Re: [Harp-L] Harps made in China

["G. E. Popenoe" <gpopenoe@xxxxxxxxx>]

This may sound a bit pessimistic but businesses all over the world are often
run the way you describe and construct sophisticated PR damage control
programs to compensate for the occasional screw up or life(s) lost. China
doesn't have the corner on this behavior.

I've never been overly thrilled with the quality of my Hohner harmonicas. I
look longingly at my friends who buy beautiful guitars that play great right
off the wall display. Yes they tweak them a bit sometimes, but the average
out of the box quality is much higher for many other instruments than ours.

I guess that's great for all of you custom harp builders.

BTW. I've lost faith in believing that I have "bought American." China is
the manufacturer for the world right now. Even high end designer clothes are
largely fabricated in China and then shipped to Italy for final assembly
just so the garment can say, "Made in Italy." The automotive industry is
very global now. That Ford F150 mentioned previously in this thread has
components fabricated from Ford's world wide manufacturing base. You are not
buying 100% American. Your just buying a Ford.

Oh yeah...shhhh! The new Chevy Malibu is based upon German engineering from
GM's Opel subsidiary.

I'm at the point right now that I really have to look at each instrument for
it's merits. If I can get a better Hohner Super 64 that is made in China but
to Hohner's standards of sound and performance, so be it. I just want to
make sure Hohner is doing their due diligence to make sure that they are
using a quality fabricator who treats their workers well and uses
environmentally sustainable practices.

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 9:01 AM, Ken Deifik <kenneth.d@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
> Those of us that are old enough can recall the day that the term "Made in
> > Japan" was synonymous with cheap goods.
> >
>
> I did some websites for a company that marketed a well-designed air
> purifier that was manufactured in China, and designed there, too.
>
> They started getting an unusual number of returns, so they looked into the
> guts of one of the returns and discovered that though the design really was
> good the manufacturing process was amazingly shoddy.  We wrote up a long
> list of problems for the distibutor to discuss with the Chinese factory.  My
> guys then started doing 15 minutes of quality assurance on each purifier,
> and developing a set of repairs when they ran into one of the manufacturing
> glitsches.
>
> The Chinese factory didn't freak out, they clearly felt that discovering
> what they could not get away with out in the field and fixing those problems
> was a natural part of their cycle, and over time they improved the thing to
> where, after a year or two, quality assurance was no longer necessary here.
>  There were a bunch of issues, and they were all dealt with over time.
>
> This is to say that it's possible that Chinese factories that make goods
> for export may very well try to get away with shoddy manufacturing practices
> (including using unacceptible materials) until they find out which problems
> are so obvious that they might affect sales, and then they fix those
> problems.  That would indicate that we should as a group figure out how to
> test for lead and other nasties in our harps, and if any are found (whether
> we know they're made in China or not) work as a group of 1600 harp players
> to let the distribs of any offending products know that we would like for
> them to make sure that the problem is fixed, wherever they're manufactured.
>  Not being a SPAH member I don't know if it's my place to suggest this, but
> SPAH might be the right body to pilot these kinds of tests.
>
> I think it is all a matter of business for Chinese manufacturers.
>  Whatever they can get away with, they'll get away with.  Whatever they
> can't get away with, they'll fix.
>
>
> K
>
> _______________________________________________
> Harp-L is sponsored by SPAH, http://www.spah.org
> Harp-L@xxxxxxxxxx
> http://harp-l.org/mailman/listinfo/harp-l
>