EMG factory tour

[David King]

Check out all the fun, in-house stuff emg has to deal with.
http://www.premierguitar.com/Video/2...ur_Part_1.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cdt9...layer_embedded

[David Schwab]

Check out all the fun, in-house stuff emg has to deal with.
http://www.premierguitar.com/Video/2...ur_Part_1.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cdt9...layer_embedded

I just watched this last night (and part II). I had no idea they have their own injection molding machine! It's funny they showed each bobbin, what gauge wire, and how many turns! So the 40-J is 43 AWG and 4500 turns on each deck.

I was quite impressed though, I had assumed they farmed everything out to Asia.

[RedHouse]

That's some "tone" discriminating QC procedure they use.

(bang it with a screwdriver, and hover a tuning fork over it)

[Possum]

...

Looks like they've come a long way since I had them as a client. The first video was done in the machine shop they bought that was next door when I was there. They didn't wind their own coils or make their own covers back then, it all came from Korea and they would go to Korea twice a year to kick some ass.

Probably the guys I knew don't work there anymore I bet. Its interesting they are still using the ProSeries box I designed for them back then (in the 80's), since I parted ways with them I don't think they ever hooked up with a pro designer again. They thought they could buy a new Mac to replace me, hired a guy who painted signs to run it and do the kind of top level stuff I did for them, but they quickly found out that didn't work. That guy turned out some horrible looking ads that probably decreased their sales, they were so amateur looking. As far as I can tell they don't actively run consumer ads even now like 20 years later. Big mistake in my opinion but I think they mostly do OEM stuff anyway, still if you make a product you need a public "face" in print so people know what you're doing. They were an interesting client to have, and I liked the work since it was music related, who'd a thunk I'd be making pickups all these years later :-)
You can dig around my archived portfolio site and find alot of the work I did for EMG, Gibson, Shrapnel as well as many other clients I had before the big internet business crash killed our business (wife and I):
http://www.sdpickups.com/web

[David Schwab]

They recently came up with a new logo, both for the catalogs and the pickups. They just redid the whole website too, so I guess they have new designers working for them. But you are right, they hadn't updated any of that stuff for a long time.

They run ads in the guitar magazines all the time.

[belwar]

They recently came up with a new logo, both for the catalogs and the pickups. They just redid the whole website too, so I guess they have new designers working for them. But you are right, they hadn't updated any of that stuff for a long time.

They run ads in the guitar magazines all the time.

This didnt have to update thier stuff as there wasnt really substansial competition... Seymour Duncans "Blackouts" gotta be cutting into thier business. The blackouts are pretty damn cool too.

[Possum]

...

Where? I buy the major mags frequently and never seen an EMG ad, I do see some of their distributors promoting their products once in awhile but no corporate ads. Their original logo was horrible, I've seen worse but had to deal with it, it was outdated when it was done in the 80s by their original designer. I did see their website had been redone and was shocked. One of my vivid memories and quotes from Rob Turner was "the internet will never be anything other than a toy." Meanwhile I was already using AOL to email ad and design comps to him, we got into this stuff really early on, send stuff over dial up and even uploading ten megabytes files to service bureaus, took ALL NITE to send a file that big :-) Graphic designers were the pioneers of internet useage back then, Apple built their business by selling to designers more than anyone else really. My biggest gripe among pickup makers and design is Seymour Duncan, their ads are so outdated, they are still using typefaces that were popular in the 70's and they were ugly back then :-)

[David Schwab]

You know, you are absolutely correct! I picked up a Guitar Player magazine, and not a single EMG ad. I guess I'm so used to seeing them in the ads for basses and that just seemed like one of their ads!

Oh yeah, I remember those days. Sending large files over dial up! Then where I worked, they got a T-1 line and their own web server. I got spoiled surfing the web on an SGI Indigo, then I'd go home and couldn't get the same sites on AOL!

Seems like a hundred years ago.

[Possum]

...

Yeah, even before that my whole family were using commodore's and a phone service to do email on a black and white screen. I had an Amiga right before Apple came out with the Plus. Its a wonder the Amiga didn't become what Apple is today, their computer was years ahead of its time, I was doing color scans and art layouts on it. The Plus though had postscript fonts and the first laser printer, that little beast wiped out the whole typesetting industry in little over a year. But I remember back in the mid-70's in Florida there was a typesetter who bought a multi-million dollar digital typesetting system, you can italicize any font, bold it, do all kinds of stuff and art directors loved it, but the stuff was crude by today's standards, you could see the bitmaps, modern laser printers print better type than that stuff. A $500 Mac does what that thing did for millions of dollars :-) I'm giving my age away here, LOL...

[David Schwab]

Yeah, even before that my whole family were using commodore's and a phone service to do email on a black and white screen. I had an Amiga right before Apple came out with the Plus. Its a wonder the Amiga didn't become what Apple is today, their computer was years ahead of its time, I was doing color scans and art layouts on it.

It's an interesting story, Jack Tramiel wanted Commodore to be the number one personal computer, started a big price war, and put several other makers (like TI) out of the computer business, wiped out its own savings, and then resigned when the board of directors complained.

Then he started a new company and bought the consumer division of Atari. Commodore bought Amiga Corporation, and Tramiel came out with the Atari ST. The ST was $800 and the Amiga was $1295. The ST had built in MIDI ports too. By the late 80's IBM and Apple had most of the market share and Commodore went bankrupt.

I think the Amiga was too ahead of its time.

Another cool computer/OS was the BeBox and Be OS. I ran Be OS on my Mac clone, along with Linux and Mac system 7. I thought Be OS was pretty cool. It almost became the next Mac OS, but of course that honor went to NeXT/OPEN STEP, which was also very cool. Be OS used to boot in about 10 seconds! I have no idea how they did that! Remember Mac clones? I still have my PowerComputing PowerCenter 132.

The Plus though had postscript fonts and the first laser printer, that little beast wiped out the whole typesetting industry in little over a year. But I remember back in the mid-70's in Florida there was a typesetter who bought a multi-million dollar digital typesetting system, you can italicize any font, bold it, do all kinds of stuff and art directors loved it, but the stuff was crude by today's standards, you could see the bitmaps, modern laser printers print better type than that stuff. A $500 Mac does what that thing did for millions of dollars :-) I'm giving my age away here, LOL...

I got into the printing/graphics field about 1980 after getting laid off from ITT. As you remember everything was type set and you had to paste it all up. I was an offset stripper... most people have no idea what that is anymore!

I remember when the Macs and Aldus Pagemaker started taking over. Shops that had a room full of strippers now had a handfull. By '90 I was the lone stripper in a mostly digital shop. So I started hanging out in the Mac department! That was the place that also had a lot of SGI computers and Sun servers. By '94 I had gotten my own Mac (Powermac 6100!) and learned Quark, Pagemaker, Photoshop, etc. It was a good thing too, because that whole field went through big changes. Then I got laid off and was out of work for a couple of years, but I was able to freelance on the Mac.

I'm out of that field now. It's dying.

I still have a Mac Plus and a Mac Portable. I might still have a Centris 600 somewhere too.

[Possum]

...

I don't remember the Be OS. Remember as a graphic designer we were heavily Mac based from the beginning. A few of my friends didn't make the jump and pretty much became poverty stricken for lack of knowledge and computers. Most of them eventually made the jump. Yeah stripping is probably a lost art at this point. I remember in the last big recession I abandoned my condo and my stat camera, couldn't give that thing away, it used to be my pride and joy and I could do things on that camera my buddies didn't believe :-) Technology is not always a good thing though, the art of typography went to shit, people have no idea what word spacing and letter spacing is anymore, they let the computer figure it out and often it looks like shit. I have alot of old design annuals from back in the late 70's and typography was high art, amazing hand lettered logos etc. that no one even comes close to these days. There was a golden age of graphic design with Herb Lubalin and PUshpin Studios etc. Somewhere I have a personal letter from Seymour Schwast who was my favorite commercial illustrator, his stuff was everywhere in print advertising, U&LC was in every designer's design reference stack and we waited anxiously for each issue to come out. I worked for a small design studio once and they had two young designers who had worked at Herb's studio, Herb was a drinker and they would all go out at lunch and have 4 or 5 drinks. These guys were still doing that, so I tagged along one time and tried to keep up with them, coming back after lunch all lit up like a Xmas tree. Too much for me, I ate someplace else besides a bar after that. Buncha prima donnas anyway, but they knew their stuff. What a life, I'm glad I'm not in that world anymore, plastic city...

[David Schwab]

Yes, Pushpin Studios! Good stuff!

Typography is crap these days... All this auto justification and hyphenation. Even the grammar is bad. I read stuff in guitar magazines and think "that's not right!". Oh well.

A lot of web design stinks too. Since the introduction of CSS, it's all coders and not artists doing web pages. And they are using CSS for stupid things, like making boxes on the page. So everything looks the same. And those "spry" menus drive me nuts! You mouse over, and then over to the next column, and then... oops... you have to start over again!

I use them on my site, but I added some delay....

OK... back to pickups!

[kevinT]

I'm impressed. EMG has themselves together. It's alway great to own your own machines (injection molder). The parts are there when you need them and are alway accurate.

Their quality control is awesome. Easy to find who screwed up with their coding system.

[Possum]

...

Yeah they run a tight ship, but I wouldn't want to work there, their system of finding out who messed up on a single pickup seems a little fascist to me. When I was there most of their employees were Mexican Americans, I didn't see much of that in the video except for that one manager. I'm guessing alot of what was done is now automated. They outfitted me with set for my Ibanez strat and two tone control circuits. I really liked it for about a year then one day picked up a friend's stock strat with noisy single coils and played it. Wow, what a shock, they killed compared to the EMG's so I took the EMG's out and never went back :-)

[soundmasterg]

Yeah they run a tight ship, but I wouldn't want to work there, their system of finding out who messed up on a single pickup seems a little fascist to me. When I was there most of their employees were Mexican Americans, I didn't see much of that in the video except for that one manager. I'm guessing alot of what was done is now automated. They outfitted me with set for my Ibanez strat and two tone control circuits. I really liked it for about a year then one day picked up a friend's stock strat with noisy single coils and played it. Wow, what a shock, they killed compared to the EMG's so I took the EMG's out and never went back :-)

You once owned an Ibanez? I don't believe it!...haha

Greg