Official Luthiers Forum!

I never get to see Professor Breakstone in these things....

Greg buddy it was a sincere pleasure to get to meet you finally and spend a couple days working on guitars with you too!

The fretting like anything else gets easier with experience as at some point you can just dive in and "get her done..." as you saw I did with the fret dress that I did the day before and showed you guys. Experience will fill in all the blanks as to when to pull here and push there with some finger tip pressure and it will especially make reading the neck and bluing much easier too.

Your class and the next one may be the last classes that we offer before changing the format somewhat. As you noticed we ran over both days and for some needing to keep a commitment that can be a bad thing. It's also pretty tiring..... We are not sure what the solution may be but it's possible that the 2 days may become 3 because the last thing that we want to do is cut the material that we cover short. We also may get a bit more rigid on where instruments that will be used in class need to be as a starting point so that everyone is on the same page when we start to save time.

I also wanted to share with you what my personal experience was since you noticed the level of detail that Dave goes to. I was the one that got him back into teaching after a ten year absence from teaching when he taught at the Galloup School of Lutherie. It took me all summer to talk Dave into putting together a one week "set-up for builders" class for me. He finally did, I attended and at the end of the week we were only half done... As such I came back the next week, and the next, and the next for five weeks.... When I finally stopped coming he called me up and asked me to apprentice... That lasted three years.... And then when I had hung out my own shingle an hour away I got called again to come to the city and help with the overflow of repair instruments and that lasted another three years.

As you can see we have a history of running over a bit... My first class ran over about 8 years.....

It was great to meet you and we want to come visit you and Steve (and John A.) too so maybe we can work that out in the future.

Take care buddy!

Anytime your in the area please drop in, we have the room