You think they pay prices like that for materials in China? LOL
What really drives the cost of a neck?
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You think they pay prices like that for materials in China? LOL
Biggest factor is brand unless it’s a hand built neck.
RomanS
Poster Extraordinaire
Nobody said anything about "from start to finish" - but it's a fact that there's still a ton of individual hands-on work involved in neck building, after the rough blank has been CNC'd, and that means lots of hand labor - and consequently, labor costs...You guys have heard of assembly lines, right? It’s like y’all imagine there’s a hundred guys building individual necks from start to finish in these places.
It's not like you drop a bunch of wood and wire into a big machine, and a finished neck drops out on the other side, most of it is still hand labor (yes, on an assembly line), that's the reason why companies go to countries with cheap labor costs for their budget guitar lines, in the first place, or else they could all be MIA or MIJ, itf it was all automatized...
Fender Corona (neck building starts at around 2:00):
bottlenecker
Poster Extraordinaire
You guys have heard of assembly lines, right? It’s like y’all imagine there’s a hundred guys building individual necks from start to finish in these places.
I don't have to imagine, I'm a machinist who makes things for a living usually at the prototyping and early production stages. I've worked in regular production factories in the past. It's not going to be cheaper to have 21 people lined up to each pound in 1 fret.
(They can only make the 22 fret necks on tuesdays and wednesdays when Roger's there.)
The labor that has to be done, has to be done, no matter how you divide it up.
People like to imagine technology or the ghost of Henry Ford makes their guitars cheap so they don't have to feel like it's just people being underpaid. If it makes you feel any better, lots of guitar buyers are underpaid too.
ABetterTelePlayer
Tele-Meister
Actually... I hate to burst anyone's bubbles but I'll just say it again - I worked in both low end and
high end factory here in the Americas and I can tell you that North America has the same amount of quality control issues as any other country that makes the same type of product. I can't tell you the number of times when my supervisor advised me to pass questionable parts through quality just because they wanted a bigger bonus and better ratings against rival supervisors. I hated that but people here might not believe that this is the reality of it.
Comparing Hand-made factory to a machine pressed factory is a bit unfair because EVERYTHING is different inside those factories and so every variable is different. In most cases from what I see, Japan is slightly better than America but that's because their rule of law is much stricter than America's.
Realistically you are paying for a the brand name you trust (Fender is popular among musicians, Ibanez too.). But if it's a brand name that many have never heard of, then you are more likely paying for the piece of wood, funding the company to continue, essentially. This is just how it works.
high end factory here in the Americas and I can tell you that North America has the same amount of quality control issues as any other country that makes the same type of product. I can't tell you the number of times when my supervisor advised me to pass questionable parts through quality just because they wanted a bigger bonus and better ratings against rival supervisors. I hated that but people here might not believe that this is the reality of it.
Comparing Hand-made factory to a machine pressed factory is a bit unfair because EVERYTHING is different inside those factories and so every variable is different. In most cases from what I see, Japan is slightly better than America but that's because their rule of law is much stricter than America's.
Realistically you are paying for a the brand name you trust (Fender is popular among musicians, Ibanez too.). But if it's a brand name that many have never heard of, then you are more likely paying for the piece of wood, funding the company to continue, essentially. This is just how it works.
jdl57
Tele-Meister
Agreed.
I’ll just leave this here. Of course it’s not fully automated. But this is nothing like the way you guys build necks in your basement.
And yes, the necks are CNC carved. Just go on believing you aren’t being gouged for a feel good sticker.
And yes, the necks are CNC carved. Just go on believing you aren’t being gouged for a feel good sticker.
"Whatever the market will bear" is what drives the retail cost of of most stuff.
There's a lot of work in a neck but the basic neck is done CNC. frets, truss rod, fingerboard etc add up to some labor, but there was a video posted last week showing them being made at... was it Gibson? Very quickly made until the final sanding.
Flame and birdseye maple is treated as if it's rare, I can tell you it's very common. Alder is common also, I have maybe 50-75 big alder tress on my property. It's firewood here in the PNW.
A bottled water at the quick stop is equivalent to about $15 a gallon ($1.50 for 12 ozs)
Gas is about $3.80 a gallon and has to be explored, drilled, pumped, freighted across the ocean, pumped to shore, put through many processes to make it gas from crude oil.
There's a lot of work in a neck but the basic neck is done CNC. frets, truss rod, fingerboard etc add up to some labor, but there was a video posted last week showing them being made at... was it Gibson? Very quickly made until the final sanding.
Flame and birdseye maple is treated as if it's rare, I can tell you it's very common. Alder is common also, I have maybe 50-75 big alder tress on my property. It's firewood here in the PNW.
A bottled water at the quick stop is equivalent to about $15 a gallon ($1.50 for 12 ozs)
Gas is about $3.80 a gallon and has to be explored, drilled, pumped, freighted across the ocean, pumped to shore, put through many processes to make it gas from crude oil.
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Wood quality is one factor.
The Am Pro necks also have two way truss rods and graphite reinforcement if I’m not mistaken.
Nut quality.
Less expensive necks often use cheaper (and softer) fret wire that doesn’t last as long.
Out of country labor is cheaper.
Finishing and fine work is better when you spend more money.
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Boreas
Doctor of Teleocity
Mostly marketing if you are comparing like for like, but wood grade will matter otherwise. Many volume manufacturers are using CNC machining and PLEK for efficiency's sake. Final profiling is likely done by hand and profile "shouldn't" really enter into the price - but if it it is considered "custom", then expect to pay more. I would expect to pay more for extraordinarily dressed frets as well.
Keep in mind, wood grading can be variable, depending on supply. I have seen some fairly heavily figured necks sold as a plain Jane model - likely when delivery on plain blanks is delayed.
RomanS
Poster Extraordinaire
Exactly as I commented before - some of the basic rough stuff is done by machines (like CNCing the wood blanks into rough shapes), but after that, almost everything is done by hand.
Nice video! More informative than others I've seen by other makers.
Those aren’t rough shapes.
You didn’t see the machine cut all the fret slots at the same time?
RomanS
Poster Extraordinaire
So?
Then all the frets were glued and hammered in individually by hand!
Even if you build in your basement, that woodwork is the least labor intensive part of the process - slap on a template, run around it with a router, slap on a fretboard template, cut the slots, etc. That's like 10-20% of the total work.
It's the stuff that comes AFTER the rough woodwork that requires a lot of hand labor - sanding, making sure the fine details (like the transition to the headstock) are right, putting in the truss road, fretting, binding, doing the nut, fret ends, etc, not to mention finishing.
And all that labor-inrensive stuff of is still done by individual workers, by hand - as you can see in this video you posted yourself. Almost no automatization, almost everything done by hand, with the aid of a few machines and templates...
In classical economics, the labor theory of value asserts that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of socially necessary labor required to produce it
Not sure how it applies to necks but the new federal carbon tax on diesel, gasoline and natural gas (up here in Canada) has driven up the price of everything because fuel is used in farming, manufacturing and definitely in transportation. Alberta, the province in which I live, has removed all provincial tax on fossil fuels to soften the blow, but like I said, the federal tax has driven up the price of everything.
I spend as much as 20 hours leveling, crowning polishing frets on raw "custom made for me necks"
Never spent a minute working on a Fender custom shop neck (on a completed guitar).
bottlenecker
Poster Extraordinaire
I can back this up. I quit a job over it, because I thought they were doing a lousy job. They even shut down one line because they could buy the parts cheaper from china than they could make them, and then not pass the savings on to their customers when they delivered the parts as their own product.
Bad, lazy management.
But there have been companies in the US that have made high quality stuff, it's just not a given.
Overall, china as a country today is much better than the US at manufacturing, including quality. We see so much low quality stuff from china because that's what cheap US companies and customers are demanding from them. They make great quality stuff for their own wealthy class and anyone that wants to pay for it. I still feel better buying japanese or swiss tools and stuff, but I think that's just because of what gets marketed to me as a north american.
hepular
Tele-Afflicted
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