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There are a small minority of craftsmen in many businesses who go to extraordinary lengths to produce the highest quality products possible but even there, one place or another, many of them fall short somewhere along the line. But for the overwhelming majority of small manufacturers with garage style operations, their products are inconsistant in quality at best.

I'm reminded of something which happened over 20 years ago. Another engineer dumped a project on me he didn't want to do. The security manager of the large software development site I worked at had purchased a replacement computer room card entry access system from a company in Central NJ which had just been spun off from a world famous British military electronics hardware company. Shortly after I was to see why with my own eyes. The salesmen who sold this system took me to the factory and gave it a big buildup. After the high level meeting with the plant manager and other top level management, I got a tour of the plant...a garage with a few people sitting at tables hand assembling equipment, a fenced parts crib, and a computer for testing. When 14 card readers arrived at my office, I spread them out on a table. Many of them had different parts from each other, some had obvious short circuits, two even had the same serial number, and workmanship uniformly stank. I sent them all back with a message that they were unacceptable and would all have to be completly reworked or replaced. The manufacturer was furious. It came back a few weeks later marginally better but eventually the entire system was scrapped for one built by a major manufacturer. This is typical of my experience with garage style operators. Even if the founder was "passionate" about his work, those who inherit the business usually aren't and are only interested in cutting every possible corner including quality. I have no issue with hand made equipment...if it is well made. BTW, even the AR2as I recently renovated, built to very high consumer standards would not have passed inspection for soldering to military specifications standards. How lucky I was to have a father who was the Quality Control Manager of a famous electronics company for 14 years which built only military gear.

Craftsmen who are dedicated to building the best musical instruments and have learned their craft over a lifetime by being apprenticed and starting out by sweeping the floor as children are not in this category. They are in a special trade. Don't compare them to the garage manufacturers of high end audio equipment. Especially the ones who farm out their work to prison sweatshops in China.

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