Today, quality takes a back seat to a global market and bean counters who calculate failure rates and acceptable loss. They can make it with cheaper parts/materials, lower skilled labor and less quality control knowing that a percentage of customers will hardly use the equipment, another group will use it lightly, another will work it fairly but not over stress it, another will beat the heck out of it. Some will fail no matter what. Others will be factory freaks and go on forever. So they look at all of this and try to target a cost to build vs. cost to warranty median point where they can accept the loss of customers and revenue based on the calculated failure rate. Long term survival of the equipment (past the warranted period) is really not a part of the equation. So to your question.... quality went away in the mid 70's as the advancement of the global market took off and most things became a race to the cheapest way to make an item, the highest profit stream and acceptable losses. It is nearly gone. This is now a disposable world.
