Official Luthiers Forum!

Thanks Michael. That's exactly the sort of information I was looking for. Is that from TAMCO? I guess when you're selling something in that price bracket it has to be totally unique/outstanding for it to get noticed.

Aaron, thanks for the encouragement!

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"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso

https://www.facebook.com/FenskeGuitars

I only know the Classical guitar market, very little of the SS. That price bracket isn't especially high. I'd firmly call that low to mid.
You don't need anything unique or even outstanding. You just need to convince the right people that they are either unique or outstanding. Of course you need a good product but it's more about selling. Much more than many would care to admit.

I thought I saw another thread where it's more about the fit and finish than the sound. Although to be honest with you when it comes to guitar embellishment I feel less is more. If the design gets too complicated then I'm not sure how to do it without it looking bad. Sometimes there's beauty in simplicity.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

I LOVE this philosophy.

It’s a well know fact that 80% of small businesses fail within the first year, 90% fail within the first 5 years. All one has to do is go to your local library and compare the number of ads run for “guitar makes” 5 years ago to the number published today in “Acoustic Guitar”. Guitar building for a living is not a business to enter with your eyes closed especially in today’s economic environment. From the news coming from Europe, your territory, I would say the situation is even worse. Disposable incomes which accounts for most guitar purchases has been hit extremely hard.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news but now would not be a great time to enter this field as a livelihood or as an investment opportunity.

I would suggest not to forego your dream but plan. Take the small business courses, develop your guitar making skills and save your money for when you decide to jump into the water. There are torpedoes out there. At the least know it and keep your eyes open.

Oh and ask yourself why do you want to make guitars. There are other ways to make a living, make money and still make guitars.

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Michael Lloyd

“I was born to ignorance, yes, and lesser poverties ...
I was born to privilege that I did not see ... I didn’t know it, but my way was paved” – John Gorka

i know a carpenter who has a master's degree in biology, a young man with two college degrees who works part time as a dish washer, and the man who keeps the termites out of my house is a former industrial salesman. I have a degree in engineering, but am having a terrible time because my experience isn't a perfect fit. At the biggest convention I went to last fall, no instruments sold, and I sold nothing that cost over $15.

Yeah, it's bad these days.

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Phil

http://www.oleninstruments.com

"Those who tilt at windmills are only considered insane by those who can't see the dragon."

Lots of great points of view represented here!

As I sit here sipping my oj in the office of our shop/business on this Saturday morning I thought that I would drop by and express my own views regarding going into business AND making one's living with Lutherie.

As some of you know, perhaps many of you after my last thread a couple of months ago, recently David Collins and I opened Ann Arbor Guitars in the epicenter of Ann Arbor's booming business district. Like me David once also walked the various forums of the OLF so he too is pretty well known not only in the biz of Lutherie but on the OLF too.

For us it was the opposite of a perfect storm in so much as all things seemed to fall into place for us and our new business is doing very well and beyond expectations. Prior to pulling the trigger on self-imposed indentured servitude... and the "C" word (relax.... I mean "commitment...") we did some things very right that greatly contributed to our current and future success.

First and this applies to me specifically I took the advice of another former forum member, Rick Turner. Half a decade ago when Rick graced the OLF with his decades of experience with Lutherie AND great experience with starting small businesses too Rick had some strong views regarding what a Luthier is... In a nut shell when Rick was not describing many of the guitars built by forum members as "GLOs" or "guitar like objects...." and likely offending more folks than just me Rick was unbudging regarding his belief that to be a Luthier one must also be well versed AND experienced in repair work. As a builder only back then and pretty proud of my own progress and guitars I didn't take kindly to Rick's delivery of his message but in the long run and at the end of the day... Rick was correct!

So... prior to "committing" to the financial liability associated with going into business I hung out my own shingle in a smaller market and became a repair guy. Several years of fixing everything that came through the door and being exposed to the biz of Lutherie on a smaller scale served me very well. For very little money and/or risk I was finally reversing the flow of money in respect to what my interests in Lutherie has been costing me.... Although I never intended to sell my guitars that I built and I remain committed to not doing commission work fearing that I likely would lose interest if I had to look at something that someone else had for their idea of what a great guitar should be I stayed firm to my desire to only build what I wanted to build.

Back then I would hang my creations in my shop and sure enough repair clients would invariably inquire as to who made the guitars on my shop wall. In short order the repair business inadvertently became a stalking horse so-to-speak for sales of my own guitars. By the time that I closed my former business so that I could concentrate on Ann Arbor Guitars and being a personal proponent of the old adage "do one thing well instead of a bunch of things &*(&^%..." the dozens of guitars that I had built myself were all in the hands of new owners and often pro players. It was not my intention to sell all of these guitars but hey after much prodding, clients bringing by their wives for "enablement..." who was I to be the nay sayer.

Prior to closing my first Lutherie biz I was called by David and asked to come work with him as a contractor repairing all manner of plucked stringed instruments in the music store, a 51 year music store that had been a staple of Ann Arbor's culture for over five decades including the 60's... Once again I was fixing hundreds and eventually thousands of guitars in the very busy Martin dealership that also had a tradition of Lutherie as evidenced in some of the early Big Red Books where they talk about Luthier Herb David.

In addition the linage here was well known to produce successful Luthiers in so much as this shop was where folks such as Dan Earlywine and Bryan Gallop started.

So, in my typical long winded style.... the point that I am trying to make here is that for me success with Lutherie included taking the advice of Rick Turner (many, many thanks Rick!!!) and having the honor of being associated with David Collins and all that I have learned from David.

In addition I cut my teeth on several thousand broken guitars including pre-war Martins including a few very nearly pre-civil war Martins. Beaters are useful too in so much as everyone deserves to have great music in their lives and fixing inexpensive guitars can in many ways be pretty challenging.

Some experience running a business (including my own background from corporate America) was also helpful.

So... like an athlete training for an event I believe that the path that I took was appropriate, very useful, and in taking the time to raise my own personal value proposition by becoming more skilled and knowledgable as well as experienced by the time a real and present opportunity to go large presented itself I knew what to do.

We are just finishing up our second full month as Ann Arbor Guitars. We have more clients than we can shake a three piece neck at and this is a result of David's clients, my own clients, the former music stores clients, and.... you guessed it - location, location, location....

Although we are located in a very progressive, highly regulated community this community is also rich with the arts and also has a booming local economy including a massive university, Google, GM, Ford, and many other technology concerns. It's also been said that during recessions the Ann Arbor area always fares very well regardless of the impact to the rest of the state mostly because of the university and 4-5 other colleges located here.

Those who have opined that one simply has to just "do it" and take the risk there is some truth to this. But what I wanted to stress too is that anyone flirting with hanging out a shingle needs to take inventory of their own personal value proposition as it may be viewed by others. Do you have very high standards for the quality of work that you do AND the value that it represents to clients? Are you capable of dealing with the public and perhaps even enjoy this interaction as I most certainly do? Do you have a market (location) that will support a Lutherie business? What's the back-up plan if things go south? Are you experienced enough to either do the repair work or honor a warranty claim for every conceivable thing that may go wrong in time with your own creations? Are you capitalized for the slow months AND do you have a vision of how to grow the business without boxing yourself in from future growth.

Health insurance.... I'm not married so being self employed has other hurtles for me especially as I age and basically fall apart in new and creative ways.... Health insurance is important in so much as small businesses depend on the principals to wear all manner of different hats.... Although I hate wearing hats.... glasses too.... my reality is that if I get too sick to work our business suffers. By the way in this sort of business there is no other path to success that will not be directly dependent on how much time we spend doing billable hours at our benches...

With the mention of health insurance is also the subject of the life styles, previous commitments (that C word again....), and other things specific to your own lives that could be stumbling blocks for one if one wants to try something new such as being a pro in the Lutherie field.

For us many things came together that are greatly contributing to our success BUT we also did the personal things required to position ourselves well for the opportunity when and if it happened. There is no substitute for learning how and why guitars fail as Rick Turner once rightly told this forum. Even if you only intend to build you need to learn how to support your creations no matter what some gigging musician may creatively do to them someday....

As for making an acceptable living from only building I remain skeptical for a number of reasons. This is not to say that some will not "make it..." and I am sure that some will and some do. But there are many, many extremely talented "big name" builders already out here AND with lots of credits to their names. Newer and small builders often after selling a few guitars to friends, family, friends of friends, etc. come to the realization that the competition is fierce, the bar is very high, the value represented by the established builders is clearly substantial in many cases, and in a number of other respects the solitary existence of a builder is not for everyone. I couldn't do it.... spending a couple hundred hours on a single project over and over again with very little people contact seems like it would suck to me personally. But hey to each their own.

If you take away one thing from my post here that may be of value to you my hope is that you understand in advance that being a Luthier as your primary profession is not easy... You will have all the challenges of any small business AND a dependency on economic issues since we are basically paid with the disposable income of folks. There is LOTS of competition, down time, and it's not cheap either to pay your lease payments, insurance, utilities, employees, and more. And if you are the sort who believes that one has a duty to give something back as I do, frequently...., it's an even more expensive endeavor.

Can it be done - absolutely but know in advance that how well you do will be a function of how well you did your homework, the value that your services/wares represent, your market, your capitalization, and the whims of the economy in general.

Please also consider that going pro as some call it... may be an excellent way to take something that one is passionate about and turn it into drudgery and despair.

If you have a plan, have done your home work to represent real value in your offerings, have a decent market, some coin set aside, can solve the health insurance issue(s), and still wanna do what you love, Lutherie - go for it! You may find as I have that dreams do come true and be as happy with what you someday may do as I am these days!

Thanks for reading and I hope that every one is doing great!

Hesh you are in a manner of speaking right on the money.Back in the 90/s I was running a successful gtr/vln shop in LA. My wife and I were both working 6 days a week to pay our bills send our kids to fancy private schools. etc.We lived in a townhome and were new to the usa. We sold the biz partly cause we hardly spent time with our young children, and were constantly schlepping around LA to do errands .We jumped at the offer to move to the midwest. For the first few years we were in major culture shock until we adjusted, and sent our kids to a regular school while I stayed home and tried to look after the homefront, and do some woodworking. My kids are grownup know and gone . So I am free to do as I wish , and build what I want.Backin the day, there was a lot of repair work and sales to do in the shop. When I left the shop ,I came to the conclusion that it was a great experience, but I still was not doing any building, and I did not want to rip my kids off of spending quality time with them .Each of us is a unique human being , and sometimes it//s hard to pursue our dreams unless we temper them with the economy and our realty. Hesh thought your thesis on going into business was excellent and well done bravo .

I'm branching out into other areas of woodworking, such as furniture making simply because I am realizing that Taiwan is extremely limited when it comes to music and arts. I think the Confucian culture places a lot of value on success and pretty much the entire population lives to take tests and exams (the possibility of being able to be enrolled into high school without an entrance exam is actually a matter of debate here, because most here feel that exams are necessary to make people feel educated), which is why a lot of people here work in "cram schools". Therefore things like music and arts are deemed irrelevant according to the culture and in their own minds, only what's established are considered any good. I have one customer who went from a journalist to being a musician but honestly I don't know how he does it, but he seems far more optimistic than I am. If there is a music scene in Taiwan I have no idea how to tap into it.

I don't mind spending a lot of hours by myself building something, being in a big crowd or group actually makes me feel nervous and makes it hard for me to perform. However because of that (like having Asperger's) I have absolutely no clue how to tap into a market even if it was very rich. I need someone else to do that but it's nearly impossible to make such requests to people...

I struggle to find enough work even doing repairs, because a vast majority of the instruments out there are disposable, where even common maintenance work such as refrets cost more than the instrument itself so people just bear with uneven frets and poor actions because they just don't see the value in spending even 15 dollars to have someone set it up like it's meant to be done. Repair work on real instruments (where the standard of quality is whatever a famous company such as Gibson puts out) is not actually offered by very many people, almost all warranty work involves sending the instrument back to the USA at the owner's expense. I thought I could tap into that (and I repair a lot of Gibsons, due to the fact that they break if it just doesn't like you) but a vast majority of the people's guitar budget is around 150 dollars... if it breaks just buy a new one.

I'm not sure if a luthiery guild exists in Taiwan, but it seems it's so secretive it's like trying to join the Illuminati.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Shalom Ernie!

Ain't that the truth that everyone of us is indeed unique as well as the need to temper dreams with reality! Very well said.

For me the approach was slow and methodical making sure that I took every opportunity available to me to learn all that I could and will about Lutherie. And the approach to the business was likewise pretty cautious being the risk-adverse sort that I tend to be (also known as cheap bastage.... ).

Regardless though we are and will always be at the mercy of the greater economy as well as trends such as what's cool in music these days. One of my neighbors who's kid is already a killer guitar player I am always sure to ask the kid/young man "are guitars still cool?" So far he keeps answering me that they remain very cool to folks his age. Hopefully this will not change. Nonetheless the news lately for Guitar Center and Fender is all about hard times in the industry...

Also LA must have been culture shock and if it makes you feel any better LA is still culture shock for me too even though I have been there many, many times... Nothing like getting off a 5 hour flight, renting a Mustang convertible, and finding myself sitting in absolute gridlock on the San Diego freeway in the middle of 16 lanes all headed the same direction at zero MPH... with the top down and brown... stagnant air and smog restricting my view.... Guess when they talk about sunny California the meaning does not apply to the areas of brown, visible air.....

Hesh, great comments - and perspective.

Side note, I too have spent my share of time "parked" on the 405. The convertible top is nice once you get about 20 miles north or south of LAX

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

It's not only about how many you can build per year, it's about how many you can sell per year...and at what price.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Business advice:

Whether making coat hangers or satellites...do what you say your going to do....or put differently... deliver what you promise and don't make promises you can't absolutely keep. Human beings seek security first and everything else second. That makes dependable people and businesses attractive. If you're the guy that delivers the coat hangers on time and the other guy doesn't...guess what happens?

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

I get what you're saying, but seems in Taiwan the rule doesn't always apply because most Taiwanese are never on time and they're still relied upon for important stuff... here "face" is more important it seems.

Dependability hasn't helped me much at all, and I'm very dependable.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com