dougk
b00b
Hey MWF,
So last friday I spent the day with Bob Taylor which was just a tremendous experience over all. You can actually read a brief synopsis here. It's an impressive place and I know Taylor tone can be decisive amongst acoustic diehards but I have a 710CE I worked 2 summers to buy as a teenager and it's still the only "expensive" guitar I own.
The thing is, you can't really fault Taylor as a company even if they aren't your favorite. They've done nothing but continue to build a better and better product since day 1.
BUT- in the discussions the GS Mini came up A LOT. It's Taylor's best seller (much to their surprise actually) and they crank out a bunch of them in their plant in Mexico. The thing is, for my end of the business everyone complains about price. I get it, I feel guilty sometimes charging what we do but then I remind myself that my annual 'income' is less than 10k a year. (seriously.) It's not like I'm driving a ferrari to work. I'm not complaining (lets not turn it into that) but it just breaks down to a simple formula:
* our guitars are expensive because while I do have a large shop with a fair amount of automation compared to most companies my size, we use expensive parts, finishes, cases, have STEEP overhead (thanks California) and our biggest restriction to production is labor and working capital. (and sales) *
But Ben, my assembly guy has been hammering on how do we build a "guitar for the masses" priced between 999-1400. We've been chasing this thought experiment down for the last few months and my time at Taylor opened my eyes to a few things.
For starters, they didn't have a "cheap" guitar for a long time. It takes a lot of working capital and human capital to truly mass produce something. We don't have human capital right now and there is certainly a tipping point where every employee I add means more payroll, taxes, unemployment and insurance I have to cover. It's very hard to add these to build only a slight bump in production. (chicken and the egg dilemma). Also, you have to be at a certain point in your company's life to offer an entry level guitar without shooting yourself in the foot. ("Why would I pay 3850 for a Starliner when I get something sorta resembling one for 999?")
So let us pursue the typical avenues of approaching a truly mass produced "cheap" guitar:
1. You go overseas. This is obviously the normal response to this situation. The upside is the guitars are CHEAP. The downside, the guitars are CHEAP. Not always but we know what a chinese guitar is quality wise.
So you do the reverend model and you go Korean but setup in America. This works well but you have to shell out for a bunch of volume, find the sales to go with it and you're locked into fairly rigid what you can make (ie: if you have to buy 1000 or 5000 of them at a time, it's hard to be flexible in design)
Also, you get into being a 1000 dollar Korean version of what you already make, it's very hard to sell it (see: Suhr's attempt at this)
2. You hire up a ton of staff and automate. Upside: I have the space to do this and my CNC really does quickly out pace me. The downside: It's very expensive, you need dedicated staff to teach, run, train ect. You can easily eat into the time you have for your expensive / mainstay brand. (why GS Mini / 1 series / Baby Taylors are made in Mexico, not the US). For me, we can crank out flat top, bolt on bodies on the CNC quickly but gluing up material, grading it, storing it ect is very time consuming.
3. You sub out. Right now besides pickups and hardware, every Kauer is made in house. I'm there from initial wood selection for all the pieces, did all the machine programming, painting, right thru assembly. There's only 3 of us, we're all involved in the entire process to some extent. This is both part of Kauer's expense and it's production limitation. (see option 2).
BUT- we could take on production right now by subbing out a portion of a new model. Arcturus is a prime example. We can build an Arcturus in about 50-75% of the time of the most basic set neck model. Frankly, the body for Arcturus or a Daylighter Express both run in about the same amount of time, pretty quick. It's the neck that gets you. There are lots of steps involved (Arcturus being about half- but still 3-6 hours of hands on work) and it's the most time consuming part of the process (besides paint).
So if we subbed our necks out for a new budget model, this would probably work very well for us as a stop gap. Eventually we'd like to be at option 2 (all in house) but it's something that for a reasonably mild expense we gain a lot of our time back per / guitar. (If it takes us 5-6 hours to build an Arcturus neck, at a shop rate of 125 an hour, buying a US made mass production neck for ~150 dollars makes a lot of sense).
Same goes for bodies. Maybe it's worth subbing that out too. I mean, to actually machine the body only takes 8-15 minutes (if we design it to be very simple, all 1 side only routing: think telecaster). But the blank glue ups requiring grading, rough plane, straight line, edge plain, glue up, final plane / thickness sand. This is why I stopped selling S/T bodies years ago, there is just way too much time in the work to get a piece of wood READY to be a body, then making the body itself for the money. Again, maybe subbing out our design and letting another US company crank these out at 150 bucks a body is worth it.
edit: I'm not new to subbing out. A company I owned for a while was 100% subbed out for building, painting and assembling. It's a viable system.
--------
So that's a look at this challenge from the production end. Now lets look at it from the other end, hardware.
On a budget model (again, budget for us is a US made guitar that's anywhere from 999-1400) we just can't do the best hardware, case, pickups ect. Pickups and a Mono case alone make up 50% of the total hardware expense on anything we make (or more). So we're not going to see Lollars or TV Jones on this model or a Mono bag.
That doesn't mean GFS either though. I'm stubborn, we're trying to see if we can do something in the lower end Duncan or Duncan Designed line that would work. Hardware would be Gotoh where we can and still hopefully CTS pots and a quality switch. No Sperzel locking tuners, electrosockets ect.
Finish will be satin finish body, oil finish neck. No way we can even remotely touch a gloss finish in that price range, even if we sub it out. I don't think we could do gloss (subbed out) for less than a 1600 dollar guitar. Colors will be limited to 2-3 colors per year and you can't custom order, if we do this we're only going to build them and put them on the website for sale. There might be 2 or 3 different pick up layouts but again, it's strictly limited to whats available on the website right that moment.
You're not going to have "options": Besides not taking custom orders, it'll have the same neck carve, same body, same wood, same bridge, mostly same (if not same) pickups ect. Again, this is a lot of the expensive of Kauer (I can't even tell you how many 70 dollar cans of paint we have to paint ONE customers request). We probably won't even build the bodies in Alder / Spanish Cedar but likely Basswood.
But then we boil it down, is a 1200 dollar, american made (but not entirely in house) guitar that is satin finished and assembled by the same people who build Kauer's something appealing? Is it too expensive to be a "affordable" guitar, or too cheap to be a appealing guitar. What are you willing to trade off for a guitar at that price point? Pickups, case, hardware, ect. Do you even care if it's a US made guitar?
Because believe me, we've been trying to come at this from every angle for years. I'm genuinely curious what people think.
fake edit:// amendment: if we do this it will not be based on anything we currently make. It may have some contributions from our current Kauer line up but it will be it's own shape and will not be available as a Kauer (or vice versa). It'll probably be under it's own brand name too (something something guitars "built by Kauer Guitars" or whatever)
So last friday I spent the day with Bob Taylor which was just a tremendous experience over all. You can actually read a brief synopsis here. It's an impressive place and I know Taylor tone can be decisive amongst acoustic diehards but I have a 710CE I worked 2 summers to buy as a teenager and it's still the only "expensive" guitar I own.
The thing is, you can't really fault Taylor as a company even if they aren't your favorite. They've done nothing but continue to build a better and better product since day 1.
BUT- in the discussions the GS Mini came up A LOT. It's Taylor's best seller (much to their surprise actually) and they crank out a bunch of them in their plant in Mexico. The thing is, for my end of the business everyone complains about price. I get it, I feel guilty sometimes charging what we do but then I remind myself that my annual 'income' is less than 10k a year. (seriously.) It's not like I'm driving a ferrari to work. I'm not complaining (lets not turn it into that) but it just breaks down to a simple formula:
* our guitars are expensive because while I do have a large shop with a fair amount of automation compared to most companies my size, we use expensive parts, finishes, cases, have STEEP overhead (thanks California) and our biggest restriction to production is labor and working capital. (and sales) *
But Ben, my assembly guy has been hammering on how do we build a "guitar for the masses" priced between 999-1400. We've been chasing this thought experiment down for the last few months and my time at Taylor opened my eyes to a few things.
For starters, they didn't have a "cheap" guitar for a long time. It takes a lot of working capital and human capital to truly mass produce something. We don't have human capital right now and there is certainly a tipping point where every employee I add means more payroll, taxes, unemployment and insurance I have to cover. It's very hard to add these to build only a slight bump in production. (chicken and the egg dilemma). Also, you have to be at a certain point in your company's life to offer an entry level guitar without shooting yourself in the foot. ("Why would I pay 3850 for a Starliner when I get something sorta resembling one for 999?")
So let us pursue the typical avenues of approaching a truly mass produced "cheap" guitar:
1. You go overseas. This is obviously the normal response to this situation. The upside is the guitars are CHEAP. The downside, the guitars are CHEAP. Not always but we know what a chinese guitar is quality wise.
So you do the reverend model and you go Korean but setup in America. This works well but you have to shell out for a bunch of volume, find the sales to go with it and you're locked into fairly rigid what you can make (ie: if you have to buy 1000 or 5000 of them at a time, it's hard to be flexible in design)
Also, you get into being a 1000 dollar Korean version of what you already make, it's very hard to sell it (see: Suhr's attempt at this)
2. You hire up a ton of staff and automate. Upside: I have the space to do this and my CNC really does quickly out pace me. The downside: It's very expensive, you need dedicated staff to teach, run, train ect. You can easily eat into the time you have for your expensive / mainstay brand. (why GS Mini / 1 series / Baby Taylors are made in Mexico, not the US). For me, we can crank out flat top, bolt on bodies on the CNC quickly but gluing up material, grading it, storing it ect is very time consuming.
3. You sub out. Right now besides pickups and hardware, every Kauer is made in house. I'm there from initial wood selection for all the pieces, did all the machine programming, painting, right thru assembly. There's only 3 of us, we're all involved in the entire process to some extent. This is both part of Kauer's expense and it's production limitation. (see option 2).
BUT- we could take on production right now by subbing out a portion of a new model. Arcturus is a prime example. We can build an Arcturus in about 50-75% of the time of the most basic set neck model. Frankly, the body for Arcturus or a Daylighter Express both run in about the same amount of time, pretty quick. It's the neck that gets you. There are lots of steps involved (Arcturus being about half- but still 3-6 hours of hands on work) and it's the most time consuming part of the process (besides paint).
So if we subbed our necks out for a new budget model, this would probably work very well for us as a stop gap. Eventually we'd like to be at option 2 (all in house) but it's something that for a reasonably mild expense we gain a lot of our time back per / guitar. (If it takes us 5-6 hours to build an Arcturus neck, at a shop rate of 125 an hour, buying a US made mass production neck for ~150 dollars makes a lot of sense).
Same goes for bodies. Maybe it's worth subbing that out too. I mean, to actually machine the body only takes 8-15 minutes (if we design it to be very simple, all 1 side only routing: think telecaster). But the blank glue ups requiring grading, rough plane, straight line, edge plain, glue up, final plane / thickness sand. This is why I stopped selling S/T bodies years ago, there is just way too much time in the work to get a piece of wood READY to be a body, then making the body itself for the money. Again, maybe subbing out our design and letting another US company crank these out at 150 bucks a body is worth it.
edit: I'm not new to subbing out. A company I owned for a while was 100% subbed out for building, painting and assembling. It's a viable system.
--------
So that's a look at this challenge from the production end. Now lets look at it from the other end, hardware.
On a budget model (again, budget for us is a US made guitar that's anywhere from 999-1400) we just can't do the best hardware, case, pickups ect. Pickups and a Mono case alone make up 50% of the total hardware expense on anything we make (or more). So we're not going to see Lollars or TV Jones on this model or a Mono bag.
That doesn't mean GFS either though. I'm stubborn, we're trying to see if we can do something in the lower end Duncan or Duncan Designed line that would work. Hardware would be Gotoh where we can and still hopefully CTS pots and a quality switch. No Sperzel locking tuners, electrosockets ect.
Finish will be satin finish body, oil finish neck. No way we can even remotely touch a gloss finish in that price range, even if we sub it out. I don't think we could do gloss (subbed out) for less than a 1600 dollar guitar. Colors will be limited to 2-3 colors per year and you can't custom order, if we do this we're only going to build them and put them on the website for sale. There might be 2 or 3 different pick up layouts but again, it's strictly limited to whats available on the website right that moment.
You're not going to have "options": Besides not taking custom orders, it'll have the same neck carve, same body, same wood, same bridge, mostly same (if not same) pickups ect. Again, this is a lot of the expensive of Kauer (I can't even tell you how many 70 dollar cans of paint we have to paint ONE customers request). We probably won't even build the bodies in Alder / Spanish Cedar but likely Basswood.
But then we boil it down, is a 1200 dollar, american made (but not entirely in house) guitar that is satin finished and assembled by the same people who build Kauer's something appealing? Is it too expensive to be a "affordable" guitar, or too cheap to be a appealing guitar. What are you willing to trade off for a guitar at that price point? Pickups, case, hardware, ect. Do you even care if it's a US made guitar?
Because believe me, we've been trying to come at this from every angle for years. I'm genuinely curious what people think.
fake edit:// amendment: if we do this it will not be based on anything we currently make. It may have some contributions from our current Kauer line up but it will be it's own shape and will not be available as a Kauer (or vice versa). It'll probably be under it's own brand name too (something something guitars "built by Kauer Guitars" or whatever)
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