Auden incorporate the latest incarnation of Gordon Smith electric guitars. Auden acoustic guitars, and will shortly also be producing drums, having taken over the Cambridge Drum Company.
Dave B had taken one of his Gordon Smiths to Gordon Smith (before it was acquired by Auden) eight years before; in theory so they could fit a Graph tech Ghost piezo saddle MIDI system in it. This never happened. So we set out on a journey of recovery.
As normally happens, the course of true guitar love never runs smoothly, and the only chap who knew Dave was coming was ill, so we were a bit of a surprise to the few staff who were in.
Nevertheless, we were warmly welcomed, given tea and a near two-hour tour of the premises. Which was nice. As it was two days before Christmas, there were only about 1/3 the normal number of staff in the works, which made the visit far more relaxed.
Auden have now almost 100% moved out of the old Gordon Smith York Road premises into some new industrial units about a mile away (where parking is a a lot easier). It was their showroom site for a while before they moved out of York Road, but the units are still being fitted out for production, so whilst we saw the room that will become the showroom, there weer no guitars yet on display.
They are awaiting (well over a year's wait so far) a power supply upgrade before they can finish commissioning all the new CNC machinery they have, which will allow them to produce a much larger number of guitars than at present. These will be mainly for the Japanese and US markets.
Auden acoustics were once finished off in the UK with bodies made abroad, but as I understand it, they are now planing to make them all in-house. Which requires a lot of machinery these days if you plan to produce guitars in reasonable quantities.
Here are some of the heated hydraulic presses used to make the sides of the acoustics. Each size acoustic requires a different press :
This jig is used to assemble the sides, neck and end blocks of the acoustics:
These are vacuum presses for gluing on veneers or carved maple caps on electric guitars:
Here's a view through a porthole window into a CNC cutting room, currently set to produce necks from wooden blanks:
We also got to see the spray booths and buffing rooms. A lot of time was being taken by a worker over ensuring the finish on a Tele-style body was perfect.
2025 is the 50th anniversary of Gordon Smith guitars and in the set-up room, they had the first two Gordon Smith guitars that were produced, though they don't know which was the first one of the two actually finished
This red one with a Strat/Tele hybrid body and a 24-fret bolt on neck was used as a test-bed for a lot of different pickup types in its life. It is being used as the basis for a 50th Anniversary model, though there are small updates for aesthetic and practical reasons e.g. the truss-rod adjustment is a wheel at the body end of the neck like most GS models.
And this black one is a set neck guitar with a GS Gypsy-style double-cut style body, a Bigsby-style trem and a Gibson 'open-book' style headstock which never made it onto the production models for copyright reasons.
And here is Mike Peters' (The Alarm and recently Big Country) Auden acoustic in for refurbishment. The big poppy gives it away!
The staff there couldn't have been kinder or more helpful. A great day out.
The original Gordon Smith workshop was a 10 minute drive from my home and I visited a two or three times over the years (and owned a very nice GS2 for a while). It was much less sophisticated than Auden Guitars workshop but fascinating all the same.
expression when observing in person : my usual expression anyways. 
