The Homecoming Report

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Your Homecoming Reporters are cameraless

 

OK, someone has to say it:

 

Your homecoming reporters are TARDS!!!!!!!!!!

 

I'd like to say don't take it personally, but going to homecoming without a camera is tantamount to showing up on your wedding night without your tallywhacker.

[guitarstrummer]

 

OK' date=' someone has to say it:

 

Your homecoming reporters are TARDS!!!!!!!!!!

 

I'd like to say don't take it personally, but going to homecoming without a camera is tantamount to showing up on your wedding night without your tallywhacker.[/quote']

 

Or, perhaps since this is the third year that they have spent their time and money to travel half way across country to attend, maybe they had all the pictures they wanted from previous Homecomings?

 

Or, perhaps they volunteered to take on this job at the last minute when someone else canceled and didn't happen to have their camera.

 

I realize you're only trying to be funny, but you don't know all of the details as to the reasons why.

[skipm]

What in the world is going on in this forum???? I realize I have been out of action for the last few months, but first the Gibson bashing thread and now this! I am the one that had to cancel out with short notice and I am grateful that Bob and Anne took on the job. I think they did a great job and I enjoyed reading their reports, even though it broke my heart not to be there. I was the reporter last year and it is not an easy job if you do it right, it took a lot of effort and it is a VOLUNTEER job. Maybe you should take it on next year and we can all critique your work!

[Jerry K]

The one above was probably just a joke gone wrong, but the other thread has all the signs of classic troll stuff. I got sucked into it but now I think it best to not dignify ignorant bashing with a reply any more.

[jefleppard]

i, for one, really enjoyed the reports and thank them for doing so.

[TheLiveSoundGuy]

ok. Who moved my cheese?

[guitarstrummer]

The one above was probably just a joke gone wrong' date=' but the other thread has all the signs of classic troll stuff. I got sucked into it but now I think it best to not dignify ignorant bashing with a reply any more.[/quote']

 

Bob and Anne did do an excellent job. I also agree with you about the "other thread". I'm done commenting on it as well.

[Space Pup]

I agree, rar did a great job on the report. I was there and believe me every evening I went home with sore fingers from playing every guitar I could get my grubby little space paws on. After that, the last thing I would want to do is sit down and type on a computer.

[anthonyc007]

One of these years ....

 

BTW, no pictures?

[Gilliangirl]

I had a love-hate relationship with the Homecoming Report (or is it Repore, like Stephen Colbert?). Anyway, my love-hate was because it was so great to hear all the goings-on and the closest I could get this year. But, it made me even more miserable that I wasn't there.

 

Nevertheless, the reports were well-written and thoroughly enjoyable reading. Thank you Bob and Anne.

[TheLiveSoundGuy]

What she said. They did a very good job.

[albertjohn]

What she said. They did a very good job.

 

 

Hear hear! Not only am I far too far away to consider going, this was my first year of exposure to The Homecoming so I read the reports every day and learned an awful lot. I now have something else to do before shuffling off this mortal coil. I'll be there one of these days.

 

Well done lads, great job for which I'm very grateful.

[jefleppard]

viva le commonwealth. it would be very cool to have the british contingent represented at the homecoming. some GB at the HC.

[michaelsegui]

no pics?

[rar]

no pics?

 

Thanks to John -- thanks, John! -- there will be some when I get to writing up the Factory Tour installment (this weekend). And, for those who have been waiting with bated breath, I'll be posting something about the Great Tonal Experiment results too.

 

-- Bob R

[rar]

Okay! Here, at long last, is the write-up on the factory tour. It won't be long, but it will have pix!

 

Starting more or less at the beginning, we have folks getting visitor-badged and fitted with headsets in the lobby.

 

 

That handsome young ponytailed fellow helping one of the Homecoming attendees get ready for the tour is Bill Gonder, who you've heard about already if you've been following along. (The black box over the face of the Homecoming attendee is because an executive decision was made not to show faces of attendees in posted photos, and a black box was the most sophisticated thing I could manage with the software I have.) The broadcast of Bill's commentary was new this year, recently added at the request of visitors who had a hard time hearing him shouting over the racket made by all the saws and sanders and other noisy equipment on the shop floor.

 

One more shot of the office -- the Gibson Fancy Pickguard display:

 

 

They're real proud of these!

 

The tour follows the guitar-building process. So, here are stacks of lumber waiting to be turned into guitars.

 

 

The main reason for the wait is to ensure all the wood has stabilized at proper humidity (i.e., about 45%). Note that we're looking at boards, not logs -- wood arrives at the factory pre-milled.

 

Construction of necks is essentially a two-step process. First, someone saws roughly neck-shaped pieces out of blocks -- or sandwiches of blocks, as here, in the case of a fancy multi-ply neck.

 

 

In the old days, this would go to someone with a draw knife to carve the neck. Nowadays, a CNC machine does this job.

 

 

Not because it's cheaper or faster -- it isn't -- but to ensure perfect consistency in neck shape. Generally, the only use of CNC machines in Bozeman is when extreme accuracy is desirable, such as cutting slots in fretboards: you want your frets in exactly the right place, and computers are better at cutting slots in exactly the right place than human beings. (Come to think of it, these two examples -- necks and fretboards -- almost exhaust the use of CNC in Bozeman.)

 

Ribs are bent, neck and tail blocks, and kerfing are installed much as in the old days (e.g., lots and lots of little clamps are used to hold the kerfing in place as the glue sets).

 

 

In fact, some of the equipment for bending dates back to Kalamazoo. (Anything from Kalamazoo that the Bozeman folks could salvage when Nashville acoustic production was shut down is treasured!)

 

After hand-beveling hand-notching the kerfing (to accomodate the slight arches in the top and back, and to allow the braces to be tucked under the kerfing, respectively), the top gets fitted.

 

 

Here's a little better shot of how the braces go through the kerfing and ribs under the top.

 

 

(I didn't get photos that illustrate the top construction process, but it's pretty straightforward. The only "modern technology" involved is the use of vacuum clamps to keep the braces in place while the glue sets. But even relatively small builders, like Santa Cruz, do it that way these days.)

 

Here 's some inlay being inlayed.

 

 

Unfortunately, no pics of the binding held in place by a million little pieces of tape while the glue sets, so about the last major pre-finishing step is to hand-fit the neck to the body and hide-glue it in place.

 

 

Finishing consists mostly of a number of "spray nitro lacquer/sand it down" cycles. Here are some guitars curing between cycles.

 

 

The most important time through the cycle, for sunburst guitars, is when Van "The Man" Feldner, the world's greatest sunburster, hand-sprays the tinted nitro that makes the 'burst.

 

 

BTW, Van used to have to do this job in a hazmat-type suit: there's a photo of him in that getup in the most recent -- i.e., 2003 -- catalog. Henry J saw this on a plant tour and told them to spend whatever was necessary to install a ventilation system to get Van out of the suit. Now, after investing a not-so-small fortune, if you stand in his spot in the booth, you're less exposed to nitro fumes than anywhere else in the region of the plant where finishing gets done.

 

Of course, binding before finishing means finish on top of binding, so several folks are employed to scrape the finish off and make sure that the binding is even with the top and sides. The preferred tool is generally a glass microscope slide, but scrapers are welcome to give any tool they think might work better a try.

 

 

People want their guitars nice and shiny, so they go through multiple stages of buffing.

 

 

Oh, and here's the little room off to the side where pickguards come from. More hand work!

 

 

At this point, it's mainly a matter of installing the bridge, a nut and saddle, stringing them up, and setting them up. (Oh yeah, and installing the electronics "if applicable".) I don't have many photos of this -- here's one of nut installation:

 

 

and here's one that's sort of suggestive of stringing:

 

 

Bridge installation was the most interesting bit, I thought. The shape of the bridge is traced out with an X-acto knife, then the finish that would have wound up under the bridge is softened with a light bulb and peeled off, after which the bridge is registered in proper position and glued down. Everything done in the same way as in a small shop.

 

After the setup, every guitar is right at factory specs (e.g., low E at 6/64" at the 12th fret and high E at 4/64" at the 12th fret), and is checked to make sure every note plays clearly up and down the neck. This, and much more, gets checked at final inspection before it goes in the case.

 

 

It is very unusual for a guitar to permanently fail a final inspection, and pretty unusual for it to even be sent back for adjustment or minor repair. The reason is the every employee is supposed to inspect the guitar -- or, in the early stages, the guitar part or subassembly -- before working on it, and send it back to the previous production stage if anything is wrong with it. This way, problems are caught as soon as possible after they occur. If guitars with problems were to get passed along the line, well, let's say my guess is that "heads would roll". At any rate, it doesn't happen -- by the time a guitar gets to final inspection, it's passed around two dozen QA inspections along the line.

 

So, at the end of the day, around 55 or 60 guitars have been completed. (A lot of people don't realize that Gibson Montana is tiny compared to Martin and Taylor. That's why you don't see as many Gibsons in the stores. And, no, they aren't interested in building a lot more, because they could no longer build them they way they want to if production were quintupled to Martin/Taylor-ish levels. One of the nice things about being a privately held company is you're under no legal obligation to make as much money as possible!) All of them have already been purchased by dealers -- guitars are only built in response to orders from dealers -- and they get shipped off the same afternoon. There is no inventory of completed guitars sitting around. The room where the finished guitars sit was filling up nicely by the time of the tour on late Friday morning

 

 

but it was completely empty at the end of the day.

 

Well, that's about it for the tour recap. Hope you enjoyed it!

 

Your sole remaining Homecoming Reporter

[guitarstrummer]

That was great. Thanks Bob.

[TheLiveSoundGuy]

That was awesome! Thank you for that. Gawd I wanna go soooo bad.

That was great!

[Johnt]

Ditto Thanks

 

Most interesting, thansk for the detail.

 

I share LSGs wish to go

[jefleppard]

thanks for the report. 352 days left til homecoming 09, not that i'm counting.

[Jerry K]

Great pix!

[PetPeeves]

"This part is for Pet Peeves: Val was working on 5 fret boards with inlay using some Led Zep symbols. The very one you use for your avatar, in fact. Someone commissioned 5 guitars, one each of four symbols and the fifth one with one of each. They're white and will be painted with the different album covers. Then they guy wants to give them to the band, keeping one for himself. I wish we could come back and see those when they're done."

 

BOB! That's awesome! Thanks for telling me. Man, I wish someone cudda snapped a pic of that! I actually just got that symbol (Jimmy Page's "Zoso") tattooed on the back of my calf over the weekend. We vacationed in Gatlinburg, TN and just got back yesterday or I would have responded sooner.

If anyone's interested in my little jaunt away from home ...We rented a beautiful cabin overlooking the Smokies that had everything from 3 jacuzzis to a pool table, went to Dollywood twice where we saw a pretty good country music show with some damn good pickers and Jessica Andrews, chilled out in the hot tub like rock stars, went gem mining and got some pretty killer tattoos. I also got a HUGE cover-up (4 hours of sitting!!) with Japanese wind bars and flowers and another with a whimsical musical note with a butterfly. (awww) I like tattoos. Anyway, sounds like you guys had as good of a time as I did! YAY for vacations!!

[Space Pup]

Laura, It never hurts to add a little extra color to your life! I have 5 myself.