OLD ASS PICS

plz continue Tony.

also why did you not use cnc machines?

Regarding CNCs', They were never quicker than what we could do. These days if you see a small firm with a cnc router it's usually one machine. First of all, back in the day, these machines were newer tech. than they are today, and were very expensive. The feed speed was slower than doing it by hand, plus the fact that I started out with 4 overhead routers with 4 people to work them. There's no single machine that would have matched that output.
The secret in production is to feed the work through so that it doesn't bottleneck at your slowest operation. Work must flow. Sometimes we had to make daily deliveries to Turbo sound. Before I started to paint them, (I later painted a lot of stuff for them as they were over capacity with unpainted cabs),their lorry would turn up and the sanding department would be sanding the last box as we loaded. This would be repeated the next day. This also helped with the storage problem.
Regarding accuracy and repeatability without a cnc. Our Main router jigs were bakerlite, and would withstand 1000's of operations in use.
Because of my own methods, I have never thought that a cnc machine was relative in our business. The numbers are too small. It would also help if the machine cut and assembled the cabs as well. As it is, If you had a small business with a cnc youwould use the machine and it would do a good router job, but would probably stand idle while everything else was being done. I know that you could cut your panels on the same machine which would help a little, but in my case I had to have my man Arthur cutting for 10 hours a day 6 days a week, while other work wass being done.
I used to paint between 30 and 50 cabs a day depending on size. These were moved around on trolleys of which there was 70. We had a small trolly park and they were stacked vertically.
I hope you now understand my veiw on cnc's. absolutley great machines, but not condusive to small batch production.

Please continue tony fasinating stuff. A great insite in to how we got to where we are now.

what year/s was doing the turbo stuff ?

and how many cabinet makers did turbo contract out too, as i seem to remember being told that logic systems also did stuff for them.

Rich, In the beginning, (sounds like genesis doesn't it) CP cases were the first ones to do Turbo cabs. I'm talking TMS3's onwards. I beleive that this was the first cab idea from what was then Turbosound Sales, which was run by Alan Wick and another guy whose name escapes me at the moment.( It might be Mike Hardy) Anyway we stepped in in the early stages and took over production. We were responsible for all the TMS models, and later the TSE models and so on. It was later that they decided to get other people involved because they were nervous about all of their production being under one roof, For instance, if we had had a bad fire, where would it have left them. That, in a nutshell became the reason for other people to get involved.

Did you make Early TMS1's tony?

Very interesting Tony....Didnt know you had done as much for turbo and martin.Was there any competition for this business at the time?Id imagne it was hard to keep up with demand....

Dave, we made the first ones and the hundreds that followed. The first mids were moulded in square boxes befor the horns were moulded conventionaly.

Flano, the uk scene was at it's peak when we were building Turbo. I kept pace by increasing staff levels when needed.

you probably made mine then! its probably why its made so well.....