Then it is *never* my fault if I miss a note.
Expensive? Not really, on the last night I just tell them, "You've been paid enough, if you don't like it- sue me!"
I hear that works really well in other forms of business...

Wessex is always making improvements in every area of the tubas construction. Wherever we can improve, we do improve. For example I think the long running problem of difficult valve threads we have at last solved, but more on that later...Ken Crawford wrote:Sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings. My criticism is only meant to be constructive. Maybe I'm the only one that thinks Wessex can improve their product. I mean if Schiller can do it, surely Wessex can.
Jin Bao would do it if their wholesale customers were willing to pay the extra buck-buck fiddy for quality components, but, we can't go blaming 'Murican bean counters for specifying crappy part because they're trying to wring every last drop of profit out of their products by cutting corners wherever possible, so let's just blame it on the Chinese manufacturers, right?Ken Crawford wrote: Edit: Actually Schiller, yes Schiller, built by Jinbao, has in the past sold a 6 valve PT16 clone with genuine Minibal linkage. Those were nice. So Jinbao CAN do it, they just choose not too..
The problem in many Chinese factories including JinBao is employee retention. These workers aren't seasoned experts that have been or plan to be building instruments for 30 years. The guy building tubas at JinBao may have been assembling toasters six months ago. And a year from now he might be making pants. So when the QA guy gets fired, the next guy with the most experience probably replaced him, and that guy probably has a whole 12 months of experience with musical instrument production.MartyNeilan wrote:It is interesting to see the post where the Chinese QA was “sacked”. Most companies tend to get better at producing things the longer they are around. A typical example is a model of a car that has been out for several years, it usually has most of the bugs worked out. China often takes the opposite result, a process known as “Quality Fade”. There are numerous studies on it, but here is some relatively brief reading. It is good to know that Jonathan and others are actively working to combat this.
https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/quali ... hina-25441" target="_blank" target="_blank
I can tell you that most of the staff assembling Wessex have been there for the last 3 years I have been going regularly to the factory. In fact some, such as the production manager are now good friends. Even when I am not at the factory, we still regularly communicate using the WeChat app - which is like the Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp.Ken Crawford wrote:The problem in many Chinese factories including JinBao is employee retention. These workers aren't seasoned experts that have been or plan to be building instruments for 30 years. The guy building tubas at JinBao may have been assembling toasters six months ago. And a year from now he might be making pants. So when the QA guy gets fired, the next guy with the most experience probably replaced him, and that guy probably has a whole 12 months of experience with musical instrument production.
Most go to a tubas grave yard - yes there is a floor at factory with hundreds of rejected Wessex. A sad sightbort wrote:What happens to the rejected tubas (which are otherwise fine, except for scratching under the lacquer)?
The workers in China are also the highest paid - but there is no getting away from the fact that holding a tuba up to a buffing wheel is a hard job. The workers doing such look like they have come out of a coal mine.bloke wrote:In most factories, the polishing people are the highest-paid, because they could easily destroy a whole bunch of other craftmens' work ~OR~ they could (as is their job) prompt people (who are very impressed by "shiny") to buy the product.