Posted by Jason Mendelson on 8/17/2012
I had the pleasure of visiting the D'Addario factory in Farmingdale, New York and got a first hand look at the manufacturing of all their strings, American Stage instrument cables, and much more! I was blown away by the efficiency on the factory floor by both the machinery they custom build and the staff that runs it.
When entering the main building you encounter a very friendly environment. Every employee had a smile on their face and was excited about what ever they were doing! Very nice atmosphere to be around. Everything is in house from website design, packaging design, customer support, sales support staff, and even product testing.
Before the strings can be made, every spool of wire is tested to break within tolerances for each specific gauge of core or wrap wire. If the wire does not meet their strict specifications then back to the supplier it goes!
D'Addario has custom made their string winding machines to make the most out of every foot of floor space in their factory. One string machine can wind up to 3 strings at once or complete 6 stages of the string winding process of specialty strings like flatwounds. They can wind a string with 3 wrappings on the core without ever releasing the tension from the string! This is not only efficient but it allows for consistent strings to be produced. The core wire is placed onto the machine and the first winding is started by hand, the second winding follows automatically, and then the third for some bass strings. Each machine keeps every wrap winding within a specific tension tolerance to ensure consistent strings from set to set. This is what makes every D'Addario string set consistent in quality every time.
The above photo is of the D'Addario factory in Farmingdale, New York.
Above is a wide shot of the factory floor. Each of these machines are winding strings!
Pictured here are two stage machines that wrap two layers over the core. Each of these machines does one string at a time.
Lots of stuff going on in this picture! This worker is making Bass strings. He goes between 8 different machines loading a core wire on each one and going to the next. Some of these machines will wind two strings at once and some of them 3! Maximum efficiency here!
Here workers sit and coil up strings to be packaged. Each person coils up a single gauge (one does a .045, next does a .065 etc etc)... They then drop them on the conveyer belt for the person at the end who grabs one of each and puts them in the D'Addario sealed pouch. Then the pouch is added by another worker into the packaging and the set is complete! The sets of strings are completed in the same room from winding, to packaging!
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