Ron Kirn wins TGP

I don't think that's the case at all. I think what Ron is merely suggesting is it is a bit foolish to expect a guitar built sometimes thousands of miles away, shipped in god knows what conditions to a store in a completely different climate, where it might sit another 6 months or a year... to NOT need a bit of attention. I'd say 1 in 75 (once or twice a year) of ours will show up with some fret buzz at the customers house that it absolutely did not have when it left our shop. Hell sometimes a week after being strung up the first time we have to come back and do a complete level and crown... again.

This honestly is why I think Plek gets a bad wrap sometimes. A guitar plek'd in nashville, by a company that maybe doesn't really care to check it again after being strung up may need an additional level and crown once it settles in 6 months later or what not.

I did not intend to imply that Ron's statement had anything to do with my post other than reminding me of something that is almost always neglected in online discussions about the quality or conditions of instruments make it on shop floors and into the hands of customers. Sorry for the confusion.
 
As a retailer myself, I can attest that most things shipped by manufacturers are packed with shipping safety and cost in mind and not setup.
Every high end full custom chair I unpack has to be assembled by me and set up for the customer. The manufacturer has no idea how my customer want the chair set up. That's on me to make it right.
A guitar ought to leave the factory with a generic setup but to expect it to be useful for most players is naive, especially after shipping, sitting in warehouses and what have you.
 
"As a side note…I can tell ya, I’ve built a boatload of BarnBusters from lumber so ratty that the termites rejected it, that sounded simply stunning… I mean, really… I string ‘em up and sit there slack jawed at how they sound… so . . “tone wood” is a nonexistent crutch some use to support their product."

Kinda what I've always thought. One type of wood, ie. swamp ash, alder, koa, etc. doesn't necessarily produce consistent characteristics let alone "superior" sound as compared to other woods. It DOES come down to individual pieces of wood. But wood DOES influence tone. No doubt about it. It's just that one piece of alder will sound so-so and another piece of alder will sound amazing.
 
Different kinds of woods have effects on tone that can be experienced and usually predicted based on how those types of wood usually respond. That said, Wood is the product of a living creature and there is variation. Certain kinds of wood are more or less predictable than others... and that's where a good luthier comes into play.

An experienced luthier not only picks out pieces of wood that pass the eyeball, weight, straightness and tap tests to become pieces of their finely crafted instruments, but even if they do their best and a particular piece of wood doesn't quite seem to work right, they will usually stop the process and get a new piece of wood. The mass produced guitars continue on down the assembly line and rely on the end user picking their favorite off the wall and leaving the finished duds behind. Craftsmanship takes over at that point and has more to do with the fit, finish, and tolerances than the piece of wood grabbed from the stash.

I know PRS will re-work a guitar until it meets their specifications and if it doesn't, it will go through the bandsaw. Doesn't matter if the guitar already has a full finish and fretwork on it... zzzrrrrt.. doesn't happen often, but I've seen the carnage after the fact. I know that Mark McFeely has swapped out necks on guitars that he was trying to dial in (the Poodle skirt guitar), and I'm sure that @dougk has stories of guitars that he's reworked to get to his satisfaction.

No piece of wood is guaranteed to make a certain quality of tone, but don't confuse that with "the wood doesn't affect the tone.. any ol' piece will do".
 
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