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Post by pcalu on Nov 28, 2022 21:51:48 GMT -5
In part I'm Pretty ticked ...
I have a 2016 American made Telecaster the equivalent of the Professional II in 2022 (it's newest guitar I own) And have always had issues with the feel and the action... something just never felt right. Did a fret dress early on cause Fender on this line used the cheapest chinese fret wire they could source... (Not cool) Never could get the action decent... Just discovered the neck has a defective truss rod. Never would hold it's tension and would loosen and a bow would return. Throw in the fact Fender used a shallow truss nut made of Chinese pot metal that takes a small 1/8 Allen wrench... the combination of both... not good. (it want's to strip at the slightest torque)
In short ... The American made neck is toast.. the nut is maxed and the warp ever present (and getting worse) thank you QT inspector Chavez... !
Sheet happens... right?
Part II of the story...
I see this Made in Mexico Fender Roasted Telecaster Neck Flat Oval Shape, w/ Pau Ferro Fingerboard. So I order it. Comes in .. First thing I notice is... the neck is at the very least the same quality if not better than what I remember the American made neck was when new. The fret dressing on it was superior to what I remember also. Instead of a shallow cheap 1/8 Chinese pot metal truss nut... this MIM comes with a beefy deep 1/4 truss nut. And the dang thing holds a level adjustment (so far... knock on wood... ) The quality of this replacement neck has me thinking.
I'm a Material Manager for a Tier 1 automotive supplier.. so I have some experience in sourcing parts, and manufacturing. It wouldn't surprise me if Fender is having all it's Neck production for North America made at the Ensenada Mexico Plant ... getting stamped with MIM or MIA denoting where they getting put into production at.
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Post by reverendrob on Nov 29, 2022 8:20:54 GMT -5
Fender USED to do all the stuff in CA, and did the finishing work for MIMs in Mexico.
The Squier Mexi guitars are MIA wood, since only Corona had the CNC machines at the time.
They've had full facilities in Mexico for ages now.
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Post by funkykikuchiyo on Nov 29, 2022 10:15:37 GMT -5
Did you buy the first guitar new? A bad truss rod should be covered under warranty.
It is also possible it can be fixed...a truss rod that will back bow and then lose its tension can sometimes be cured. It might be more money than it is worth, though.
"Chinese fret wire" shouldn't make a difference. I've worked with a lot of types of fret wire, and while some feel different to work on, the differences are small. In fact, Dunlop, the most recognized brand among consumers, probably has the worst wire at the highest price. The tolerances are high, the bead on the bottom of the crown is pretty big so they always look like they're lifting, and they're the softest. If you're used to clipping another brand and getting a bit of a snap, clipping the Dunlop wire feels like you're cutting a stale marshmallow. It just sort of smooshes. I remember way back when on the old FDP when Fender reps would actually post there was a heated debate about Fender using "soft" fretwire, and the Fender reps weighing in and saying they did it for the sake of incremental tone improvements. They never said it by name, but it was Dunlop. So, a clear high quality vs. low quality ranking really isn't there on the market. Besides Dunlop, most of the differences are going to be noticed by the person doing the fretting, as the tang tolerances change or they behave differently with tools. It is very, very rare that a player is going to notice any differences, or even a tech who is not doing a full on refret. (Of course, I'm excluding SS or EVO wire, as those are fundamentally different and it isn't a matter of quality.) The Chinese companies tend to be more accommodating when fulfilling purchase orders and with customizations, while the domestic companies often just sell out of a catalog, so there are a lot of reasons Fender might be going with a Chinese company over another like Poly-Met or Jescar besides cost.
Fret dressing remains a very hard thing to do in factories in a way that isn't a total time suck. By 2022 some company like Fender should have figured out some way to do super quick fret dresses, but no one has yet. In the '90s this was excusable. It was just a reality to have a MIA price point instead of a CS price point.
But, yeah... Fender hasn't really done enough to ensure that the MIA stuff is superior to MIM and justifies the price. They probably spent too much time fart sniffing and thinking that there is some kind of magic in being MIA. The reality is that solidbody electric guitars are products of a manufacturing process, and whoever does manufacturing better is (usually) going to make the better Strats and Teles, regardless of what the marketing department wants. The manufacturing quality is basically the same, and they try to do it with features. The problem is, those features aren't necessarily any more desirable. So, the MIA neck has a 2-way rod and the MIM has a one-way rod. What's the point? They VERY rarely need to be adjusted in the opposite way. The MIM truss rods run into fewer problems because the larger allen key hole means less stripping, and if it DOES strip it can be pulled out and replaced without removing/replacing a walnut plug and doing finish touch up. MIA should be the quality level that Custom Shop is now, and Custom Shop should be the immaculate, ultimate iteration.
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DrKev
Wholenote
It's just a guitar, it's not rocket science.
Posts: 418
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Post by DrKev on Nov 29, 2022 13:46:56 GMT -5
Did you buy the first guitar new? A bad truss rod should be covered under warranty. Yes. Just don't tell them you've done a fret dress yourself or you are on your own. "Chinese fret wire" shouldn't make a difference. 100% agree. We have to knock this anti-Chinese nonsense on the head. Once upon a time we turned our noses up at Japanese stuff. Then we then got over it because they were doing better than everyone else at a lower price point. In this day and age CNC manufacturing means necks and bodies come out faster, cheaper, and more accurate and consistent from ANY factory today than a US Fender factory 30 years go. Yes, hardware quality will always be lower at lower price points but that in itself is not a hindrance to a good instrument. It's the fit and finish that where the man-hours and cost start to skyrocket. Which brings us nicely to... Fret dressing remains a very hard thing to do in factories in a way that isn't a total time suck. Absolutely. Any fool can polish frets on a wheel to high shine in a few minutes. But you need experienced, well-trained people get the level and crowning right and the nut slots etc. Add a floor manager, in any country, pushing for more instruments out the door faster and you have recipe for crap even at non-beginner level prices. I've watching the Crimson guitars YouTube channel lately. Ben (the boss and chief guitar maker) has been buying sub-$1000 dollars and taking them apart and seeing what makes them tick. He said this week (the PRS SE Silver Sky review) there is probably not a single guitar under $1000 that will not have fret level and/or dressing issues. Shocking to hear but he may not be wrong. And country of origin has nothing to do with it. But, yeah... Fender hasn't really done enough to ensure that the MIA stuff is superior to MIM and justifies the price. They probably spent too much time fart sniffing and thinking that there is some kind of magic in being MIA. That's literally half their customer base right there too.[/quote] |
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Post by funkykikuchiyo on Nov 29, 2022 17:39:25 GMT -5
Absolutely. Any fool can polish frets on a wheel to high shine in a few minutes. But you need experienced, well-trained people get the level and crowning right and the nut slots etc. Add a floor manager, in any country, pushing for more instruments out the door faster and you have recipe for crap even at non-beginner level prices. I've watching the Crimson guitars YouTube channel lately. Ben (the boss and chief guitar maker) has been buying sub-$1000 dollars and taking them apart and seeing what makes them tick. He said this week (the PRS SE Silver Sky review) there is probably not a single guitar under $1000 that will not have fret level and/or dressing issues. Shocking to hear but he may not be wrong. And country of origin has nothing to do with it.
I could teach anyone who is reasonably good with their hands with attention to detail to do a really good fret dress. It won't be the same as I do it, there'll be a few extra safeguards to make sure it comes out alright, but it isn't too bad. The problem is that it takes time. Factories have always had work-arounds. The correct way is a good level, recrowning, and polishing it out at least until the strings don't feel gritty. Many old manufacturers would just use a brass wire wheel, which is why there are old '60s guitars with strange across the grain scratches. Gibson historically doesn't recrown - they level and then are aggressive with polishing which puts in just a little bit of roundness. It is just a tear drop piece of hardwood with sandpaper wrapped around it, if I remember right. (The Plek probably got oversold because the Plek Gibsons were being compared to the Gibsons where a full fret dress had never been done.) Fender, on their maple boards, would level and polish the tops, but there would be zero crown, and the pieces of poly would be all the way up to the top of the fret. By never attempting to hit the side of the fret they avoided messing up the finish. FDP old timers will remember that a VERY frequent question about their new strats was about the shedding of these little pieces. Sitting down and crowning each fret, polishing them out progressively up through grits and maybe buffing, and doing so in a way you don't muck up the fingerboard is like the monks rewriting documents on animal skin in the middle ages. There really is no printing press way to dress frets right now. Just creative ways to cut corners.
On top of that, manufacturers not only want processes to be quick, they don't want WIP (work in progress) to be around any longer than possible. With a bold on neck, that means it might be getting fretted the day after the wood is planed, the fingerboard is glued on and the slab of maple is carved into a neck profile (I don't actually know, it depends on order of operations). This means that the neck has really no time to relax into a new shape. This isn't "seasoning", this is just the reality of wood releasing internal tensions as it is cut. Every material does this... metal does it, even large pieces of plastic. Set necks have an advantage because the neck is made earlier in the process and it probably gets another couple days. So, how valuable would a fret dress be at the factory at this point? It could never be as good as one done 6 months or a year after the guitar is first strung up.
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Post by samspade on Nov 29, 2022 18:47:50 GMT -5
Hmm, I have a lot of US Made Fenders, maybe more than I should, lol. I wonder if this is a quality control thing, as I've never had major issues and can tell a MIM vs MIA pretty easily. Actually, I had a thread issue on a bar and their customer support was not good. Was during covid so not sure if the people I were talking to were day drinking. Anyway, I was just wondering how you know frets or truss rods are made in China, do they leave indicators?
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Post by pcalu on Nov 29, 2022 21:43:00 GMT -5
Hmm, I have a lot of US Made Fenders, maybe more than I should, lol. I wonder if this is a quality control thing, as I've never had major issues and can tell a MIM vs MIA pretty easily. Actually, I had a thread issue on a bar and their customer support was not good. Was during covid so not sure if the people I were talking to were day drinking. Anyway, I was just wondering how you know frets or truss rods are made in China, do they leave indicators? The use of the phrase... "Chinese Pot Metal" wasn't meant to be literal... it was denote "my own opinion" of the quality of the fret wire and the truss nut used in this specific neck. I have no idea where Fender sources these parts... although as a Material's Manager, I would NOT bet someone Fender makes these "in house" or sources any of these from and American supplier. (just a guess due to my experience in automotive sourcing... I don't know anything about Fender manufacturing) On the quality of the MIM neck... I can not tell any difference when compared to the MIA neck. I should note this is an Aftermarket Neck... It's Roasted Maple with a Pau Ferro fret board with a 12 radius. (not compound... straight 12 ) Not a standard Fender Neck. Not sure why Fender offers it. Plays very nice, looks very nice.. The Pau Ferro has a different tonality than maple or ebony... It has more in common with Rosewood, softer tonality than Rosewood, but still gives a lot snap and bite. Right now... my opinion is why would anyone pay $200 more for a "supposed" MIA replacement neck... when the MIM is just as good? (Now this opinion could change ... tomorrow the neck could go to sheet.. and be garbage.. but as I write this .. I'm very happy with it. |
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Post by reverendrob on Nov 30, 2022 4:01:14 GMT -5
People pay for the myth and the legend, that's why.
There are some folks who will NEVER play an import guitar, same as won't EVER drive a "foreign" car even if it's made in the US by Toyota or whatever or is made of mostly imported parts!
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Post by reverendrob on Nov 30, 2022 4:03:24 GMT -5
And as far as "why are they selling necks" - guessing they looked at the prices for the 'takeoffs" on Ebay and Reverb et al and realized they could just sell them too.
Maybe they had a contract NOT to with Warmoth as part of the licensing that expired as well.
Some people just want "Fender" on the headstock, and the MIM lets Fender do that without rebadging Squier necks and devaluing the mark.
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Post by samspade on Nov 30, 2022 20:49:58 GMT -5
I think it does boil down to everyone's opinion of what they want to buy assessing the other options...not mythology in my opinion  It's all good |
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It's all good