Musical Instrument Manufacturing: Luthiers to ABB Robots

A guitar or a piano is still mostly made by people, but the hardest physical jobs in musical instrument manufacturing are slowly going to machines. The clearest case is the buffing wheel, where a worker used to press a lacquered guitar body against a spinning cloth wheel for hours. This post follows instrument making from the luthier's bench and the first piano and guitar factories to CNC machined necks, then looks at Taylor Guitars, where ABB robots spray and buff guitars, and at Fender's 2026 push on quality. It ends with what robots might take on next and what will stay by hand.

Workers at the buffing wheels in the Taylor Guitars factory in El Cajon, California, 2009. Photo: Marcin Wichary / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

From the luthier's bench to the first instrument factories

For most of history an instrument came from one workshop and a few pairs of hands. Antonio Stradivari, who died in Cremona in 1737, built his violins in his own workshop, and many violin makers still work alone or in small shops, carving tops and backs by hand and testing them by tapping and listening. Guitar making followed the same pattern. Christian Frederick Martin left the guild system in Germany, opened a shop in New York City in 1833 and moved to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, by 1839, where C. F. Martin & Company still builds guitars.

Luthier Franz Übelhör in Linz tests the sound of an unfinished violin top, 2023. Photo: Kritzolina / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pianos were the first instruments built in real factories, because a piano has thousands of parts and a heavy iron frame. Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg, later Henry E. Steinway, founded Steinway & Sons in 1853 in a small loft at 85 Varick Street in Manhattan, and the company has since been granted 139 patents in piano making. In 1880 his son Theodore opened a second Steinway factory in Hamburg. Large piano works split the job into stations, so that one row of workers fitted keys and another strung or regulated the action, but almost every step still needed skilled hands.

A row of key fitters at work in the Cable Piano Company factory, around 1918. Photo: US National Archives via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The electric guitar brought factory thinking to guitars. Leo Fender's Broadcaster, renamed the Telecaster in 1951, went on sale in the autumn of 1950, and with the single pickup Esquire it was the first guitar of its kind made on a substantial scale. Its bolt-on neck and flat body were easy to machine and assemble. Later, computer controlled routers took over shaping. By 2017 Taylor Guitars in El Cajon, California, was carving necks from wood blocks on CNC machines more than 20 years old, and since the early 2000s an ABB IRB 2400 robot has moved guitar parts under a fixed electrostatic sprayer to apply the urethane finish.

Leo Fender's portrait and early Fender guitars, including the first Esquire prototype of 1949, at the Fender factory museum in Corona, California. Photo: Mr. Littlehand / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Robot buffing at Taylor and Fender's quality push

Buffing was one of the first jobs Taylor automated, because holding a guitar against a high speed buffer caused serious ergonomic problems for workers. In 2017 the company upgraded its robotic buffing cell, built with integrator Pinnacle Technologies, to an ABB IRB 4600 robot with Rockwell Automation controls that adjust the buffing wheels to keep the pressure right. The old system handled 80 to 85 percent of the buffing and the new one 95 to 98 percent, with final finishing still done by hand. Engineers refined each program from the guitar's CAD model, and proving out a new guitar type took about a week. The older buffing robot was moved to Taylor's factory in Tecate, Mexico.

A belt wet sander used on guitar parts at the Taylor Guitars factory, 2009. Photo: Marcin Wichary / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

At Fender, quality is now the talking point. In September 2026 Fender CEO Bud Cole said in an interview that he had heard player complaints that quality control had slipped since production rose during the pandemic. Fender described an internal push called Fender 360, which puts craftsmanship ahead of manufacturing yield from raw materials to final inspection at its factories in Corona, California, and Ensenada, Mexico. Fender has not said whether robots are part of that plan. Taylor's experience suggests where they help most: in repetitive finishing steps where consistency matters and people tire.

A guitar back with gear shaped inlays, seen at the C. F. Martin guitar factory in 2024. Photo: Henrysz / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

ABB's part in this industry, as far as public sources show, is the Taylor cells, and we found no published case of ABB robots in a piano factory. Sanding and buffing guitars are surface finishing jobs, much like the work ABB arms do on wood and metal parts in other plants, as our post on robotic woodworking sanding shows. ABB's force control software keeps a constant pressure between tool and surface. Robot paths can be generated from CAD and checked in RobotStudio, which could shorten the week it took to prove out each new body shape.

Two ABB IRB 4600 robots around a Porsche 911 at the Porsche Museum, 2017, the robot model Taylor Guitars uses for buffing. Photo: ABB

Where instrument factories go next

The next jobs for robots are likely the ones Taylor's engineers called ergonomic problems: sanding bodies between finish coats, buffing, and moving heavy piano cases and lids between stations. Collaborative arms such as ABB's GoFa CRB 15000 could sand smaller parts next to a worker without a fence, and larger arms like the IRB 4600 can hold a whole guitar against a wheel. For pianos, polishing large lacquered lids and rims is a possibility, though we found no maker that says it does this with robots yet.

An ABB robot with a flat finishing head over a wooden part in a cell with dust extraction. Photo: ABB

Wood is the main obstacle. Every board bends, grains and finishes differently, and Taylor's robotics engineer told Automation World in 2017 that automating the hand inspection of incoming wood would be "a nightmare". Glued parts also need time to rest before the next step, so speeding the line can hurt the instrument. Skills are another problem: Taylor pointed to a wave of coming retirements among long serving staff, and its robotics engineer said experienced people are hard to find and slow to bring up to speed. A robot can buff a body, but a person still has to choose the wood and voice the finished instrument.

A GoFa cobot sands a curved wooden panel with a Mirka sander inside ABB's OmniVance finishing cell. Photo: ABB

For players at home, more automation should mean more consistent finishes on mid priced guitars, which is what Fender's customers were asking for. Hand work will stay where it matters most to the sound and the look, such as bracing, setup and custom inlay. Small luthiers will likely keep their benches and buffers, while large factories in California and Mexico add robots to the dusty end of the line. Even at Taylor, the last polish after the robot is still done by hand.

Visitors try a guitar in the museum at the C. F. Martin factory in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, 2012. Photo: Joseph Brent / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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