Official Luthiers Forum!

As promised we are trying hard here to schedule more classes because of the very high level of demand.

Our next "Fretting For Builders" class will be June 17th at our Ann Arbor shop and the following day will be the next "Set-up For Builders" class. This is also Father's day weekend which may give some additional justification to either take the classes or be gifted them...

We designed these classes to include the things that you will need to know and do when the woodworking is complete and now it's time to turn the thing into a proper musical instrument or my personal favorite, a tool for a musician. This is also how it all started for me in so much as a builder at some point I wanted to know and learn more about proper fret work and set-ups. I signed up for a class and nearly 10 years later I'm still in it...

On Friday you will be completely fretting one of your creations (or a mule that you bring to work on) and will learn everything that you need to know to do superb fret work. The methods taught are the very same professional methods that we use for refretting customer instruments in our busy repair business. Fret wire and a few special tools are supplied as is lunch. You will need the SM Jaws II fret press device and cauls, leveling beams and two small SM files.

On the next day, Saturday we will take your just fretted instruments and learn how to make bone nuts and compensated bone saddles as well as our approach to doing a superb set-up. Industry specs for set-ups will be taught and discussed and when this class is over you will have a completely set-up instrument that will have the best set-up in three counties... Sorry....

Our shop is also in an historic building with a great deal of Lutherie history to learn about and see as well. We have some of the tooling of some very notable Luthiers in our charge these days.

For the set-up class you will need a set of gauged nut slot files and we will provide everything else including lunch.

It is recommended that students take both classes since they build on each other and that will save you travel expenses as well.

In the past we have priced these classes below the price of having the work commercially done. For example we charge more to refret an instrument than we charge to take our fretting class and do it yourself. We also listed the classes as two separate classes and this led to some confusion and resulted in some of our students and friends having to make the trip to A2 twice. Again our apologies.

As such this time the price is $600 for both classes and a non-refundable deposit of $300 is requested at the time that you book your spot in the classes. No price increase just a new requirement to take both back to back classes again because they build on each other.

There are only four openings in our classes because we want to maintain a student/instructor ratio of 2:1 and one opening has already been booked in both classes by OLFer RockyRoad leaving three openings as I write this.

Please contact me via PM with any questions that you may have or to book your seat in the classes.

Thanks!

PM Sent. Thanks, Hesh! Hopefully there is still an opening.

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Brad you are in and I pmed you back with payment instructions. Talk with you later this week and thanks too this will be a very good time AND you will learn methods that will serve you very well.

Two seats remain folks.

Thanks

Hesh, I'm interested. Sending you a pm.

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- Keith

UPDATE: Three out of the four available seats in these two back-to-back classes have been booked.

The remaining seat is on hold pending a discussion with our friend who is interested in it but we should know it's it's available by the end of the week.

As such the next one to indicate their interest in this thread in this last remaining seat will be the first one to get that seat if the person currently interested does not take the seat.

Also if you missed out because these classes filled up in only several hours.... we plan on putting more classes on the schedule likely in September. If interested please indicate your interest here in this thread as well.

Many thanks!

Keith you are all set!

Everyone else we have one seat remaining that is on hold though tomorrow for the OLFer interested in it. After that if he/she does not take the course we would have one seat left in the June 17 - 18 class.

Thanks!

Brad you are all set too - thank You!

Dave you are all set and thank you too!

Joel you are all set too and thank you as well!

Folks our June 17 - 18 class is now fully booked. If you have interest in our next "Fretting for Builders" and "Set-up For Builders" classes please let us know. Our classes tend to fill up in a matter of days and we are planning more likely in the fall of this year.

As a side note we have students that are not primarily interested in building as well and who plan to do repair work in the future or are already doing it now. The skills learned, fretting, fret dressing, nut making, intonation, saddle making and how to achieve superb set-ups translate very well for both builders and repair folks.

Many thanks.