Hartley recounts that as a gun nut, he'd always been amazed at the tight wood-to-metal fit on even cheap rifles. He did some investigation and found that gunstocks were made on copy lathes: You put a master in and it would carve many duplicates very finely. Pop them out, finish sand them, send to spray, done. He soon discovered that cad/cam would work as well. The consensus was then that you could not handcraft fine guitars this way.
Of course, nowadays the big builders brag about how complex their robotics are to craft better guitars. Like I've always said, HP (NOT Hewlett-Packard) made a fortune doing what 'they' said couldn't be done. I've always been a big fan. The T40's were $350, case included, when PBasses
were $700 or better. Pair it with a Combo 300, and you were ready to gig for a little under a grand ! Plus they were both unbreakable. I feel real confident saying that a lot of us, before we got real highfalutin' and got Alembics and high-end amps, probably played lots of Peaveys back in the beginning . . .
J o e y
(Message edited by bigredbass on October 19, 2010)