We don't use high tech manufacturing to make high-quality instruments because high tech manufacturing produces instruments that sound and play like they were made by machines.
This view that high tech produces instruments that sound an play like machines is highly reductionistic. If we understand how things work, we can improve it through that understanding.
You're missing my point completely. I'm not talking about an aluminum guitar that's good enough to run through a triple rectifier and effects chain on stage and look cool for the crowd. You may consider these high-quality, but I don't. This isn't a bad thing, there's obviously a lot of benefit to having cheaper alternatives on the market. I myself have owned a mid-market Ibanez for almost 10 years now that I absolutely love, but I don't pretend it can stand next to Steve Vai's Flo. I've had the fortune to play a few high-quality instruments in my lifetime, the most notable being a silver-plated Selmer Mk 6 alto sax produced in 1953, if I remember correctly. Most probably wouldn't understand the differences between that and even the next horn off the line, but there is a difference. High-tech manufacturing techniques are designed for consistency, which entirely ignores the fact that no 2 instruments will sound the same. When you're talking about instruments of this caliber it becomes much more complicated than just 'better' or 'worse', because they each have their own unique characteristics. A good instrument maker is able to craft an instrument whose unique subtleties complement each other. A machine is not capable of doing this yet; when you buy an instrument made by a machine, you get an instrument that sounds like whatever the machine happened to spit out. It might sound good, but it's more likely going to be a mess. When we can build a machine with good taste, things might change.
And you're missing my point completely too. The nature of the production, to me, is nearly irrelevant to the finished product. You're putting arbitrary parameters on the discussion, which is fine for your own points to be made, but I simply don't share the purist angle that you're going for, which, I must say, kind of rambles and doesn't make a lot of sense, other than "I know the difference and most people don't" which is a fallacy I don't care to engage.
