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

octatonic

SlopeSoarer said:

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!

Guitar is one of the most common instruments to play and many people own more than one guitar.
The market is saturated though- it has been a buyers market for ages and continues to be so.

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.

Used price is about 60-70% of the new price.
If a guitar is £1000 new then 20% is vat- it is long established that people understand that vat just goes when buying a new instrument, like when you buy a car, driving it off the lot it drops by 1/3rd (or more).

Even a good price is going to be 70% off the new (often discounted) price.
If you look on eBay etc you will see a lot of optimistic asking prices.
They almost never go for that.

It is all about market forces and demand.
If Brexit happens I expect used prices to drop even more as people start to pinch and get desperate.

Snags

Don't forget that capable of 550 a day != actually doing 550 a day, 7 days a week

alexh

It might be helpful to distinguish between man and machine hours spent per guitar (maybe 5 to fifteen) versus total start to finish time. 

SlopeSoarer

octatonic said:

The market is saturated though- it has been a buyers market for ages and continues to be so.

Personally, I suspect used prices have never been so high.

Roland

PhilW1 said:

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.

Don’t forget that there’s a big difference between elapsed time and processing time. Each process may take minutes, or even seconds. However much more time is spend on drying, curing and relaxing. Then there’s move and queue time between processes. Typically a mass production plant has items queuing before each machine. This allows expensive machines to run 24x7, rather than sit waiting for materials. It also allows machine retooling times to be optimised. 

Neil

Snags said:

Don't forget that capable of 550 a day != actually doing 550 a day, 7 days a week

Does the factory run seven days a week?