Fender made Benedetto's

[Sam Sherry]

While collaboration with Fender was less than a success

Says who?

. . . Benedettos under Howard Paul in Savannah since 2006 . . . there's no room for exploitation.These people must be doing their jobs with love and pride.

I've had friends and bandmates who worked on the lines at Bourgeois, CF Martin and Ovation. One of my friends runs America's largest double-bass manufacturer.
It's easy for us to get romantic about instrument-building businesses because we pour our emotions into our instruments for hours and decades.
At its best -- say, at the DB company -- the job is high-skill craft work on a product which will outlive the people who build it. But even a job you like is a job. People are still happy at 5pm.
If it's not at its best there's a steep slope down to a dull factory gig making parts for expensive widgets.