An interview with G&L's new Custom Shop boss and an unofficial supervisor of all production both US and Import.
Here's what he had to say about the state of G&L when he arrived. No surprises here considering whose been in charge.
SPIN: What brought you to the G&L Custom Shop?
James Gay: [McLaren] and I just hit it off really well. I came up here to interview, and we spent the whole day just talking and showing me around. It was so chaotic that I knew things could only go up. Things here have been in disarray and chaos for a couple years, but these types of guitars and basses are exactly what I’m the best at building. It’s right in my comfort zone, and I feel like I do some really good design work with stuff like this. I started here [in the beginning of December], and I’ve been diving into all of it since. The first month was just cleaning and organizing because it was just too chaotic to function, but now we’re actually starting to get orders pushed through. We’re also getting things cleaned up [in the factory]. I was brought in to be the Custom Shop Manager, but I’m currently supervising the overall production. I’m helping with quality control throughout the entire facility — even on the import stuff from Indonesia — and I’m helping those guys learn repair techniques that they didn’t know to turn potentially B-stock items into A-stock and “sellable as new” merchandise. Some of the guys in the facility are really good at what they do, but they’ve also been doing it the same way for a really long time — and things have evolved a little bit.
