That "other" guitar parts company

[fdesalvo]

So, I have been asked to keep a lid on this until it happened and now I'm free to complain.  USA Custom was recently bought by another investing interest.  The staff is new to the production process with the exception of the foreman.  Tommy is gone pecan - he was the only person holding that place together.

I placed an order with them for a custom neck before he was paid out on the sale and what a mistake that was.  The new people have been promising my neck for over a month now.  "It'll ship out this week!", they say.  It was supposed to have been finished 6 weeks ago and I just learned they are using the neck to train their new crew.  Not happy.

Caveat emptor. 

 

[mayfly]

woah!  That's too bad.  Hope Tommy got something out of it.

Sorry about your neck!  I expect a full report on that one!

 

[fdesalvo]

Trying to cancel now.

Tommy made out alright, I'm thinking.  He was a solid guy - a dude's dude as it were.

 

[aarontunes]

"Another investing interest"


File that under "Things that make you say hmmmmm...."

 

[fdesalvo]

^^^

 

[Cagey]

Interesting. The only reason I can think of to buy a neck manufacturing concern and not hold onto the existing talent would be to put them out of business. It's not like they'd have valuable intellectual property or obscure tooling/licensing that would be difficult to obtain/develop/buy otherwise.

 

[mayfly]

Any news on this interesting thread?  get your neck?  If so, how is it? 

 

[bagman67]

Interesting. The only reason I can think of to buy a neck manufacturing concern and not hold onto the existing talent would be to put them out of business. It's not like they'd have valuable intellectual property or obscure tooling/licensing that would be difficult to obtain/develop/buy otherwise.

Another reason might be to obtain their manufacturing capacity, if it's cheaper than augmenting your own facilities and cheaper than an outsourced-manufacturing contract.  And if the marketing guys say "Made in USA" is better than overseas (Chinese) parts, there you have it.  It may well be cheaper to acquire a going concern than to stand up additional CNC's and train personnel and all that.

 

[MikeW]

Interesting. The only reason I can think of to buy a neck manufacturing concern and not hold onto the existing talent would be to put them out of business. It's not like they'd have valuable intellectual property or obscure tooling/licensing that would be difficult to obtain/develop/buy otherwise.

Another reason might be to obtain their manufacturing capacity, if it's cheaper than augmenting your own facilities and cheaper than an outsourced-manufacturing contract.  And if the marketing guys say "Made in USA" is better than overseas (Chinese) parts, there you have it.  It may well be cheaper to acquire a going concern than to stand up additional CNC's and train personnel and all that.

This happens all the time in medical device development and manufacturing; especially with the strict requirements FDA imposes on manufacturers and processes. It's far more efficient to spend the money you have available to purchase a company that already has shown that it's capable of passing FDA requirements than it is to try to ramp up a production facility and then get through the submission process.

I suspect that's what we're seeing here with "another investing interest". The real question is Big W? Are you taking over?
:laughing11:

 

[musicispeace]

This may stand in as some sort of update. Its September 2016 and I know Tommy and he is still involved in the business and still works at the shop. I just talked to him on the phone there last week. In the past couple of months I've had USACG do a big fatback neck for me and no complaints or issues. Another, commercial, client of USACG told me the new owner is a guitar player who lives east of the Mississippi and had invested in equipment for the shop. So i doubt they are going anywhere soon. As I understand things most of USA's business are commercial clients more than individuals.

As to transition and quality control, I did have one mishap a couple years ago where an order was done wrong and that may be the root of why some people were let go it seems, which would be for the better. At this point you get connected to a real person seemingly every time you call the shop, which is an improvement too.

As a user who has both Warmoth and USACG necks I feel they both provide fine product and its an apples and oranges sort of thing. You can get more radius options and neck profile options out of Tommy but Warmoth offers the widest wood choices and the Showcase is still a great feature of working with Warmoth. Both shops have their following and their detractors. That's life.