My daughter and I took the Martin factory tour the day before the LMG III event. A couple of areas of the workshop were indeed viewed from an elevated gallery where you simply walked in and looked down upon rows of CNC machinery. Other parts of the tour were walking around amongst the workers, watching while they did their work. The tour route in most cases was outlined by yellow tape, to keep folks from getting into harms way, and into the way of the workers. The Martin factory was indeed 10X or 20X the size of the Guild facility (so it seemed to me).
The Martin Custom Shop area of the factory seemed to be much more like the Guild factory. There, you found individual workers dealing with guitar manufacturing on a much more intimate level, like at Guild.
Everyone we saw at Martin appeared to be very consciencous folks who cared about what they were doing.
The last time I had taken the Martin factory tour was in the late 80's, and the contrast between then and now was immense. While the Martin factory was certainly larger back then, than the Guild factory is now, work seemed to be done on a much more personal level back then at Martin than now. (This should be expected I guess, since Martin produces so many more guitars these days). Things were so laid back in the 80's, in fact, that Chris Martin IV was the guy who led our group of around 6-7 through the factory for 1-2 hours, showing us essentially the whole shop.
High quality guitars coming from both facilities, but Guild just seemed to have a much more personal process of guitar construction for normal production guitars than at Martin. Kind of makes me want to spring the extra money for a somewhat "custom" guitar from Martin, just to get the instrument into the small area of the factory where the production process is more personal.
KY
fronobulax said:
At least one attendee at LMG III had been at the Martin factory the day before. The comment that I recall is that the Martin tour was much less intimate. People watched processes from galleries rather than on the shop floor in many cases.