Not sure living in California should be a factor but who knows?? Maybe it is.
Yes, things are absolutely more expensive here.
Just about everything except the cost of heating your house in the winter is more expensive here.
And the luthiers gotta live here and rent space just like anybody else. (no snark intended at you, Richard)
@ the OP:
"J" This subject comes up periodically and yes there are some legitimate reasons Guilds are harder to re-set than others, in fact Gilded brought up a couple I hadn't heard before., like finding the right place to inject the steam.
I
have heard of drilling
3 steam holes.
One of the quirkiest problems I ever heard about was from luthier Flip Scipio who worked at Guild in the mid '80's and reported that the glue pot was never emptied and cleaned, it was just re-filled all the time and was even contaminated with metal shavings.
Imagine trying to slide a neck out of its socket that was fighting
that kind of friction, besides the massive amount of glue due to Guild's greater surface area (compared to most) in the dovetail, and different rates of expansion if a maple neck was in a 'hog neckblock (or vice-versa), so that the woods were always too tightly squeezed in any case.
But I think a lot of that rep was earned when the guitars that were from the most problematic build eras were starting to need resets, and luthiers gradually started shying away from 'em after a couple of bad experiences.
But there are a ton of successful re-set stories around here just like Richard mentions.
There're also a couple of other details that may or may not be priced into a $1200.00 neck reset, like a fretboard planing and refret, which Frank Ford (that guy at Gryphon and author of Frets.com ) recommends being done with
any re-set, just to insure good geometry is
completely restored once the neck's back on.
So Gryphon delivers a reset that needs nothing more than a set-up when finished, (and might even throw that into the price too, I don't know).
Another Guild "quirk"is that the neck joint is finished over and requires careful scoring before separation and then touch-up afterward if cosmetic restoration is part of the expected level of service.
Ahhh... I see once again I forgot to read all the post before composing this and others brought up most of these same issues.
So it goes.