer I believe. If I get time I’ll try to find the video in question.

30 days on a mass produced guitar.... I can't see that. They must have a lot of tea breaks (or coffee in America) : )

https://i.imgur.com/Qz2sDFX.png

Nearly 3 weeks.... that does make say a Fender Player look amazing value for money! Will that be typical of other mass producing manufacturers?

PhilW1

I’m a cnc machine programmer/operator making tool dies out of steel etc . I reckon using a high speed spindle and cutting at about  2 metres a minute Fender are probably knocking out one body an hour. You’d be amazed at the speed of these machines.
Ford probably knock out a Focus in less than a week,

GoldenEraGuitars

PhilW1 said:

I’m a cnc machine programmer/operator making tool dies out of steel etc . I reckon using a high speed spindle and cutting at about  2 metres a minute Fender are probably knocking out one body an hour. You’d be amazed at the speed of these machines.

Hell... they’d need to be finishing more than one and hour!

https://i.imgur.com/Rhdh6mp.png

SlopeSoarer

I'm not sure those two comments add up, unless they have a lot of staff!

PhilW1

GoldenEraGuitars said:

PhilW1 said:

I’m a cnc machine programmer/operator making tool dies out of steel etc . I reckon using a high speed spindle and cutting at about  2 metres a minute Fender are probably knocking out one body an hour. You’d be amazed at the speed of these machines.

Hell... they’d need to be finishing more than one and hour!

https://i.imgur.com/Rhdh6mp.png

I was thinking of just one machine , but 500 a day!? That’s impressive! 

GoldenEraGuitars

SlopeSoarer said:

GoldenEraGuitars said:

SlopeSoarer said:

GoldenEraGuitars said:

I had re edited my post to include info I believe I heard on a fender YouTube video. 30 days is the rough answer I believe. If I get time I’ll try to find the video in question.

30 days on a mass produced guitar.... I can't see that. They must have a lot of tea breaks (or coffee in America) : )

https://i.imgur.com/Qz2sDFX.png

Nearly 3 weeks.... that does make say a Fender Player look amazing value for money! Will that be typical of other mass producing manufacturers?

£1350 for an American professional series strat at Andertons. 20% dealer margin leaves fender with about £1000 or so then there’s the usual shipping, taxes and overheads. But it’s all big numbers if the factory can make 550 guitars a day... 

PhilW1

SlopeSoarer said:

I'm not sure those two comments add up, unless they have a lot of staff!

This is what’s confusing me, wasn’t the original answer to the o/p 30 days? Which is a long time for one , surely they’re knocking them out conveyor belt style.

m_c

PhilW1 said:

I’m a cnc machine programmer/operator making tool dies out of steel etc . I reckon using a high speed spindle and cutting at about  2 metres a minute Fender are probably knocking out one body an hour. You’d be amazed at the speed of these machines.
Ford probably knock out a Focus in less than a week,

I'd doubt there will be much true CNC, as it'll mostly be multi-spindle profile machines, running far faster than 2m/min.
I would be very surprised if it took any more than 10min to knock out a complete batch of bodies. Then onto a sander where they're given a quick hand sand before being ready for paint. The longest part of the process will be paint, and waiting for it to dry.
Necks are more involved, but again most of it can be automated. Profile machines will do the bulk of the wood work, Big drum sander will profile a neck in a couple minutes, fret slots cut on a dedicated machine in a single pass, pre-cut fret wire can be knocked in in under a couple minutes per neck, frets then profiled quickly on another dedicated machine.

Once you're into real mass production, dedicated machine cost can be very easily justified.
Using a body as an example, as @Danielsguitars says he can do a body in under an hour on a pin router (aka a very basic profile machine). Now imagine you do the same on 6 spindle profile machine, for the added time of loading 5 extra bodies, you've just done 6 bodies in one pass. Now add a hydraulic copy attachment where you just need to simply run over a master template (think like the curved jigs home builders use for putting radiuses onto necks using a basic router), you could probably easily half machine time. Now automate that process, and for those 6 bodies, the only human time involved is loading the blanks, and unloading the bodies. The machine will likely cost upwards of £250k, but you've just eliminated 95% of the labour needed to machine each body.

For true mass produced guitars, I'd say actual hands on time will be under a couple hours, and probably even under an hour for some. Everything else will be machine time, drying/curing time, and simply queuing time as parts are held awaiting assembly.

GoldenEraGuitars

They said in the same video the poly takes 3 days to dry enough to wet sand and buff.

Given that their (plasticised) nitro is usually laid on a poly or acrylic base coat I don’t think they’ll wait long for them to dry either.

Ddigger

Fender factory in Corona does 450 standard Fenders a week.  I posted a wee story on here about a factory visit.  I will see if I can post a link.

vonLayzonfon

SlopeSoarer said:

I'm not sure those two comments add up, unless they have a lot of staff!

Even if they had a production line that was only capable of producing one guitar at once, the rate of production would be determined by the slowest step.

For example, if "painting" takes 2 days you can produce one guitar every 2 days, even if the entire process takes 3 weeks. Edit: Assuming you have the ability to run every step simultaneously and can therefore keep every stage of the production line filled. 

If you want to increase your rate beyond that you'll need multiple production lines, or processes capable of handling more than one guitar at once.  The very definition of "mass production"   

SlopeSoarer

m_c said:

For true mass produced guitars, I'd say actual hands on time will be under a couple hours, and probably even under an hour for some. Everything else will be machine time, drying/curing time, and simply queuing time as parts are held awaiting assembly.

Yep really reflecting on the question and for clarity.... how many person (politically correct) hours to build and finish a mass production guitar? Realistically it is never going to be 3 weeks hands on.

Interesting though using Fenders statement of being able to produce 550 per day, how come the market isn't saturated (and that's just Fender)? No wonder people have so many guitars!

Just doing a simple search on eBay it shows about 1600 used Fender's, 990 used Gibson's (other brands are available) currently for sale. How come when they are produced in such great numbers they manage to retain so much of their value? I suspect some of the recent older ones (i.e. not truly vintage) are selling at about the price they were when new.