When I had my green Elan Five built, I made a choice to never call and ask about it: This wasn't their first rodeo, and a small shop like Alembic doesn't work like a steady production line operation like Gibson or Fender.
The work is sequential for sure, but with far fewer people hopping from one guitar to another, spending a LOT more time getting it right, as the various pieces pass this step to the next, you get a lot of leap-frogging at the much slower pace required for this level of work. Nobody can speed up how long it takes glue to cure, paint to dry, etc., plus it will have to wait for this guy to do his thing, then wait to go to Ron, etc. Then there's flu season, holidays, vacation, you name it, and the bench is not very deep: People who can do this don't grow on trees, and you can't get inlay artists at the local Temp agency.
Then they have their own targets internally. I just described the color to Susan over the phone;
we never exchanged paint chips or anything, I trusted her to 'get it'. Well they shot it once, and decided 'this ain't it', and started over, with NO input from me, they just decided to try again. Again, I knew nothing about it.
When I got it, it was exactly what I'd had in mind. Unbelievable.
But see, I knew this going in, so I said 'I'll get it when it's finished', and that was that. I knew I couldn't stay that excited for ten or eleven months, but geez did it hit me when Will and I took it out of the shipping box and opened that case for the first time !
Nice axe, Doc, and I dig you went with the Fan head too.
J o e y
