Not to mention, the last three Martin's I bought have had Quality Control issues. Two of which were from their Custom Shop! Yeah. I am beginning to think they are over producing and the QC is beginning to show here and there.
It's anecdotal, but there are plenty of stories on the web about Martin quality issues, which is sad because it is a great guitar with a storied and well respected history. I'm a Taylor man by taste and I'm not painting Martin with a broad quality brush, but there's "something there" with their quality issues.
Unfortunately, you are not wrong in saying that.
I say that as a 70 year old, (playing for 55 years of those) who is a life long lover of Martin guitars. Not all of them have QC issues of course, but it is a pain when it happens to be your guitar. I have had five of them in recent years that had problems out of the box or soon after. I now own only one Martin guitar. A very expensive custom, which had problems but repaired. I started to consider that my Martin guitars were a liability rather than an asset. That's a very sad thing for me to say.
I too am a new member to the fold of Taylor guitar owners. (A gorgeous all koa GA custom). Why a Taylor? Because I trusted the way that Taylor were making guitars, and unfortunately I didn't trust modern Martin guitars any longer.
That got me to thinking about the actual reasons. Martin produce traditional guitars, but have tried to alter manufacturing with CNC to bring themselves into the modern age. But in doing so they have tried to get the CNC machines to do what was done traditionally. That change presented problems, so they tweaked something to overcome a problem..... which in itself created another problem. And so on. In other words, Martin are often chasing theiir own self created problems. (For example, there have been four different methods of bridge fitting in recent years. Three different neck joints).
Bob Taylor, on the other hand took a different approach. He knew that he wanted to mass produce guitars using CNC and therefore in effect re-designed the guitar from the bottom up so that it
could be produced using CNC machinery. Then he designed the CNC in house to do it. Unlike Martin, he didn't have to preserve the "tradition" (or the illusion of tradition and "hand made"). The end result is that the Taylor guitars are much more consistent, no matter what the price range.
That Taylor neck joint, for example, is pure genius! Sure, wood moves and sooner or later a guitar needs a neck reset. Too many new Martins are needing a neck reset within a couple of years to a month (or brand new out of the box even). Five of mine. There is a warranty, sure, but it takes around nine months for Martin to do the job. With Taylor's neck joint that job can be carried out in minutes. Brilliant.
So when it came to buying a new guitar this time round the choice was easy. It came down to a matter of trust.
Several thousand dollars is a lot to put down on a new guitar. I didn't want it to give me hassle down the line or end up costing me more. Simple.
Rod
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