Hand work in 1980 Grecos

[Jlee]

I am curious as to how much of the construction was done by hand in 1980?

I was swapping pickups in my 1980 Greco SS-700 and the pickup routes appear to have been done by hand. Or at least the router was guided by hand.

I’ve seen the cavities of one other ‘80 SS-700 and they look very similar.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

How much was done "by hand" depends on what the factory was and if it had CNC or other automated machining equipment, but generally - against ubiquitous belief and apart from cutting outlines out of blanks - most things on electrics are still "handmade" with or without the help of jigs and powered tools.

It looks like they could have used a template (or just more care) for the cavity outlines but the indentations were made with a hand router. Checking some more images on Reverb they all seem to look like this.

That again brings up the question who made this guitar - AFAIK this is not exactly typical for Fujigen, there is one factory stuck in my memory for these coarsely hand-routed height screw lugs (that's one of the Kasuga factories) but this looks a bit different.