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Anyone out there have a Plek machine? Or used one at some point? Just curious what your experiences with it is?

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

Since those CNC machines run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.... I doubt anyone loans them out.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I don't but I have had one of my new guitars pleked by its new owner. The feedback which I asked for was that I had the typical geometry from this type of guitar. Can't fight typical so I won't be getting a Plek soon.

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Ken

I have spoken at length with Joe glazer about a plek and they sound pretty neat. They not only dress frets, but can add precise custom relief not the fret board or frets themselves. He says that it gave him a whole new level of control of the plane of the frets.
If you really want to know about a plek, you should call him. He is in Nashville. You can probably google his shops info

Btw, did you win he luthiery lottery? A lot of q's on height end machinery lately.....

I got a couple out in the back yard rusting. Too accurate for me...

I've never understood the need for a Plek machine, other than when dealing with real volume (and boy would you need a VOLUME of Guitars).
Armed with a guaranteed engineers straight edge, an accurate fret rocker and a good set of feeler gauges, how much more accurate does one need to be? What exactly does that last 0.01 mm (over the course of say 6 frets) get you?

My understanding of the PLEK is that it is capable of doing something which is impossible to do by hand . . . namely, imparting a different amount of relief to each individual string path, in order to optimize the action for every string separately, taking into account the differing amplitude of each string.

I know that some builders do claim to do something approaching this, after a fashion, but there is no way they can be certain that they have optimized the process. . . with the PLEK the optimization is guaranteed.

All well and good but it still doesn't tell me how much more one can squeeze out of the 'action'. What exactly does it equate to? Another 0.3 mm lower action? 0.1 mm, 0.05 mm 's ?

Oh Dave, oh Dave......... This is one of Dave Collin's favorite subjects and as such I suspect that he will be along shortly to weigh-in.

But until he does Plek, smeck.... a highly skilled Luthier in fret work can match or possibly exceed the accuracy of a Plek.

Of the folks that we know who have Pleks all of them are very capable of 1) knowing what superb fret work is and 2) being capable of similar results with manual and traditional methods. The difference is that no one wants to do this all day, over and over again, with no breaks, lunch, perks, parking spot, and holiday bonus. But a stinkin Plek will work for peanuts that is once you come up with the over $100K price of entry.....

Regarding accuracy and what it gets you. Repair Luthiers know all too well that there are those 1 - 100 players who do benefit from a level of fret accuracy that pushes tolerances of .001" or more.... And there are many folks who want very low action even if they are not pro players (think shredders...) who benefit from accuracy approaching or matching .001".

The OLF is largely an acoustic forum where often builders are building for the cowboy chord crew (CCC...) who may use mediums or Bluegrass string gauges and are right at home with an action set of 5 - 7 (64th") or the Martin spec for mediums on a dreadn*ught.

But then comes along Mr. Greaseball with his Les Paul who plays weddings every weekend who wants (and used every bit of it too) action of 2 and 3 (again that's 64th"). These folks are demanding, know what they want, know what's possible (often not always...) and do in fact directly benefit from a shop or maker who can produce a set-up that gets them where they want to go.

And then there is Gibson and if any of you follow Frank's excellent forum you will know that when we discuss Gibson and their plethora of Pleks many of us are not fans of how Gibson is employing Pleks and especially the results that they get either. We don't suspect the Pleks but I personally suspect the roll-out and integration of the technology into the manufacturing process because quite frankly the results suck....

A Plek is a great tool but similar accuracy and results can and have been obtained by skilled Luthiers for a long time I am sure.

And like many things that get discussed on any forum there is the issue of personal standards as well. What some may not see the need for some may not have ever been exposed to a real human being with a requirement that will only be satisfied by a level of accuracy that exceeds their understanding. Not being critical and I am recalling how I once thought about fret work too and what was..........."good enough..." But we live and learn, grow, expand our experience and knowledge and low and behold there is a class of player who greatly benefits from a level of fret work accuracy that is simply not possible with a fret rocker.....

Hi ya Murray: Individual levels of disparate relief is possible with manual methods. It's even easier to have different levels of relief on the bass side from the treble side also with manual methods.

Again just like any thing with a micro processor a Plek is not capable of things that humans can't do but a Plek can do these things all day long with nary a complaint. Pleks also likely have more repeatability too since we human bags of mostly water get tired and want to go watch Orange is the new Black....

No, not exactly. But I am tossing around ideas with a guy right now about setting up a small production/custom shop. Something that could produce around 200 guitars a year with a handful of staff. I'm in the dreaming/planning stage right now and there are a lot of details up in the air. Maybe it won't happen. But I'm in the process of trying to figure out what sort of a shop and tooling would be needed to meet this kind of production. It would defiantly involve some CNC. And for the scale we are thinking of I think a Plek could be a good addition. I'm fine doing a fret job and even good at it (if I do say so myself), but I don't want to be doing 2-3 a day for a week at a time. I think my arm would fall off. If a Plek and a good CNC can do the work of a couple employees they would be payed for in a few years.

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

Let's do some math... Granted there is a huge catch-22 when thinking about deploying (and paying for.....) a Plek.

Josh if you don't mind please let's use some of your numbers that you are kicking around. Say 200 units annually for a small guitar production operation.

Of course we have to make some assumptions as well. And we all know what assumptions can.... be but it's a straw man or starting point.

200 units with a retail price of say $3K each. Retailers or Mom and Pop music stores like to mark things up nearly 50% or more which means that the manufacturer of the $3K instrument will only get $2K each for them and less if they do volume deals with most favored distributors. But we can stick with $2K as a best case example for this exercise.

200 units at $2K each that's $400K annually in sales. Employees are expensive and it's just not what you pay them it's other things too and in the states we have unemployment insurance, worker's compensation, perhaps....... health insurance although not a current requirement for organizations with less than 50 employees. And you have to pay them too in so much as not everyone will work for beer and medical weed.....

Olson was a model of small shop production with 65 dedicated routers and 2 full time apprentices. Although his apprentices are and were worked pretty hard with three full time people Olson produced at best 65 units annually. Using his model because.... we.... can and have this example a 200 unit shop would require roughly three times or slightly more person hours to produce those 200 instruments that sell for $2K wholesale.

If you nix the wholesale model and wish to pursue individual and direct sales you just got yourself a big marketing and sales expense too by self representation in your sales activities. But let's stick with the distributor model to at least get one complete analysis accomplished.

Nine employees each needing (and hopefully) earning a living wage with the regulatory costs associated might be $40K annually each or more.... Maybe I pay better than you guys too but we are HUGE on treating people as we would want to be treated and that also means paying well. Nine employees with fully loaded costs (salary, benefits, regulatory costs, perhaps insurance although never in Canada which is very cool by the way) in my book is $360,000.00 in employee costs alone annually....

Now we have facilities, materials, some marketing expenses to gain distributors and resellers, export costs and requirements, tools....., utilities, coffee..... (don't laugh we spend a lot of money on coffee and it's worth it too...) and a plethora of other mouse nut stuff that adds up.

Our overhead, and overhead is a good term for the facilities and other costs, can be 30 - 40% of our annual revenue because of our expensive location. So you can do better especially if you are not directly serving the public and have to locate right smack in their path. Assuming that one is a business genius and can get their overhead down to 25% for a guitar manufacturing facility we can extrapolate an overhead number of 25% of 200 units selling for $2K each or $100,000.00.

Let's see where this takes us:

$400,000 from annual sales of 200 units at $2K each wholesale
$100,000 in overhead as above
$360,000 in employee and associated costs

Drum roll please: This business would be $60K in the red in 12 months AND no one has bought or leased a Plek or any other CNC machine yet either.....

Point being it's very expensive to manufacture guitars in North America and my hat is off to Godin, Martin, Taylor and others who do make it work. Looking at the numbers one would not believe that this was a profitable venture.

Interestingly I once did the numbers for my own one-man builder operation and they came out similar in that the old adage how do you make a million bucks building guitars - start with two million bucks..... seems to also scale from moderate to small builders.

And back on topic this is the struggle for the Plekers out there who have purchased or leased the technology. To pay for a $100K tool one has to do a LOT of fret work..... For a manufacturer that does do thousands of fret jobs it works I am sure as employee costs are far more unpredictable and of course you pay for what you get too. Be cheap with your people and don't be surprised when they screw you and do terrible work.... No guarantees for results of being great to your employees but one can sleep better at night regardless.

Josh not trying to be a bubble burster by any means. These are numbers that I have personally struggled with for some years now and it seems to me that Lutherie is best suited for either a very small one person shop or a few maybe or a giant manufacturer with name recognition and a defined and lucrative distribution channel. The middle ground, the medium manufacturing concern seems to be the hardest to make the numbers work.

And then we have the economy..... what was that terrible thing called that is not that far in the rear view mirror - the great recession.... And we also have the fact that according to the musical instrument retailers association for the first time in history guitar sales have declined for the past two years.... Hence Henry at Gibson raising prices 29%......

When I was in college studying marketing it was said that what ever business one decides to get into be sure that it has a huge market in so much as one may one capture a small piece of that market.

Leaving one with the thought if this stuff is not profitable why then do we do it?

Because we love it! And I for one never said that I was the brightest bulb in the pack either...

Hesh, your labor estimates are pretty darn high. 3 FTE's producing 65 per year comes out to 97 hrs per guitar. Are you including overhead functions such as sales, accounting, etc. in this number as well? Even then it is high. No factory will survive if it takes them 97 hrs per guitar. The shops that I have knowledge of take about 40 hrs per guitar for a quality build....

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

C. F. Martin PA -- makes about 200 units per day

500 employees including production and support

500 x 8 hours day = 4000 total hours / 200 units = 20 labor hours per guitar

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Hey Trev!

Yeah we all know too that there are likely just as many ways to run a business and view one's staff as there ways to build a guitar too.
I suspect that my labor estimates are high as well and that's my personal goal - to treat people who I care for and value as well as I can...

Here's a very related example of where this can lead. Costco in the US values their employees greatly and as such pays far above the minimum wage even for starting employees. Some folks who have been there a few years make over $21 per hour and the benefits are outstanding too.

WalM*rt.... on the other hand goes through people like feces through a goose.... They are paid very poorly resulting in many Walmart employees having to be on food stamps and at times other forms of public assistance as well. Walm*rt pushes much of the costs of their business as a result of the poor treatment and pay of their employees back on the public, their customers... What results is the public has to subsidize Walm*rt employees and even then I would not wish the life of a Walm*rt employee on anyone.

At the end of the day, beginning too Costco stores are twice as profitable per square foot of sales space as a Walm*rt....

Which model would you want to be? And yes I am a Costco member and it's great including their new car buying plan which just saved me over $1,200 on my new car just because I belong to Costco... But I digress.

Social contracts aside much also depends on what kind of manufacturer we wish to be when we grow up too. More specifically are we with our 200 units annually produced in our North American facility keen to produce very few models that are all basically the same with little or no customization?

Or are we keen to be Huss and Dalton or Collings who manage to produce far more than 200 units annually but also offer a huge amount of customization available too? Doing more than the cookie cutter single offerings requires a different level of skill set for at least some of your employees. Folks may actually have to fit a bridge pin.... or cut a stinking nut slot at least somewhat close to optimal. And for this there is no way around skilled labor. You can grow your own skilled labor but I suspect that if you invest in folks to this degree you may also have a vested interest in keeping them doing great things for you and not your competitor. Nothing stops them from defecting after being trained on your dime. Nothing that is unless they are happy and well cared for by you/us.

You may think that my numbers are high and they very well may be but I also think that my numbers represent a business model that is "sustainable" in the sense that the investments that one makes, including in any businesses most valuable asset - it's people are more likely to have benefits realized because folks are treated very well.

I left out other costs too in my post modeling a prospective Lutherie biz manufacturing 200 units annually.

Insurance and not health insurance but business liability insurance. Our business pays around 2% of our annual revenues on first class insurance through Heritage. Not only are we insuring people's property that we have a bailment for (stuff in our custody) but we are also insured for accidents that we may cause including knocking a guitar off a bench accidentally, etc. Our insurance also covers $2,000,000.00 toward our building, work loss, relocation, lost income in the event of a fire, etc, theft, and even shipping. I see no reason why a manufacturer would pay less than we do and in fact see a far greater possibility of more liability for the insurance company for a manufacturer that may be milling their own lumber, etc.

A word about how cost analysis is done. There is a term "fully loaded" employee which does not refer to the guy who works for you and loves single malt scotch even at work.... Fully loaded refers to an "expected" level of productivity that the organization employing the person can hope to glean from the employee's efforts. Fully loaded is the sum of the salary, benefits (time off, etc), health insurance, all other associated costs such as workman's comp, unemployment insurance AND..... here's the kicker - fully loaded also refers to that expected productivity which in North America is a factor of 5 times the salary. A person making $40K has a fully loaded cost of $200,000.00 because this is the expected level of productivity and all other associated costs for that person.

If you take my $40K per employee and test it against the concept of "fully loaded" the employee would only take home $8K annually. And who would wish this on anyone. Hell it's not even legal to pay this little for a FTE....

Ken has some good numbers from Martin. I don't doubt that Martin can do this because of economies of scale, prior investment for generations that is now realized and "paid for" (things they own that prior generations bit the bullet for), excellent embracing of technology while never losing site that customers expect a person to be making a Martin not some stinking machine, and a reputation second to none as the standard bearer of the industry. Both the D-18 and D-28 are what all others are judged against.

I'll save it for another post but Martin does a lot of things right by the way IMO including environmental stewardship but more on this later.

With Martin's 500 folks 20 hours per unit is entirely possible but that number likely does not include the support services, sales, marketing, accounting, procurement, slipping and deceiving, etc. But when you are Martin with the distribution channels that they have developed and grown you have to operate as an industry leader because you are very much one.

So sure you and I and several others can lease a building, bring in some CNC, hire some folks and excrete some number of units annually. But most importantly since this would be a new business what differentiates our offerings from anyone else's? What is our value proposition and what makes it winning in the market place.

Why do we see so very many builders essentially fail? How many people have come and gone from this very forum and how many of these people had big plans that they even voiced here on the OLF? I wanted to build full time but the numbers told me that I would be working for virtually nothing.... Sure I might be happy as a clam until I became homeless....

We've fancied building and have the market for it too based on folks who love our work already. But the numbers just don't work and instead we are WAY better off doing what we are doing. I can think of lots of aspects of Lutherie that one can make a living with and do fine. But when I do the numbers and throw them on the wall of business costs, regulation, market concerns, competition, the economy, one's own personal requirements such as say health insurance, etc. - nothing sticks....

Every day I see guitars that were manufactured by some big names and every day I also see guitars that the maker is long gone....

China - how could we possibly discuss Lutherie and manufacturing without mentioning China. You know don't you that if the Chinese ever learn to use serviceable glues and do a proper bolt-on or dovetail joint that we can all kiss our own prospects good bye... Even Japan which is a democracy and very much a modern, advanced nation greatly benefitting from our wrong minded belief that Demming was a whack-job also produced very high quality guitars. Again the neck joint and glue choices held them back

But at the end of the day Japan and China can easily change neck joints and glue choices but can we say that we will work for .50 cents an hour or have a nationalistic obsession with quality that prevents even the line workers from ever knowingly letting defects pass?

I'm not throwing in the towel by any means but I am attempting to make it clear that anyone who fancies starting a Lutherie business of any size better know in advance that their costs are highly likely to far exceed their initial expectations, the market is full of stories of people who tried and failed, the economy is fickle as all get-out, and based on recent surveys perhaps, just perhaps the hay days of guitar making are passing us by now.

This is why the good folks who make a run at it and succeed have all of my admiration - this is NOT easy..... And I am sure that those who are in the trade, are part of a profitable manufacturing concern, etc. will read this and say that whack-job Hesh guy is right about this - the Lutherie biz is NOT easy by any means.

Long posts, only skim read...

I think a Plek is unjustified for 200 guitars annually. I'd save the cash for payroll and sandpaper. If your biz is bringing in enough dosh to pay for, and being hampered by the lack of a Plek, then maybe. Perhaps if it did other CNC tasks as well.

Fwiw, we were down to 16-18hrs per at my old job, and would have been able to shave a few more off had we been able to carry on. But to be sure, that's an uncomfortable workload particularly when balanced against the recompense...

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the input. I guess there isn't anyone here thats actually used one of these things.

I'm well aware of the costs of running a shop, and I'm taking those thing into account as I work on my ideas. As I said, right now they're just ideas. Maybe they won't go anywhere. But it never hurts to dream...and its not costing me anything either.

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

Just a random thought-

It would be interesting to see what farming out a Plek job would cost at a wholesale level. Conversely what you could charge for a Plek job if you owned a machine and did work for other small factories and one man shops.

I bet none of the machines out there are working to full capacity.

I see shops that have one are charging around $275 for a full setup.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

My pal Geoff (owner of San Francisco Guitar Works) has a Plek machine.
We (the NCAL club) were privy to a great demo of it not too long ago.
He explained the costs involved. Overall, he finds it to be a very cost effective machine for his repair business.
He offered to Plek any of the NCAL members guitars for a good discount, off hours.
I have yet to take him up on the deal, but for sure will be getting my next guitar Plek'd sometime in the new year.
I'll report back when I do...

Cheers,
Dave F.

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Cambrian Guitars

"There goes Mister Tic-Tac out the back with some bric-brac from the knick-knack rack"

Regarding the original topic, I don't see a practical use for a plek machine even in a factory. Just because you can make a robot to do something doesn't mean you should...

Hesh, I think you summed it up below:

"We've fancied building and have the market for it too based on folks who love our work already. But the numbers just don't work and instead we are WAY better off doing what we are doing."

I think you've pointed out that this potential part of your business is not sustainable...and it's no doubt due to the labor cost. I'm sure you are making great instruments...but the real challenge for a guitar business is not just to make great instruments. It's to make great instruments, sell them, and make a profit. If you could lower your labor costs, then your business could afford to employ more people. You've always seemed like a great guy, and I'm sure you would treat your new employees well...and so your lower labor costs could enable more people to have a job with a company that truly values them! So in a sense, I think you could do the most good for the most people by lowering your labor costs....

FYI, I'm not sure about Huss & Dalton, but I believe Collings is around 40 hrs per guitar...PRS is probably around there as well with their acoustic line.

High efficiency does not necessarily equate to low quality. I think the Chinese have plenty of skill and ability. I think they just focus on the bottom of the market because that's where the volume is. As Henry Ford said...“Sell to the classes, eat with the masses.
Sell to the masses, eat with the classes.” I think the Chinese are pretty committed to making the most money possible..and the best way to do that is to go for the volume. Eventually they will try to take the whole market...whether they can do so before their labor costs makes manufacturing prohibitive for them is an interesting question. If you haven't read it yet, the book "Factory Man" describes the whole process by which furniture manufacturing left the US...there are some obvious similarities to the instrument industry.

Nice to see you back on here, you always have good posts. I just lurk these days...still build the occasional box of air (working on 2 tenor ukes and a jumbo cutaway at the moment)...but not putting the time into it that I used to.

Best,
Trev

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

Would be glad to hear what you think. Thanks!

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

At that price and in a very busy repair shop it might pay for itself fairly quickly. I guess that in some ways it generates it's own work, people want to get PLEKED . . . even though their instruments may not even need the slightest adjustment i.e. they think they are getting something very special. You gotta love the psychology behind all this stuff. . .

I think someone said it best on another thread, "a solution looking for a problem"...
As far as a "production" facility...good luck in this day and age. Just what the world needs, another Eastway, Bluebeard, Lameson bros, etc. If Marvin is making a guitar in 20 hrs and charging $5K, you'd think folks would say something wrong there...