Takamine

O
f the many visits to guitar-making
factories around the world that
Guitarist undertakes, our visit back in
2002 to Takamine’s Japanese base, to
celebrate the company’s 40th Anniversary,
was one of the most memorable. It wasn’t
just the lengthy travel, nor the hospitality,
but the surprise we felt upon fi nding not a
huge mass-production plant but just 90
employees crafting, in quite an old-school
fashion, around 400 guitars per week.
Based in the small town of Sakashita,
under the Takamine mountain that gives
the brand its name, the factory was quite
low-tech: a series of different workshops,
on different levels, and seemingly no
obvious production path. The necks were
made in another place entirely, likewise the
laminated backs and sides. Of course,
there was mechanisation, including the
default CNC routers, but these sat side-by-
side with traditional handcraft.
Fast-forward to today and everything has
changed as Takamine opened a brand
new, purpose-built facility on 2 September,
2005. According to Andy Schlosser, the
international sales director of Kaman
(Kaman, home of Ovation, has “signifi cant”
shares in Takamine and holds a direct role
in product development and international
marketing), Takamine made the move, “to
have more manufacturing effi ciency, to be
able to handle increased production and
satisfy increasingly strict Japanese
environmental controls.
“As you know, the old factory was built in
the sixties and it didn’t have
an effi cient production ‘fl ow’,
it had limited space and
would have needed huge
investments to satisfy the
increasingly stringent
environmental restrictions in
Japan. The new one was
built with all of this in mind,
and is one of the most
environmentally friendly
guitar factories in the world today.”
Located around fi ve miles from the
original factory the new facility is also pretty
modern. “It’s actually not that high-tech,”
says Schlosser, “although the production is
certainly more ‘linear’ now. Takamine did
buy new state-of-the-art laser cutting
machines to replace the original ones that
were among the fi rst used in the musical
instrument industry. Those machines are
used to produce the precision-cut inlays –
like the thunderstorm on the current 2007
LTD model or the elaborate American
Indian motif rosettes on the Santa Fe
models – and some other parts that
Takamine uses, that only a laser machine
can make.” Importantly, the fundamental
guitar-making process at Takamine hasn’t
changed: “The guitars are still very much
hand-crafted in the same way that they
have been for years.
“The necks are still made outside the
factory by a wood working factory that has
a joint-venture with Takamine and makes
necks only for Takamine. And when
Takamine needs laminated backs and
sides it gets them from an outside source
too. But there are not too many laminated
back and sides being used by Takamine
these days: laminated sides, yes, but few
sides and back.”
Takamine still employs a similar number
of staff (93) with around the same output
as the old facility – around
19,000 per year, near a
quarter of what Taylor
produces annually – but the
new factory has a lot more
production capacity. “It is
not planning on more
downmarket Japanese-made
models but, to the contrary,
is planning to expand the
upper end, taking advantage
of the factory improvements and new laser-
cutting machinery.”
And with our review reckoning that our
trio of Japanese-made Takamines are
among the very best we’ve played it seems
the factory move has been positive in terms
of the end product – not always the case
when brands relocate.
Yet Japan is just one part of the modern
Takamine picture: Schlosser states that,
“approximately 50 per cent” of all
Takamine-brand guitars are now made in
China. “Because of the relatively low prices
of those guitars, we are selling quite large
quantities, but our Japanese production is
obviously the cornerstone, and our Korean-
made instruments continue to be
important. We will see some future
migration of models from Korea to China
but we are at the same time developing
new models to be made in Korea since the
quality and specifi cations from Korea
continue to exceed what we can do in
China – it bridges the gap between our
less-expensive G-Series guitars from China
and the Japanese-made guitars.”
One contributing factor to the store
prices on Takamine’s lower-end guitars is
that, “approximately 50 per cent are
straight acoustics”. That’s a very different
ratio to the Japanese-made guitars where,
“approximately 90 per cent are electro-
acoustic”, and around half of those are
using the new CTP-1 Cool Tube preamp
that utilises a 12UA7 preamp valve. “We’ve
made great strides on the acoustic side,”
reckons Schlosser, “and are making some
wonderful straight acoustics, but electros
are what Takamine is really known for.”
In fact in the past three decades, while
Takamine’s pickup technology has barely
changed, the company has refi ned its
preamps on at least eight occasions: the
Cool Tube and Acoustic DSP onboard
digital preamp are good examples. “The
competition has forced us to keep pushing
the envelope,” says Mike Markure,
Takamine’s product manager. “With the
Acoustic DSP you get unrivalled versatility
and the Cool Tube brings that wonderful
warm tube sound to acoustic players. Both
are unique in the market.”
Does Takamine make these preamps?
“No, they are still outsourced to major
Japanese electronics manufacturers,” says
Schlosser, “who are much more adept at
manufacturing the preamps than Takamine
– we concentrate on guitar building. It’s a
great combination: the best electronics with
the best guitar manufacturing.”
TAKAMINE FACTORY REPORT
DECEMBER 2006 121
Expanding tradition
Change has been afoot at Takamine. Guitarist fi nds out more… Words Dave Burrluck
Below: bodies in
storage
Takamine’s shiny
new facility
Above: inside the
spray booth
Takamine outsources
manufacture of laminate
sides, but makes its own
on all-solid guitars
“We’ve made
great strides on
the acoustic side
of things, but
electros are what
Takamine is really
known for”
GIT284.rev_takamine 121 7/11/06 13:49:08