Monday, January 3, 2011

Hidden compromise

I do not intend for the following 4 pictures to be an exposure of a deception; no guitar stores here are selling compromised goods to buyers. If they do, the instruments you brought home wouldn't be working. This is my effort to bring you, my friends, to an understanding of quality control. Manufacturers out there are sometimes fighting themselves silly to conceive instruments which require a certain standard of construction which they know they cannot fully conform to, with a limited production cost. However, they are mindful enough to tuck these away so that what (flaws) you don't see, won't make your heart ache. Keep in mind that I bought this guitar after seeing these flaws & accepting the instrument as it is. The guitar in question is my Rally Neosound Jr. & it's all about the binding in the inner F-holes.

This first pic shows a cut-like gap.


Pic 2 shows an atrocious rip. 

What do we have here? Coarse binding surface? Looks like it.

More uneven finishing here.

I hear some people out there saying I'm being ultra petty with small compromises but this is the Achilles heel of an F-hole finishing. When it comes to making the F-hole edges presentable, the budget instruments won't pull through as well as their upper tier counterparts. In view of the instrument's list price, the binding work you see here might prove to be pseudo-binding after all; ordinary wood surface given the cosmetic fix so that it looks like real binding. Whatever the case may be, the manufacturer has a duty to see this done properly.

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