Taylor Guitars factory tour

[tovo]

Gee Dennis, can you notice that Shrek is PARTICULARLY green today! Enjoying the tour so far though.

[dennisg]

Thin strips of ebony are placed on top of the mahogany neck. Why ebony? For starters, it's extremely hard and durable. Also, it's black, and less likely to show oil and dirt from your hands.

[dennisg]

I was, as is my neurotic custom, the first person to show up at the tour. I was so early, in fact, I had about 30 minutes to sit and chat with one of the employees who was on his lunch break. I used that time to ask him about what it was like to work for Taylor (great company, terrific benefits) and about the specific job he did (joining the headstock to the neck). It was at that point that I realized that working in a guitar factory probably isn't nearly as romantic as we envision it. We -- or at least I -- picture a single person shepherding a guitar through the process from beginning to end, but that isn't at all the way it works. The Taylor factory is a hugely automated system in which any given person does only one or two jobs. They're not building guitars so much as they're assembling little pieces of them. But they take huge pride in the work they do.

Know what those thingies are below? They're individual frets that are about to be inserted into grooves cut into the ebony fretboards.

[waggis]

Interesting about the Koa wood supply. I just bought a Taylor K20ce limited at a very cheap price. Perhaps one day it will be quite valuble.

David

[dennisg]

A special machine moistens thin strips of wood, bends them into shape, then dries and glues them. The result? You now have the sides of the guitar onto which the top and back will be attached and bound.

[MarkM]

dennisg wrote:

A special machine moistens thin strips of wood, bends them into shape, then dries and glues them. The result? You now have the sides of the guitar onto which the top and back will be attached and bound.

I've seen a video on this process. It is just amazing. Really incredible. Just think about how they did it before the machines.......


MarkM

[Chasplaya]

Like Tony, I am somewhat envious of you Dennis, we have nothing like this in NZ only individual guitar builders who make half a dozen or so a year, so a tour looking at the complete process would take forever. Great photographs Dennis, i'm enjoying the Tour

regards

Chas

[dennisg]

I didn't realize that inside my guitar were all these little support beams. Their purpose? To strengthen the top of the guitar because it's under such stress from the string tension. Every different body size requires a specific pattern of support beams to best strengthen the top and to produce the optimum tonal quality.



There were two photos that didn't come out because of reflections off of the glass that protects the operator. One of those photos showed a robotic arm that lifts a finished guitar body (without the neck) up and rotates it around a buffing wheel. Every millimeter of the guitar touches the buffing wheel at some point. The process used to take a human over 40 minutes to do by hand, and the person would often get tendonitis or some other repetitive stress injury. The computer-controlled robot does the whole process in about a minute, and doesn't bitch about a lunch break or worry about getting hit on by the worker next to it.

The other process I found fascinating also involved a robot. Its arm would lift up the guitar body, then hold it under a nozzle that would spray the gloss finish on it. The software is smart enough to know that when the robot turns the body so that the side of the guitar is facing the nozzle, the spray has to narrow so as not to waste finish. Taylor has a surprisingly eco-friendly finishing process.

That's it. Hope you enjoyed the tour. Join me next year on my birthday when I visit a blow-up doll factory. Tony, I know you'll want to join me for that one.

[d_dog]

Wow Dennis! You never cease to amaze me with the content that you put on here. Really top notch work man. I am so jealous. I will actually be in San Diego at the end of April, I am going to look into this. Even though the audio did not come out, did you still shoot some video? Love to see it mashed together with the still photos and maybe a voice over? Ok, that may be asking a lot, would be cool though! Thanks so much for sharing, I probably jumped in here a bit early, looks like there is more to come...

[dennisg]

MarkM wrote:

dennisg wrote:

A special machine moistens thin strips of wood, bends them into shape, then dries and glues them. The result? You now have the sides of the guitar onto which the top and back will be attached and bound.

I've seen a video on this process. It is just amazing. Really incredible. Just think about how they did it before the machines.......


MarkM

Mark, the guide told us that when this bending process was done by hand, between 5 and 10 per day of the guitar sides would break. With the bending machine, only one or two per MONTH break.