Regardless of whether guitars are completely or partially 'hand made', I think if I had the money, I would prefer to choose and support an individual crafts person luthier (and I write craftsPERSON there not to be politically correct, but because there are also some excellent female luthiers around these days) and have a custom made one-off guitar to my own design and specifications, than buy a 'name' guitar, custom shop or not, which may only be a compromise with what I really wanted..
However, I don't have that sort of money at this time, so it's a good old Chinese cheap and cheerful Squier job that I use...
