What takes the longest time when completing a guitar?

[soul_lip_mike]

I was just curious, we see all of these manufacturers with 2-3 year wait times for custom builds. Where are the bottlenecks or what takes the longest when building a custom guitar from scratch? Is it just the company has a massive back log? How long does it take to complete a guitar once humans actually start working on it vs how long is it just sitting in an order queue waiting for its turn to be built?

 

[budda]

Probably the multiple spec changes the customer makes as they go

 

[SalsaWood]

I would think the finish depending on what it is. Solid gloss colors maybe not, satin raw finish probably not. Good question.

 

[jaxadam]

Tuning it

 

[Drew]

Based on m personal experience, I'd say setting action and pickup height. I micro-tweak mine almost every time I pick up a guitar.

Second is strap height. Everything else is easy.

 

[odibrom]

Everything takes its time to achieve, one can't rush things in order to get to the finish line or one risks to get things not so good or functional.

... sourcing materials takes a long time if not in stock. This ranges from guitar parts to (tone cof cof) woods and various supplies like glues, paint and sealers for example. Building parts from scratch is also time consuming.

Then it depends on the guitar specs, like does it has lots of intricate inlays or not, is it a completely from scratch build or a semi-custom one?

Carving wood takes a bit, sanding even more. Finishing everything may be what takes longer. Drying out or curing glue times may take a while, curing finishes as well. Fret work is time consuming, wiring as well and more so if complicated.

... and one has to account for things to go smoothly, because accidents happen and things may go south easy, meaning starting over some times.

 

[lost_horizon]

I was just curious, we see all of these manufacturers with 2-3 year wait times for custom builds. Where are the bottlenecks or what takes the longest when building a custom guitar from scratch? Is it just the company has a massive back log? How long does it take to complete a guitar once humans actually start working on it vs how long is it just sitting in an order queue waiting for its turn to be built?

People work on the easiest stuff first then avoid the hardest/most calamitous things for later.

E.g. they will make the fretboard and fret it before putting it on the guitar, incase they stuff the fretboard up and glued it, they would have wrecked the neck as well as a fretboard

So things will all be 100% and then get to assembly and things go pear shaped and they will have to go back to the start, which with a massive backlog can now be 3-4 months

There are parts of the PRS process which are no/go and this is in final stages such as sanding and finishing. Only 1/100 guitars probably fail this process but if it's custom, 1 off, they would have to start again including sourcing the woods, gluing, drying, frets, stain etc. Even if you choose to prioritise some work over the others maybe you are stealing parts from another persons build putting their completion date at risk.

Availability of parts and materials is a big thing. If you have a particular tremelo quite often you can't even buy the one part and you need to buy a whole parts pack. That alone could make a build 4 weeks just waiting on a particular part or even a single tuner etc.

Anytime your wishes deviate from the norm it creates risk, not only for you but for the builder.

 

[MaxOfMetal]

I was just curious, we see all of these manufacturers with 2-3 year wait times for custom builds. Where are the bottlenecks or what takes the longest when building a custom guitar from scratch? Is it just the company has a massive back log? How long does it take to complete a guitar once humans actually start working on it vs how long is it just sitting in an order queue waiting for its turn to be built?

There are a lot of factors.

The outsourcing of finish and inlay work, changing over shop configuration/equipment for different tasks, troubleshooting material issues, and just general small business problems tend to be the most common for the type of small builders you see with extended wait times.

You can build something fairly basic if you have the time, materials, and tools on hand inside a week, but that's typically not sustainable and ignores a lot of the complexity of these sort of operations.

 

[soul_lip_mike]

There are a lot of factors.

The outsourcing of finish and inlay work, changing over shop configuration/equipment for different tasks, troubleshooting material issues, and just general small business problems tend to be the most common for the type of small builders you see with extended wait times.

You can build something fairly basic if you have the time, materials, and tools on hand inside a week, but that's typically not sustainable and ignores a lot of the complexity of these sort of operations.

That makes sense. So do you think if a customer has let's say a basic Jackson USA on order for 2 years (USA select, not some insane custom hand carve thing), by the time their order is actually up and work starts, it's done in less than a month or does it get stretched out due to things like paint drying and all that?

 

[budda]

That makes sense. So do you think if a customer has let's say a basic Jackson USA on order for 2 years (USA select, not some insane custom hand carve thing), by the time their order is actually up and work starts, it's done in less than a month or does it get stretched out due to things like paint drying and all that?

Waiting on something?

I'd say it moves in a que at a place like Jackson, so it's going to move along in a batch and not be completed til the batch is completed. I think 4 months would be reasonable but maybe Max knows more.

Backlogs are a thing as has been mentioned.

 

[soul_lip_mike]

Waiting on something?

Kind of. I have two guitars on order from two diff manufacturers (Mayones and Dean) and I was just kind of curious what goes into the wait time, as well as I think there was a dealer a while back on this forum that was saying that had build slots with Anderson available to sell that were in a certain month.

 

[spudmunkey]

For reference: Kiesel's process is that a guitar is started within a day or two of receiving the order, and then it can ship in as little as 6 weeks, as a not-unheard-of short turn-around for them. And that's without any sort of rush processing (I think they said the fastest possible for them is about 3 weeks), but would take into account a few specific factors that facilitate a faster build:
1) A finish with a few coats as possible so there's the least amount of down-time waiting for it to dry/cure
B) A finish that requires as little taping as possible, so the whole thing can just be finished in one go.
III) Bolt-on (or some set-necks) lets a factrory do some operations in parallel. One team can be working on the neck while one can work on the body at the same time, and then they are assembled when they are both mostly done. Not something you can do with a neck-through.
4) As few glue-ups as possible, since that adds dry/cure time. In addition to just the glue, Kiesel's said their glued-up necks get additional time in the drying kilns since wood glue introduced moisture, so that adds some time.

I think for some builders, they have an order queue, and they use that to make sure their builds are scheduled to keep the shot efficient, and also so they can make sure that they have whatever woods you're going to be using will be procured, prepped, dried, before the build its started.

 

[MaxOfMetal]

That makes sense. So do you think if a customer has let's say a basic Jackson USA on order for 2 years (USA select, not some insane custom hand carve thing), by the time their order is actually up and work starts, it's done in less than a month or does it get stretched out due to things like paint drying and all that?

An operation like Corona has various departments. There's a "wood shop" that makes the blanks, the actual "build shop" that turns the blanks into guitars, the "paint shop" that does the finishing work, and then the "final shop" that does the assembly, setup, and last checks. At the end of the line is the "shipping department" which packs everything up and gets it out of the door.

At every department there's potential for a bottleneck depending on workload and staffing.

A good example is that there are only a handful of painters that handle all of the CS stuff, regardless of brand, and they try to setup the workload so there are fewer equipment swaps for new colors/color families.

 

[Drew]

Kind of. I have two guitars on order from two diff manufacturers (Mayones and Dean) and I was just kind of curious what goes into the wait time, as well as I think there was a dealer a while back on this forum that was saying that had build slots with Anderson available to sell that were in a certain month.

Some of it is backlog (Suhr is the same way, btw - dealers wll reserve custom build slots and use them for inventory if they don't get a customer order but a good part of the wait is just the order backlog).

But a lot of it is just doing this right takes time - letting finishes cure, letting wood stabilize a little after carving, stuff like that. Technically you don't HAVE to do this (though with finishing you're asking for trouble if you rush it), but it's a lot safer and easier to just give it the extra time and if you have a boatload of guitars on order anyway it's not like you're wasting time if you carve a neck and put it aside for a week to acclimate before spraying it and then giving it another week or two to cure, if you're using that time to work on other guitars. And, if it means less rework and fewer issues in the finished guitar....

 

[NickK-UK]

... sourcing materials takes a long time if not in stock. This ranges from guitar parts to (tone cof cof) woods and various supplies like glues, paint and sealers for example. Building parts from scratch is also time consuming.

Carving wood takes a bit, sanding even more. Finishing everything may be what takes longer. Drying out or curing glue times may take a while, curing finishes as well. Fret work is time consuming, wiring as well and more so if complicated.

I'd say sourcing the right wood and then giving some time to find any warps after cutting to rough sizes. I had a 2.4 meter long piece of maple and just got a through neck sized chunk that was straight and didn't warp after several months.

Carving takes effort and skill, it takes a while not as long as the finding and giving it time to show any issues.

 

[ChAoZ]

Every time you machine timber it takes out stresses that can cause the wood to move, also anytime you glue something you are inducing moisture which can have the same effect, so i like to leave the parts for a week at each stage to let them acclimatise, eg when I glue on the fretboard I leave it for at least a week before truing it back up on the shooting board

 

[JimboLodisC]

waiting for stuff to dry eats up the most time, be it glue or paint/stain/dye/clear

although the reason a waitlist grows is new orders outpace build speed, even if it took a guy 3 days to get a guitar built from start to finish if he gets even 1 order in those 3 days he's now backlogged, so if a build takes 6 weeks then 2 orders in that timeframe book him out for another 12 weeks

that's a bit of an exaggeration as you can simultaneously work on things while waiting for stuff to dry, so workflow becomes a huge part of it, but if you're talking like custom shops where a single master luthier sees your build through from start to finish, well that limited throughput is the reason it's taking so long