You know what I could really go for? A turbocharged Astro modified to, er, “look like a Lamborghini”. A show called “Ultimate Car Build” created such a vehicle a year or so ago. The “Astroghini” ran from 0-60 in 6.2 seconds thanks to a turbocharger sitting in place of the passenger seat. It sold on eBay in September, but the precise whereabouts of the Astroghini were unknown… until now. It sits just a few miles from a General Motors plant which closed in 1999 and nearly put the surrounding community down for the proverbial count.
Long-time TTAC readers will recall my mention of the Heritage Guitar Corporation in an article on MB-Tex guitar straps. This past weekend, I attended the the “Parsons Street Pilgrimage”, an annual visit to the Heritage’s production facility in basement of Gibson’s Kalamazoo factory. I knew the factory trip would be a treat, most notably because Heritage founder Marv Lamb had just completed an H-357 “Firebird” made from Korina wood and flame maple just for me. He’d also agreed to install a set of Jon Gundry’s ThroBak MXV SLE-101 Plus pickups in the thing. Mr. Gundry is a fanatic about correctly reproducing the sound of Gibson’s vintage “PAF” pickups, and every piece of a ThroBak, from the magnets to the maple internal spacer, is sourced from local suppliers in Michigan. Best of all, the whole thing is wound on Gibson’s original “Slug” and Lessona winders.
In an era where most of the junk one buys is precisely that — junk, and from China to boot — I was inordinately pleased to know that I would have a guitar assembled using the methods, machines, and people who worked at Gibson some fifty-three years ago. Before I could visit Heritage’s basement facility, however, I had to stop by Aaron’s Music Service. Back in January, I’d taken a chance on buying a broken-necked Heritage “Eagle Classic” jazz guitar from a doctor in Kalamazoo, and Aaron Cowles, the owner of Aaron’s Music Service, had agreed to take on the project of building a new neck and rebuilding the rather fragile instrument from the braces up. After seven months, Mr. Cowles believed the Eagle had finally risen from the ashes, to mix a metaphor.
Kalamazoo has been on the losing end of America’s long slide into Third World “globalism” for a while now. Gibson left in 1983, attracted by the “right to work” environment in Tennessee. Today, although the Nashville and Memphis plants turn out plenty of new American-made guitars, Gibson as a company has staked its existence on a brand new plant in — you guessed it — Qingdao, China, where the lower-cost “Epiphone” line is made. An Epiphone Firebird guitar costs $449. The Nashville-made Gibson Firebird, chopped out in record time by CNC machines and assembled as quickly as two decades’ worth of process improvements can manage, costs $1,699. A Heritage 357 Firebird, made by one man over the course of a month or two using hand tools and rough jigs, is considerably more costly than the machine-made Gibson. This isn’t the kind of math that bodes well for American manufacturing. Luckily, guitar players are sentimental people and once they can afford to put down the Chinese stuff and buy a local product they usually do so.
If only the car-buying populace was as sentimental. General Motors opened the Fisher Body stamping plant in 1964 and closed it in 1999. Like Gibson, GM sees its future in China. The white-collar employees who fiddled while GM sent more and more jobs to Mexico and other overseas locations eventually found out that they were playing the role of the infamous Pastor Niemoller; when engineering for projects like the Cruze and Sonic moved to Daewoo, many American engineers and managers found themselves looking for work.
Abandoned by GM, Kalamazoo has fought back. The unemployment rate, an almost unbelievable 2% in 1999 before the GM plant closed, is now nine percent. Still, that’s better than the Michigan state average of 11%. The bad news: both of those numbers are trending sharply up even though Kaiser Aluminum opened up in the old Fisher Body plant two years back and has added a couple of thousand jobs to the local mix.
My first reaction on seeing the “Astroghini” in a roadside yard was that someone in K-zoo had built the thing, and I honestly wasn’t all that surprised. Over the course of three days, I saw a lot of modified cars, a lot of custom motorcycles, a lot of well-restored vintage Fifties and Sixties Chevrolets. This isn’t New York or Seattle. People build, create, fix, restore here.
Aaron Cowles opened his shop in the early Nineties. He’d been a Gibson employee for nearly twenty years prior to that. After some mild prompting on my part, he began to tell tales about working for Gibson in what were commonly considered the “dark days” of the Seventies. Having started his career in Kalamazoo literally sweeping floors for the company, he ended up doing binding and finish work, as well as building mandolins in their entirety. When Gibson announced the opening of the Nashville plant, he knew that his days with the company were probably limited.
“They didn’t offer us a chance to move to Nashville… we were union, we made too much money. The people in Nashville earned a third of what we did, and they were glad to have the work.”
On Aaron’s wall, a series of black-and-white photos document his time with Gibson. Aaron is a serious, handsome young man in the pictures; he looks like the quintessential Golden Era American and it’s easy to imagine him building a B-24 bomber or, indeed, flying one over Germany. A color snapshot tucked into the corner of the bottom photo tells the end of the story. In this one, a sixty-ish Aaron is standing with a heavy, balding young man in safety glasses.
“I traveled down to see the Nashville shop a few years ago,” Aaron recalls, “and they let me meet the man who does my job now. He works really hard. Nice fellow. It isn’t really a living like it used to be, though. The Gibson plant paid well. I sent my kids to school on that job, bought house. It was solid, steady work and I was proud to be there.”
There’s a pause, and Aaron looks at me, perhaps to make sure that I am listening — that the callow, long-haired hippie/yuppie standing before him, the guy who barely knew who Chet Atkins was, the fellow who had commissioned a rather serious rebuild project over the phone and hadn’t really even asked the right questions — that I was really paying attention.
“The Gibson plant was solid, steady work,” he repeats. Another pause, and his eyes lose their focus.
“Of course, it wasn’t as good as working for GM.”
Jack,
Another excellent article. I always enjoy your writing.
However… two things about Martin Niemoller: I don’t think “infamous” is the term you were looking for. Also, though he was the Pastor of his congregation, to everybody outside his congregation the more appropriate term would be Reverend.
I agree… but he is so typically referred to as “Pastor” Niemoller that I’ve referred to him as such here.
I have a tough time with Gibson. Their product line is a real crapshoot. And, speaking of “the dark days”, I own a Norlin (the Gibson corporate overlords at the time) product. I bought it new. I rarely play it because it’s a bitch to intonate the thing properly despite the tune-o-matic bridge.
My other Gibson was built at their custom shop in Montana. It’s a very nice piece, a joy to play.
I’m a Bozeman owner too! I have a Montana-made “Doves In Flight”. I’m absolutely infatuated with it and enjoy the long scale.
I love my Sheryl Crow Signature. But it points out another complaint I have about Gibson. Mine is number 101 out of a limited edition of 200. A few years after I bought it I discovered that they had been cranking them out for quite a while and had dropped the whole “limited edition” notion. On one level I really don’t care, I buy guitars because I like how they sound and feel not because of artist endorsement or “exclusivity”, but it is disingenuous on Gibsons part.
Here’s a drinking game for people trying to quit: Go to a toy store and take a swig every time you find something that was not made in China.
Nice little snippet of life Jack. Although from the back the “Astroghini” looks more like an “Areostarghini.”
“People build, create, fix, restore here.”
One of the first things I noticed upon moving here to Windsor Ontario, was how many people had hot rods and muscle cars stashed in their garages. There is a cruise night every night around here.
Car towns…gotta love ’em.
nice piece, and full of sentiments that I think many on this site share. People do still buy cars with those same sentiments, but not always American cars. The lone exception is maybe the Corvette, where people actually want to tour the plant and they offer you to assist in building your engine. One buys a Porsche feeling it is engineered and assembled by educated, intelligent, passionate people in Zuffenhausen with a rich automotive history. They even travel to Germany in some cases for delivery. Nevermind the fact that a Korean built Hyundai is probably assembled better. The story is the same with Gibson guitars and other items. A lot of the perceived quality is in the history behind the product and the people who build it.
Anyone into surfing, as I am, is aware that the sport has long been home to a culture of small workshops crafting custom boards to suit local conditions. A beautiful cottage industry, full of people who love what they do. Yet over the past few years the industry has seen the inevitable flood of Asian made boards popped out of moulds rather than hand shaped, and done so by people who for the most part can’t swim or who have never been in the ocean. I bet 95% of the stand up boards that have become popular are of this sort, and the people riding them don’t care, it’s just another new hobby to add to their collection.
A lot of the fault lies with the consumer culture. People like to shop, and they buy bargains, rather than saving for one special instrument or one special car, etc. When our culture shifts to emphasize quality over quantity, local production with historical weight will be valued more often. It’s not such a far fetched thought…locally produced food I think has made a comeback in the American consumer psyche, at least amongst those who can afford it. The same mindset can go further, and hopefully will.
Jack, your writing style flips back and forth between Peter Egan and Hunter S. Thompson (not that I’ve ever read Mr. Thompson, but people here say that a lot, and who am I to disagree, having never read any Hunter S. Thompson?), but the quality is always there.
I’ve been wondering for a while if people would get nostalgic for (to steal a phrase from Mr. Egan) “rustic cars”. That is, simple, well built, durable cars. Cars that open and start with keys, have switches and dials for secondary controls, and otherwise don’t bother you. People pay a lot of money for Harleys, and comparatively less for litre-bikes. Could the same translate to cars?
Sounds like an Ask the B&B :) Look for it tomorrow.
My Honda VFR cost considerably more than my brother’s Sportster 883 (and it showed at anything above a walking pace). People still commented on his bike more when we’d go for a ride together, though.
Most Harleys and Ducatis don’t cost nearly as much as people assume. My VFR cost more than my bro’s new Monster, too ;)
You are correct JuniperBug. It makes me remember 1997 when my buddy and I had both purchased new bikes, he got a Honda CBR900RR, I got a Ducati 900SS. After a ride one weekend we stopped by his mother’s house for dinner. She came out to look at my bike because she ‘wanted to see what a rolling house payment looked like.’ I didn’t have the heart to tell her her son paid more for his CBR than I did for the SS.
Kalamazoo was way more economically diverse than you lead on. True, the GM and Checker plant closings were a blow but they were late in arriving. At this point, you may as well list Roamer as another automotive casualty. The scaling back of Pfizer and Upjohn pharmaceutical companies, which IMO were the real engine of their economy hurt. Also, the paper industry closings didn’t help.
However, the pharma industry continues to blossom in and around Kalamazoo with start ups, and Western Michigan University is another anchor of the area. Upjohn is still here, just smaller. Additionally, Bell’s Brewery is a regional favorite. (I should know, I work next door to their competition in Grand Rapids, Founder’s Brewery) Stryker products makes medical devices and seems to be going along nicely. The western side of Michigan is a different deal than the eastern side.
You should come to some of the regional car shows we have in Western Michigan, you’d be amazed at the quality of what shows up here. In fact, since you’ve been to GingerMan, you’ve probably already sampled some of our car culture here. It’s grrreat! (to paraphase Tony the Tiger)
/rant
“This isn’t New York or Seattle. People build, create, fix, restore here.”
Not sure what is meant by that but the vintage car restoration and appreciation scene is alive and well in Seattle. Besides, we build things here, too (albeit in Seattle suburbs like Renton and Everett). They’re called Boeing jetliners.
I would suggest that the assembly of Boeings is very different from the kind of traditional craft/manufacturing work done in Michigan. That’s about all I meant.
I think that many Boeing assembly workers would feel differently. Planes are inherently more hand-built than any mass-produced cars.
And the PNW has a strong manufacturing legacy, Kenworth truck plants in Seattle (closed) and Renton (closed except for off-highway), Western Star trucks up in BC (closed), Freightliner in Portland (assembly plant closed, offices still there), Genie boom lifts in Redmond (open), Fluke and HP (closed) in Everett, and many other smaller operations.
Off-shoring and lower-cost locations have hit PNW manufacturing hard, however. Boeing is definitely on the way out, but it is a decades-long process (sound familiar, Flint and Detroit?).
“Besides, we build things here, too (albeit in Seattle suburbs like Renton and Everett). They’re called Boeing jetliners.”
They are moving too.
You beat me too it, see post below
My dad gave my son these damn railroad production DVD’s and it’s nothing but 16 hours of trains moving east and west, up and down 1% grades, he loves it, makes me watch it, the thing is I find it incredibly depressing because all I see is the death of middle america (I know part of it is b/c the interstate system bypassed all of those cities), but I find it sad all the same.
I don’t hate unions, some of the plants at the company I work for now are unionized and thier production and quality have improved dramatically (theres two sides to a (well done) contract) to the point that the non-union plants now just follow the work rules established in the union ones.
However they (unions just seem to not get it sometimes and would rather destroy themselves than face reality). Take Boeing for example, all Boeing wanted was a no-strike clause so the union couldn’t disrupt thier most important product launch in history, no pay cuts, no benefit cuts, any disputes during negotiations would be decided by a mediator and they said no, why? End result, a brand new plant is being built in SC next to Charleston port and I can imagine that as each union employee in washington retires another non-union will be hired in SC and a robot will be placed in Washington, where do they think boeing’s suppliers are going to build new plants and I can promise you when it’s time to build a replacement for the 757/767 there will be a plant built in Georgia next to the savannah port. What was the point?, to have a little celebration in the local hall and now they get to watch as thier communities decay over the next few decades, I wouldn’t call that winning (of course it will be blamed on corporate greed, but in this case it’s just misguided stupidity).
I never got the opportunity to play a Heritage as I don’t have them locally in Montreal Quebec.
I’ve never been a huge fan of the headstock design but I did have a Gibson Firebird for a little while and … well … neck thru body can be a hassle at times, mine had the sustain of a Fender Mustang.
I’m a big fan of vintage PAFs as well ! but lollar imperials are it for me
This is a car blog. We like modern transportation. We like our travel freedom. We like what modern automobile transportation has added to our lives. We like how modern transporation has broaden our horizons.
So we cannot expect limited horizons for some things, but not for us. We cannot expect little local economies to be robust, while we put our nuts in Chinese briefs. We cannot want simpler times when we are using cellphones, the Internet, and modern banking. While we pine for simpler things, we are not doing simpler things.
And that is good. Capitalism is good. Diversity is good. We see that when we try to limit any market, we only make things worse. Our intentions may be noble, and our college degrees may indicate some kind of intelligence, but it seems we have blinded ourselves to the results of our good intentions. We cannot wall ourselves in Peoria Illinois or Kalamazoo Michigan in order to keep local business healthy, and expect to survive. It didn’t work in Moscow, or Haiti, and it won’t work in Des Moines.
We constantly hear supposedly enlightened individuals demanding that we localize our markets and simplify our consumerism. But that is similar to asking that we limit ourselves and our own future. The difference between a developed economy with healthy happy liberty loving citizens, and an undeveloped economy is the number of walls built to prevent reality from doing what it will eventually does – tear down walls. The longer walls exist, the sicker the economy behind them, and the more decimation that occurs when the walls come down.
So, the walls are coming down. Walmart replaces Sears, who replaced thousands of local merchants during the 20th Century. Hyundai replaces Mitsubishi, which replaced Studebaker, Hudson, and American Motors. With each wall falling, the rotted protected economy cannot survive, causing great pain to thousands.
But it would be worse to keep the walls up.
NAFTA was supposed to be two-way. After twenty years, it isn’t. While we uphold our end of the trade bargains, our trading partners have not held up theirs. Our ports are open, while theirs is closed. While millions are driving Toyotas and Hondas, the Japanese are also driving Toyotas and Hondas. The trade imbalance worsens. The solution is to demand the removal of the walls protecting the Japanese. The Chinese. The South Koreans, and the Germans. We should not be doing business with Communist countries. We should not be doing business with non-Capitalist countries.
NAFTA cannot work if it is not completely implemented as originally designed and sold. Half-implementation is worse than NO implementation of NAFTA.
Local economies only thrive honestly when they have global competition. Protecting them doesn’t work. Pine all we want about the old days and the old ways, but what we have in our homes and driveways is better than ever, and cheaper at the same time.
We drive through walls. Don’t promote their construction – ever.
While I agree with the overall sentiment wholeheartedly, I think you’ve got an inaccurate idea of what NAFTA is. Countries in Asia and Europe are outside the scope of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which applies to Canada, Mexico and the US only. Open trade and free with these countries would be a good thing, but it would have to fall under a different trade agreement.
So Japan, China, South Korea, and Germany are part of the North American Free Trade Agreement now? I’m not sure if this is better or worse than the commenter who didn’t know the difference between the Czech Republic and Chechnya.
We do have separate FTAs with other countries, btw. For example, KORUS FTA with Korea:
http://www.ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/korus-fta
Good post.
Gibsons are wildly overpriced. Shame to see they’re not sending some of those profits the way of the current employees.
Jack, did you trade that man your jorts for the guitar?
Something about the way I crack under pressure at National autocross events tells me I will be needing those jorts again… so no.
On another note, the more I view the Astroghini, the more I want it. But I want it with an LSx motor in it. And I’d probably have to go through the whole thing to fix all of the sh*t that was missed on the made for TV bash to get it finished in time for the show…
OTOH, I think it would make more sense to add nitrous to my Sunfire…
Jack,
I have a hard time believing that anyone who knows guitars like you do “barely knew who Chet Atkins was”.
I believe that somewhere in my vinyl is a copy of Lester and Chester.
Also, I’m not so sure that Gibson was so representative of the way manufacturing has been done in the midwest. There’s a lot more handwork that goes into instrument making, even with CNC routers etc. than with other products.
When I think of the industrial base around here, instead of the big car plants and those of their tier 1 suppliers, I think of places, most of which no longer exist, like the contract broaching shop that I worked in one summer during college. There were lots of tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers, small to medium sized businesses, doing process work on parts: heat treating, broaching, centerless grinding, plating and other things needed for making car parts.
“I traveled down to see the Nashville shop a few years ago,” Aaron recalls, “and they let me meet the man who does my job now. He works really hard. Nice fellow. It isn’t really a living like it used to be, though. The Gibson plant paid well. I sent my kids to school on that job, bought house. It was solid, steady work and I was proud to be there.”
Why is it so impossible for US companies to recognize the basic facts in this statement? A vital economy has to be based on a broad segment of its participants getting enough of a share of the profits to be able to move forward with the economy. It can’t be based on the owners/bosses taking all the profits while handing the bulk of the workers the absolute minimum wage possible. There just isn’t enough forward motion from the masses to keep the economy thriving. Henry Ford realized this. Why is this no longer understood?
@Clutch: “A vital economy has to be based on a broad segment of its participants getting enough of a share of the profits to be able to move forward with the economy. It can’t be based on the owners/bosses taking all the profits while handing the bulk of the workers the absolute minimum wage possible.”
No sh*t. It’s a race to the bottom, and dammit, we’re all losing! Woo hoo!
Isn’t it a two-way street? In order to thrive in a modern economy, you have to have skills that the modern economy wants. Obviously, the modern robber barons who make ridiculous multiples of worker salaries are a problem within themselves (people on Wall Street are idiots if they think some of these CEOs are worth what they pay them — no doubt the best ones are, but not everyone can be the best CEO), but that doesn’t diminish the fact that workers have to do their part too.
What Mr. Cowles said is a good example, however, of how people of past generations had it better than current generations. Some baby boomers and certainly their parents were able to get low-skill factory jobs in small towns and still buy houses as their retirement fund and raise families and pay for college. Baby boomers may have gotten the best deal — cheap educations, cheap housing, and a 25-year stock market boom in their prime earning years — all paid for by future generations, of course.
Obviously, being a highly-skilled luthier like Mr. Cowles is slightly different from being a factory drone, but there are only so many Baruths available to brag about their bespoke guitars.
It’s a lot tougher now to be a low-skill worker, and the people who don’t work hard and gain skills will fall behind and probably should.
Great piece! And a helluva fine looking guitar. Gibson lost me during their more recent transition to house-brand for Guitar Center. That dealer cull was something I wouldn’t be surprised to see from GM.
Luckily there are some great USA guitars and basses still made, like Heritage and G&L.
Bringing this back from the dead. I am a native of Kalamazoo and avid reader of TTAC. I recently stumbled upon the astroghini. For sale locally for $4400!! What a steal!
I’m in Kazoo, too! Where is this ad?
EDIT: Nevermind, found the Craigslist ad….
http://kalamazoo.craigslist.org/cto/3777157474.html