You may too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj9a625k_jk&feature=related

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No no and no

Very cool .Thanks for the post.

Thanks Niki,
Liked it a lot, also liked the custom shop Calpton tribute video I found on youtube when I looked at the one you posted.
filerj

Nik,

Thanks for the vid. Yes I enjoyed it.

RK

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RK

2007 Fender Highway 1
2012 American Deluxe
2015 MIM Dave Murray HHH
2010 Fender Blacktop
1987 Fender Avalon Acoustic
2012 Marshall DSL 15 watt head

nice

Cool vid, reminds me of working at Boeing. Mike

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The blues ain't nothin but a good man feelin bad.

Co-inkydink. I worked on the Boeing factory in Luton. The height of them walls was no joke.

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No no and no

nice .... there are few around .. I also enjoyed the Robin Trower interview at Fender .. thanks for sharing

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Member # 85477

"Remember"

First let me say thank you for sharing that vid...I certainly did enjoy it.

I do have a comment here though that I feel like I just HAVE to make. Nick, this isn't aimed at you bud and folks are welcome to call me a snit here if they must but as I'm watching that vid...watching those big CNC machines knocking out what...12 bodies at a time? 8 necks were all being ripped at the same time? Even where people were working "hands on", most of the equipment was still set up to make things "automatic" (i.e. the jig for cutting the nuts...slap the neck in, pull the handle back, pull the neck out...repeat). One must ask one's self...with all this automation, how exactly is it that an "American" Strat somehow has better "craftsmanship" than one made in Mexico or even China? What...the guy sucking on a donut setting up a CNC machine to factory specs is somehow more evolved or something? LOL!!! Seriously...sitting here watching this video, I'm seeing VERY little that would constitute "craftsmanship" over "mass production"...seems like they're just cranking those suckers out in any case.

Like I said...I'm sure I'm just being a snit here but man...that video almost seems to prove what I've been saying for years.

Anyways, just my $.02 worth and again thanks for sharing!
Peace,
Jim

Hi Jim:

'Zactly: I think this is what many of us have been saying all along.

Fender guitars are excellent pieces of industrial design; not craftsman products. And unless someone wants to put forward a terroir theory of CNC machines, then it doesn't matter a monkey's where that machine is located.

But it's just too, too boring to keep saying it on all those dreary MIM v MIA threads...

Cheers - C

I suppose it does matter whether the tools are kept good and sharp.
And it does matter on the initial quality of the wood going into the machines ...

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

Hi Orville: yep, that certainly matters, wherever in the world it's done.

Come to think of it, far as the industrial design bit is concerned I think I was pretty much paraphrasing you - I remember a thread a year or two back where you tried to suggest to someone that these guitars come off factory production lines, not out of the hands of trained luthiers (CS excepting, of course).

One of a list of things on which I quote you...

Cheers - C

I know I wasn't the first to suggest that the workers on the production line at <choose your favorite Guitar maker> were not luthiers. I recall someone on some forum asking some noob if he thought elves worked at his favorite company!

I think my greatest contribution is mentioning that people don't actually push the strings down to the wood of the fretboard ...

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

I, er, um, uh...

Well anyway. (Since you didn't ask) possibly my favorite Orville gem was on Niki's maple-rosewood test thread. The argument raged (yawn), and then you remarked that whatever folks could or couldn't hear, flipping the selector switch from one pickup to another made a far bigger difference.

Put it in a nutshell, far as I'm concerned.

- C

That brings up questions that I've never seen answered: do the Fender Custom Shop master builders actually route the body blanks? Do they shape and fret the necks?

I've heard it said that they "select" from the wood stocks (diverting the highest quality wood to the Custom Shop), but is this before or after the CNCs do their work?

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.