Pre NAMM

The yearly migration of cold Easterners and Northerners to Anaheim, California for the Winter NAMM show is in full flight.

The D'Addario team spent the day getting the booth ready for Thursday's opening.

The Anaheim Convention Center

Keith Carlock image above the Evans displays

American Stage cable now in Straight-to-Right Angle and Right Angle to Right Angle

Balanced Tension EXL110 set...new string...new logo...new packaging!

D’Addario string sets now coiled in pairs. Why?

Over the last five years we have implemented Toyota’s Lean manufacturing systems at D’Addario. Lean is a culture of continuous improvement that was perfected by the Toyota company and is utilized by hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world. It has helped us improve our quality, improve our customer service and control our manufacturing costs.

In fact the Lean transformation has been so effective in teaching us world class manufacturing principles that we have been able to apply the disciplines we have learned to every area of our business; from the harvesting of cane in France and Argentina for our Rico Reeds, to developing new products, to the assembly of Planet Waves Pro-Winders in New York.  An example of the success of “Lean” at D’Addario is the fact that we have been able to re-shore 50% of our Planet Waves products that were previously being imported from Asia.

In our string production area we have made countless manufacturing improvements. You may not be aware, but D’Addario produces nearly 800,000 strings a day at our Farmingdale New York headquarters. We are proud that even though our volume exceeds our nearest competitor by a factor of two or three times, our quality control and manufacturing consistency has continued to improve and is the benchmark for the industry. We are also proud that all our strings, drumheads, reeds, drumsticks and many of our accessories are Made in the USA. In fact 95% of the products we design and produce are American made.

Recently I visited the Woodstock Luthiers Festival where 98% of the guitars on display were strung with D’Addario strings. When talking to each luthier they all told a common story. When they set out to build their guitars they use D’Addario strings exclusively, because of the quality of their sound and their consistency set after set. D’Addario strings are the reliable reference they use as they build and ultimately set up their instruments.

Part of the DNA of the D’Addario family and company is that “We are the most difficult people to please, not our customers ”. We also have a deep respect for our planet and try our best to minimize our impact on our environment.

In the late 1980’s we began to develop and pioneer the environmental packaging we use today. It was a major breakthrough as it eliminated the individual envelopes that were required to identify each of the six strings in a set. It created other issues in production that led to the creation of a conveyor system where operators coiling strings for each note in the set would drop their string on the conveyor as it kept indexing. The conveyor would then deliver complete six string sets to the end of the line where they were bagged in a corrosion barrier bag and then inserted in a recycled paper outer envelope. Two pieces of packaging replaced eight; a 75% reduction in packaging material being discarded.

This system eliminated the need to cut down tens of thousands of tress and also improved productivity. It also resulted in a significant price decrease in the early 1990’s and has helped us to hold future price increases on our string sets to a minimum.

It is our culture to respond to every single comment, question or suggestion we receive from our end users, in a timely and respectful manner. We also carefully monitor any quality concerns regarding our products and take them very, very seriously. After all it is our culture to maintain the reputation as the highest quality producer of music strings and accessories.

While we only receive a handful of complaints each week historically the most common complaint has been the occasional incomplete set. A user may open a package and find he is missing a string. On our packaging conveyors it was difficult for the person packaging the sets at the end of the line to identify if all six strings were present.

We tested sophisticated check weighing systems to flag incomplete or incorrect sets, but none could detect the many combinations of errors that could occur during the process. About two years ago, someone had the revelation that if we coiled the strings in pairs it would be much easier for the operators at the end of the lines to detect if they had a complete set. Visually it is easier to see three neatly coiled pairs of strings than six randomly mixed individually coiled strings.

We set up one line to package sets this way for over a year. Tens of thousands of sets were put into the market place and we found that this new system virtually eliminated the issue of incomplete sets.

While have seen a handful of complaints from customers in regards to the new coiling system, we trust that the reassurance that all 6 strings will be in the package when you need them will outweigh the negatives.

I would also like to point out that D’Addario offers a complete range of single strings that are neatly packaged in individual envelopes; electric singles here & acoustic singles here.

I hope the information above helps you understand the reasons why your favorite string sets are now coiled in pairs and not individually. If you have any questions on this topic or any other please direct them to customer.service@daddario.com or comment on this blog and we will for sure get back to you.

Thanks for listening.

Yours Truly,

Jim D’Addario

 New winding

Old winding

Congrats to D'Addario Artists 2013 Grammy Nominees

We are very proud to have 2013 Grammy Nominated artists playing D'Addario and Planet Waves products!

• Bruce Springsteen – Best Rock Performance & Best Rock Song & Best Rock Album (D'Addario)
• Anthrax – Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance – Scott Ian, Frank Bello, Rob Caggiano (D'Addario)
• Megadeth - Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance - Chris Broderick & David Ellefson (Planet Waves)
• Zac Brown Band - Best Country Album (D'Addario)
• Pat Metheny – Best Jazz Instrumental Album – (D'Addario/Planet Waves)
• Steep Canyon Rangers – Best Bluegrass Album - (D'Addario)
• Luther Dickinson - Best Folk Album - (Planet Waves)
• Janis Ian -  Best Spoken Word Album - (D'Addario/Planet Waves)
• Hunter Hayes – Best New Artist, Best Country Song - (D'Addario)
• Jamey Johnson – Best Country Song - (D'Addario)
• Alison Krauss – Best Country Duo/Group Performance – (D'Addario/Planet Waves)
• Blake Shelton - Best Country Solo Performance – (D'Addario/Planet Waves)
• Larry Carlton - Best Pop Instrumental Album - (D'Addario)
• Little Big Town - Best Country Duo/Group Performance - (D'Addario)
• The Time Jumpers - Best Country Album, Best Vocal Performance by a Duo/Group - (D'Addario)
• Ronnie Dunn - Best Country Song, Best Country Solo Performance - (D'Addario)
• Blake Shelton- Best Country Solo Performance – (D'Addario/Planet Waves)
• Carolina Chocolate Drops- Best Folk Album - (D'Addario)
• Steep Canyon Rangers- Best Bluegrass Album - (D'Addario)
• Jack White – Best Album of the Year, Best Rock Album (Lillie Mae Rische on fiddle) - B
• Alabama Shakes – Best New Artist & Best Rock Performance - (D'Addario)
• Paul McCartney – Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album - guitarist Brian Ray - (D'Addario)
• Casting Crowns – Best Gospel/Contemporary Christian Music, Best Contemporary Christian Album – (D'Addario/Planet Waves)
• Israel Houghton – Best Contemporary Christian Music Song – (D'Addario/Planet Waves)

Fuzzy Dice, Leopard Skin and Jingle Bells

Mrs. Santa's Got A Brand New Bag

New York-based D’Addario Artist Relations guy Hugh Gilmartin visited the Brian Setzer Orchestra recently and sent back these photos:

Leopard Skin... FTW!

'59 At Rest

Guitar Tech Tyler Sweet

Tell Tchaikovsky The News!

SantaBilly's Set List

Ace of Bassman

Fine '59

      Jingle Bells Live

Jim D'Addario & Rick Drumm on the Panel for Manhattan School of Music Event

D'Addario CEO Jim D'Addario and D'Addario President Rick Drum were among the distinguished guests and top music industry executives to sit on a panel recently for a master class in music entrepreneurship.  The event was set up by the Center for Music Entrepreneurship at the Manhattan School of Music as part of the Setting the Stage Workshop Series. Both Jim and Rick participated by sharing their experiences and successes in the music industry. Topics discussed included how to succeed as a music entrepreneur, how to best plan an artistic business venture and how artists and music product companies can best work together.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo Tours D’Addario’s Farmingdale Headquarters

On Friday, October 5, 2012, Governor Cuomo, along with his Strategic Implementation Assessment Team and the Long Island Regional Economic Development Council, toured D’Addario’s music string factory and headquarters.  Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano, as well as other elected officials were part of the ensemble that toured D’Addario’s engineering, machine building and string production areas.

The Governor toured Cold Spring Harbor Labs, OCI Pharmaceuticals and D’Addario. All three sites were awarded New York State economic development assistance as part of the Long Island Regional Economic Development Council’s strategic plan.  The Governor was impressed with the results achieved at all three locations.

While many of the LIREDC’s programs support advanced technology programs, the Governor and his team were relieved to see the success D’Addario has achieved producing high-volume, low-priced consumer products on Long Island.  “D’Addario’s culture for the last four decades has been to continually re-invest in technological advances that enable us to compete on a global basis with our competitors.  Our packaged strings are sold in over 120 countries and our bulk strings are installed on hundreds of thousands of guitars and violin family instruments every month. Factories from China to Eastern Europe to South America rely on our strings for the instruments they produce,” stated Jim D’Addario, CEO of D’Addario.

The Governor saw firsthand how D’Addario’s engineers and technicians design and build the world’s most advanced equipment. “D’Addario has over 1,100 employees worldwide and 800 on Long Island. Our team of 25 plus engineers is constantly advancing the art of string, reed, drumhead and drumstick manufacturing. Each time we add an engineer, you can be sure it will result in scores of new jobs in our factories,” stated Jim D’Addario.  It’s all music to the Governor’s ears.

US Representative Steve Israel Visits the D'Addario Factory

US Congressman Steve Israel paid to our factory this week in Farmingdale, Long Island, NY. Steve has been very proactive supporting manufacturing on Long Island. He created a manufacturing task force that I co-chair.  The committee came up with a Bring the Jobs Back Home bill that helps small businesses finance the capital expense of retooling to bring the manufacture of products being made off shore back to America.

D'Addario has always made all its strings, reeds and drumheads in America.  Three years ago, during the recession, we created the Make it Here program where we began to retool some of the Planet Waves accessories that were made off shore back here to America. This program has been very effective, and although D'Addario did not receive any government aid for these projects, they were used as an example for the Congressman to create a program to help other companies accomplish what we have accomplished on our own. Four years ago 87% of our products were made in USA, now 95% are. We now produce cables, pro winders, peg winders, humidifiers, sound hole covers, guitar rests, guitar straps and all our picks in the USA.

- Jim D'Addario, CEO D'Addario & Company