M-20 issue and how Guild Treated Me

gibsonjunkie said:

As far as the quality of workmanship - there is one person on the assembly line that can't be a new-by - the guy who signs the tag stuffs it in a case/box and sends it out the door. Even I (with no build experience) would know enough not to let a guitar with that big a defect leave the factory.

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Yeah but that's the single highest turnover job in the plant.
He gets fired every week so they can keep blaming the problems on the guy who isn't there any more.

It is disconcerting for a USA made model for sure. Developing a company culture takes a long time. It's also disconcerting that their quality program is not good at all.... evidently... unless the problems were from the music store. You think that is possible?
Modern quality makes sure a problem is caught along the way as something is produced... not at the end by a final inspector. That is very old school. And it appears in this case they dont even have that.

Okay guys, got the guitar about a half hour ago. I was able to test it all of five minutes so far, so I don't want to review it yet, but initial impressions are very positive. The sunburst finish has no issues that I see, but I will look closer later.

We can let this thread die, and I will write a review of the guitar in a few days as I test it more.

Guild did well in the end. This specimen appears to be very well done. They sent two free t-shirts ($20 each) as well for the troubles. The only thing I didn't like was the strings felt a bit stiff, but I think this might be the coated strings (I never use coated strings, but noticed immediately a stiffness, and on Guild's site I see they use coated strings, so I think that's the issue).

A thread dying on a positive note is a good thing!

...but you do know someone is going to remind you that pictures are mandatory. :wink:

jmascis said:

They sent two free t-shirts ($20 each) as well for the troubles.

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I'll bid $10.00 for both of 'em.
:glee:

jmascis said:

The only thing I didn't like was the strings felt a bit stiff, but I think this might be the coated strings (I never use coated strings, but noticed immediately a stiffness, and on Guild's site I see they use coated strings, so I think that's the issue).

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They might be mediums too, can't remember.

swiveltung said:

It is disconcerting for a USA made model for sure. Developing a company culture takes a long time. It's also disconcerting that their quality program is not good at all.... evidently... unless the problems were from the music store. You think that is possible?

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Only the one Jmacsis showed.
And if it did happen in the store, then I'd think Guild would have said "That definitely needs to be replaced on the dealer's dime, not ours".
The other problems mentioned could only have happened at Oxnard.

swiveltung said:

And it appears in this case they don't even have that.

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Right, they fired the old guy on Friday and don't have this week's replacement yet.

jmascis said:

. The only thing I didn't like was the strings felt a bit stiff, but I think this might be the cosee they use coated strings, so I think that's the issue).

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I don't think the coating makes strings stiffer, I think coating makes strings coated.

Yeah I never played coated strings so I wasn't sure. I'm not a fan of coated strings...the feel when finger-picking is odd.

But anyway...it had zero relief, so I put in a little and now it feels better. Action is slightly high at 2.6mm. I think once I get that down to ~2.3mm it will slacken up a little, too. Nut feels okay. It could probably come down just a hair. It's bone -- can I use sandpaper to file the entire nut down? Or should I have a luthier file each nut slot individually?

jmascis said:

But anyway...it had zero relief, so I put in a little and now it feels better. Action is slightly high at 2.6mm. I think once I get that down to ~2.3mm it will slacken up a little, too. Nut feels okay. It could probably come down just a hair. It's bone -- can I use sandpaper to file the entire nut down?

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That's the usual method for the saddle, where you do it from the bottom because you want to retain its profile (it should have the same radius as the fingerboard).
Never heard of doing that with the nut although it would seem to make sense.
But I suspect it's glued in and would be kinda difficult to remove and replace.
Maybe that's why filing the slots is the usual suggestion.
Also a tiny bit can go a long way in the slots, and a luthier knows how to retain the shape of the slots and not ramp 'em or make 'em too wide, which is also important.
They use specialized files that are matched to string gauges to keep the slots the right width.
I did use a sheet of folded sandpaper once to get the "last nth" of perfect slot depth on my D25, right after its last refret and set-up, but only the D needed it and I wouldn't have attempted it with the G, B or E slots, it would have been too wide.

jmascis said:

Why didn't they take the east coast staff out west?

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Story I heard is that a) they didn't ask everyone and b) the ones they did ask were not offered enough to make it worth relocating. Relocation may have been about more than money. I personally feel an affinity for New England and never felt anything similar when I was on business in California. I'm not sure you could pay me enough to relocate and there are reports that many of the New Hartford Guild employees felt the same way. I think one person, besides Ren, of course, did relocate but they worked in finishing and had been with Guild for less than a year when they moved.

adorshki said:

Cordoba already had a high-end classical guitar manufacturing operation in place in Oxnard when they bought Guild.

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My recollection is that Cordoba had four luthiers making huge end classical but the facility they used was not where the Guilds were going to be built. Ren built the factory. I'm sure logic dictates that the skilled luthiers would have been consulted about Guild but I thought we reported/decided that already had all the work they could handle.

fronobulax said:

My recollection is that Cordoba had four luthiers making huge end classical but the facility they used was not where the Guilds were going to be built.

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Right, but it is in Oxnard.

fronobulax said:

Ren built the factory. I'm sure logic dictates that the skilled luthiers would have been consulted about Guild but I thought we reported/decided that already had all the work they could handle.

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Right, "logic dictates" about consultation at least, but I don't think it's ever been "proven", so as far as I know it IS still an open question.
I didn't mean to imply they were actually in the Guild shop doing construction, but "made available to help" wasn't quite the correct wording..

At the risk of drawing the ire of a whole lot of folks, I had a hard time buying a Guild that was made in Westerly, not Hoboken......(yes, it was long ago but I am anal). Now following the numerous iterations of location since FMIC acquired the company, in my anal purist mind, it has ceased to exist other than in name only.
Sorry to all in advance, but I think Willie would have killed someone letting a guitar go out with the defects previously listed........

Double post, sorry.

I got to play it a bit more tonight and noticed the bridge pin tilted forward: http://imgur.com/a/IqCpl

Is this normal? What causes that tilt?

Also, I see what looks like a blank space on the bridge where it's not flush (or it's missing glue, I can't tell): http://imgur.com/a/gqjEL

What do you make of that space?

These kinds of flaws are like what I've been seeing on Gibson acoustics over the last few years. Unacceptable, especially for a hand-made American guitar. I'm surprised that guitars with such obvious defects got passed on down the line by everyone including the dealer. If they left the factory like this then we have big problems.

And having come from a Manufacturing Quality background, I would like to remind everyone that you can't inspect quality into the product.

Makes no sense to build 'em up all the way then sort 'em out after they're built, you've got to get the manufacturing process nailed down so you're producing high quality stuff repeatably.

dreadnut said:

Unacceptable, especially for a hand-made American guitar. I'm surprised that guitars with such obvious defects got passed on down the line by everyone including the dealer. If they left the factory like this then we have big problems.

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That's how I feel, but again, I wasn't sure if I was being picky.
I asked to return it. The guitar does sound nice, for those interested in the M-20. Very nice sound. I just don't trust this craftsmanship.

dreadnut said:

I'm surprised that guitars with such obvious defects got passed on down the line by everyone including the dealer. If they left the factory like this then we have big problems.

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About a month ago, I purchased an M-20 sunburst new from an authorized dealer. When he went to ship it, he noticed all these scuffs on the guitar (brand new):
http://imgur.com/a/inPNn

So, he told me he wasn't comfortable selling it. Which was cool. He placed a new order, and they said it would be 3 months!

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To be fair the dealer noticed the flaw and took the necessary steps to keep the flawed instrument out of a customer's hands. The problem is that something this obvious should have never left the factory. And now everyone is standing around and asking whether that instrument is an aberration or whether there is something the factory needs to find and fix in the procedures and tooling. Teething problems for a new factory.

adorshki said:

How about 3 tee shirts?

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Damn three??? Well I do believe that is what we would call a game changer!!

jmascis said:

I got to play it a bit more tonight and noticed the bridge pin tilted forward: http://imgur.com/a/IqCpl

Is this normal? What causes that tilt?

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NO that's not normal and first suspicion is that hole was not routed at the correct angle.

jmascis said:

Also, I see what looks like a blank space on the bridge where it's not flush (or it's missing glue, I can't tell): http://imgur.com/a/gqjEL

What do you make of that space?

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Same thing you do, either not completely glued to top or not properly profiled to match the top radius, leaving that edge a little bit high.

After trying to reassure you about Cordoba, I have to say this is just getting really depressing.
In fact it's even starting to p--s me off.

dreadnut said:

These kinds of flaws are like what I've been seeing on Gibson acoustics over the last few years. Unacceptable, especially for a hand-made American guitar. I'm surprised that guitars with such obvious defects got passed on down the line by everyone including the dealer.

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It's part of what's p--ssing me off.
Quality's getting shoddier and shoddier in everything and young folks just coming into the market have nothing to compare it to, so they just think that's the way it is and always has been, so the makers just keep laughing all the way to the bank.
Even more irritating is the lack of choice in so many segments, you can't buy good quality even if you wanted to pay more for it.

dreadnut said:

If they left the factory like this then we have big problems.
And having come from a Manufacturing Quality background, I would like to remind everyone that you can't inspect quality into the product.
Makes no sense to build 'em up all the way then sort 'em out after they're built, you've got to get the manufacturing process nailed down so you're producing high quality stuff repeatably.

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I remember reading somewhere that in Westerly each station reviewed the work of the preceding station and sent stuff back for rework if needed.
They were small and intimate enough to be able to do that, but the "Big Guys" couldn't.
It's one of those intangibles that made the guitars feel like they actually had a soul instead of having been turned on a lathe with a million other table legs.
I've said before that for the first couple of months I used to just eyeball my D25 for a few minutes after practice, at first looking for flaws, and pretty quickly just to drink in the sheer quality of workmanship: Perfectly joined seams everywhere, perfectly beveled fret-ends, not even a drop of glue squeeze from the kerfing inside the guitar.
When you see such care taken even inside the guitar you know it was built by true craftsmen.
And now they ship out guitars with crooked bridge pins?
SHAME ON YOU, CORDOBA!!!!!