News article about new Custom Shop manager

A buddy pointed me to this article from SPIN (via Yahoo) last week about James Gay, the new manager of the G&L Custom Shop. Good, informative read. I think he posted here briefly toward the end of last year.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/g-l-guitars-bringing-leo-220316709.html

Here's James' post in the Introductions forum in December:
https://www.guitarsbyleo.com/FORUM/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=18025

Great article, thanks for sharing. James sounds like the right guy at the right time! Maybe he will pop in here from time to time to show off some custom shop pieces and give insights into his design ideas.

Agree, the timing is right.
G&L has been slipping of late in the rankings of some major outlets. Sweetwater's latest rankings did not even list a G&L in their top guitars of 2024 above $1000.

Sweetwater's latest rankings did not even list a G&L in their top guitars of 2024 above $1000.

They (Schveetwater) don't know NUTHIN' if that's the case...

Hey folks, James here.

I'm actively working to try and fix that ranking on Sweetwater's site on a weekly basis, as well as shore up our QC across the board.
It's going to be a slow work-in-progress kind of thing, unfortunately we can't correct every issue we face all at once. But I'm happy to say that I feel a lot better about the guitars we're making, both in Custom and Standard Production, now as opposed to when I first joined the team in December.

We don't currently have an actual production supervisor, I'm filling that role as well as keeping Custom flowing for the time being.

We're slowly implementing changes to try and get our methods up to par with everyone else in the Bolt-On Electric Guitar industry. As well as just modernizing methods a little bit while still keeping Leo's vision in the forefront.

I'm anticipating this year being a really good one for us as we roll through it. The whole facility is cleaner now than it has been in years. We're more organized. We're starting to bring more guys on to the team and grow a little bit again. And everyone is doing a really good job getting things buttoned up.
I implemented QC inspections at the end of each shift for our woodshop, and what started out as a 10-20% pass rate on the first go has now turned into a 90-95% pass rate with very little daily re-work.

My guys are doing a great job and making some really cool guitars in the process.

I'm also working on getting our Plek Machine up and running again.

All in all, December was fairly eye opening as to what we needed to fix, but the McLarens are committed to really getting everything improved and have allowed me the freedom to see that through.

James, thanks a bunch for taking the time to post. I'm sorry to learn that there were some issues, but kudos to you, the team, and the McLarens for changing things for the better.