Are Taiwanese more impressed with speed or quality?

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
1

So It seems like, given the skills I have with mechanical stuff or making stuff, that I’d impress people who machines for a living right?

They complain that I am too slow, and seems to gloss over any ability I have in operating those machine tools (the fact that it isn’t mine so I’m trying to be careful not to damage it, does not help).

They do not seem the least bit impressed with what I have to offer at all.

What does it take to impress a Taiwanese? Being white? Being super fast even if I do a sloppy job?

2

volume and at cheaper cost than anyone else
but, you stated earlier you don’t do high volume, right?

like that 600mn sock order from the US.
some mom with a sewing machine using her foot as a pedal was probably looked over.

or do like some early entrepreneurs, like Terry Gou, over-promise sonething, get a contract, and then they’re stuck with you. learn from mistakes on first big order and then develop from there

3

Being busy and looking busy is more important than actually doing something good. Do you ever notice how staff in the lowest or nicest establishments still run past you, get in the customers way, or bump into you trying to look busy. Bingo.

4

Well you aren’t going to go to a big factory to hem your cut jeans or turn it into a short (because it’s too hot in Taiwan to wear jeans). Those moms with sewing machines have a place in society.

What annoys me is my neighbor basically talking down on all the manual machinists and singing praises of CNC machines. Yes I get it CNC machines are great, does everything for you even cooks your breakfast and you can make millions of NT within a few months with it. But you also have developed a system to where you can hawk the items so you aren’t stuck with a bunch of aluminum parts that nobody will buy, and also those CNC machines costs about 2-3 million NT each. Not everyone have your kind of money to invest in CNC machines.

Besides would you spend 8+ hours making a CAD drawing for a one off part (and making 2 or 3 rejects before delivering)? Manual machining may be slow but they have a place too. And yes sometimes it can take 30 minutes to drill a hole because you spend all that time setting the machine up, lining everything up so that one hole is located in the EXACT location it needs to be, because if it was off by a hair the part is scrap. Perhaps if I have a lot more opportunity to do stuff on the mill I may cut down my setup time by a lot (and it’s a BIG question if Taiwanese machinists even bother doing a good setup to make sure the holes aren’t off at an angle).

5

I’m not even sure Terry Guo qualifies as an entrepreneurs. By definition an entrepreneur is someone who has a novel business idea and convinces someone to actually fund it.

I think Terry Guo just have some political backing. Probably mafia connected too.

You don’t just get up and decide to become like Terry Guo just because you have a novel idea. You become like Terry Guo because you have people backing you.

6

uh…
no…
i have read research on him. he was not like that.
started out just making connectors (wires in back of old computers, etc.)

if you don’t believe in yourself and make excuse that other successful people had help, then you yourself will not succeed.

read up on 王永慶. same thing

7

How about making high quailty stringed instruments, a nobel pursuit by any standard?

8

Assuming most Taiwanese even know what quality is.

Almost all acoustic guitars sold here have a huge belly, and nobody here seems to know that it’s a problem.

To them, quality is something coming out of Europe or America. If you’re Taiwanese, you have no quality.

9

I know why it’s a problem for me, but why for a guitar? Just curious.

10

That sounds like a pity, but a high quality musical instrument is a high quality musical instrument. It commands its own space.

11

It does, but while an instrument from some European or American makers could command a high price, people would not pay say 5000 USD (a reasonable price for a high quality instrument) because it’s made in Taiwan, even if the luthier uses the same standard to craft that instrument. Being Taiwanese means a huge reduction in your prices and therefore appreciation.

I need to break this perception. Too many Taiwanese just tries to do things fast but are sloppy.

12

My late uncle was a harp maker. Wasn’t made in This or that country, it was made by him. He had a list of orders longer than he could ever fill too. Literally years to get one of his harps.

I shouldnt talk I spent a summer making a bass guitar and messed it up .Carved the neck by hand from rosewood Solid body from ash. maple fingerboard, and then truss rod, killed it with a fricken truss rod and had to abandon it

Edit: fingerboard was rosewood, neck was maple. But anyway I broke it so …

13

So the neck was made of rosewood but you used maple fingerboard? I never seen necks like that, usually it is maple neck, rosewood fingerboard, or maple neck, maple fingerboard.

If the neck is indeed rosewood, you picked a not-so-beginner material to make necks out of. A good master would not allow his students to work with difficult material. The student won’t learn that much and will get discouraged from the trade because of failure. Not to mention it’s a waste of a good material since rosewood isn’t cheap.

I never made an electric base beyond assembly, but even my first acoustic guitar (which is by no means perfect) worked. It went to some group in Afghanistan…

14

Yea, see my edit. the neck was maple and the fingerboard was rosewood. and I fricked it up and broke it anywayo

15

How you break it? Routed the truss rod too deep and made it too thin? That’s a common mistake and it’s the reason why low profile truss rod is all the rage. It certainly beginner proofs a lot of things.

16

Did it too much by hand, so it was too uneven both in carving and in bending the rod (it would have been ok without any truss rod perphaps) Anyway when I tightened it (probably by too much) it split the fingerboard away from the neck. But that was really just confirmation of pervious fuck ups

17

I think it would be hard having a guitar shop that manufactures things and caters to only the Taiwan market. Maybe the Japanese or global market can have some potential in this endeavor.

Are you looking at making small parts, or bodies and necks, or all of that?

18

I’m going to let you in on a secret… I don’t like how people keep stuff secret and like Frank Ford says, if you got what it takes to succeed doing this, not knowing how things are done isn’t going to stop you.

Get a block plane, doesn’t have to be a very good one, but make sure it’s flat. In Taiwan get those wooden ones, 300nt a piece at a wuzhing store. Learn how to use it, set it to the right depth and all that (it’s a little long winded to explain). I’m sure you can ask your uncle for advise on this.

Use a wood rasp to get CLOSE to your final neck profile at the nut end, and again at the 10th, 12th, or 15th fret (depending on the guitars you’re building). Obviously the neck will be fatter at the heel end than the nut end. Once you get that, take the block plane and holding it sorta sideways (but not completely sideways), start removing wood and connecting the dot. Check often with a straight edge to make sure you’re not making it concave or anything.

I carved necks by hand, done it for a bunch of guitars, all acoustic, and never had a neck that wasn’t straight or was uneven. Use a sanding block to finish it off.

If the fingerboard separated cleanly, it’s not your truss rod, it’s likely you did not sand the fingerboard before gluing it on. So the glue didn’t stick and so it peeled off. Happened on my first guitar as well. What I did was sand it well and that did not happen again. A properly glued fingerboard should not separate from the neck because of the truss rod. The rod will break long before it will come shooting out of the neck (and it will punch a hole where the end of the truss rod is if it does). Bass guitars NEED a truss rod, trust me on this. In fact, some have two because the tension on a bass guitar is much higher than even steel string acoustic guitars. Electric bass necks have been known to be bent out of shape because of insufficient truss rod or wrong kind of truss rods.

@anon76032781 I want to make guitars, but failing that, I would like to cater to customers outside of Taiwan as well because it doesn’t seem like Taiwanese can appreciate quality unless it has a famous brand attached to it. They simply do not evaluate an item for what it is but rather is too taken in to the herd mentality.

I take on repair/setup work simply because I’ve gotten far more servicing musicians than getting commissions, but then there are people who have so many commissions that they’re working nonstop.

19

Personally, I want quality. Qualify is so hard to find these days. There are so few things left that are made with high craftsmanship and with the highest quality materials. Few things that are meant to last for generations like in the past. Everything is made to break down so you can buy another one.

20

I don’t like throwaway society either, it’s not sustainable for the environment, but we’ve gotten so used to it, especially in Taiwan. Taiwan kinda pioneered the throwaway society thing because of concerns over Hep. B, and so they used disposable dishes all the time.

So now they expect everything to be throwaway, from phones to stuff like guitars. I can’t imagine how many Martins and Taylors get thrown away after they bellied up and they just didn’t want to get it fixed (even if those guitars cost 150,000 NTD)