Official Luthiers Forum!

To be clear with what I was saying, I'm not suggesting you "let" the customer set your price. They are going to regardless of whether you want them to or not. It is up to you to decide if that is a price you are willing to accept. To be more concrete, if you customer is thinking entry lever Taylor you either pass or decide wether you can live with that. You are not going to convince them that a "fair" price is $25/hr + material costs if that is not where they are coming from. Likewise, you are not more likely to make a sale to someone who thinks $6,500 is a good deal by offering a guitar to them for $3,500. Even if $6,500 is $50/hr + materials feels like "too much" for you.

I still get all extremes. Just a few months ago I had someone ask me to build them a unique hand made arch top guitar. I asked them what other guitars they had looked at or were considering. He told me he saw a mid nineties Heritage Eagle for $1800 on Reverb, but that he had seen a YouTube of one of mine and thought that looked interesting. I asked him if he knew that a new Heritage Golden Eagle from the factory was a $6,000 to $8,000 guitar. Clearly not.

I could have sold him a guitar for $2,000, but that isn't worth it to me. There was no way he was going to think $6,000 for one of my guitars was fair (or even $3,000 for that matter).

On the other hand, I sold one of my first carbon fiber arch tops to a guy in Silicon Valley. He had bought several other guitars that same year, including an Emerald carbon fiber guitar, a custom Collins because Bill had just passed, and some Midi/Synth/Metal monstrosity. The price was irrelevant to him. If I had asked Linda Manzer prices, I am sure he would have said no. He knew the difference. But he also knew what a new L5 or Heritage Golden Eagle costs, so the low end of that was an acceptable range for him. I could live with that.

So, in summary, the price is very customer dependent. Your Mission Impossible, should you choose to accept it, is to find the customer for your guitar at a price that makes sense to you. This post will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim.

Another way to say it is that the builder must target a certain demographic and market guitars to that group. Entry level Taylor customers (or buyers of just about any factory brand) are not my demographic. I have more money in materials that some of those guitars sell for at retail. What I do is educate the Taylor buyer or owner about the differences between a "guitar shaped object" as the late Bill Collings called them, and a handmade instrument that has been crafted, voiced, and tuned by human hands. At some point, some of these players will want something better, and they will remember me. In the mean time, I give them exceptional service on their existing guitars. In a few cases I will allow them to listen to their guitar along with one of mine in an A/B listening comparison. Most will never buy one of mine, but I don't know which person will be a future build customer, so I have to listen and target those who seem to be genuinely interested.

A great many well-known and very successful builders started out as repair persons, paying the bills while developing their building skills and clientele. It is a proven way to build a lutherie business, and a better approach than to attempt to make a living by building full time.

When I say that there are more builders than customers, it means that there are more guitar builders seeking to sell instruments than there are players looking to buy their guitars. If a customer wants a custom, high end acoustic guitar, he or she does not have to join a crowd of people all competing the the time of a few lutheirs. Rather, the customer has a choice of dozens of fine builders to consider, and the luthiers must convince the customer that his or her guitars will present the best combination of value, excellence of fit and finish, superior tone, and appealing design elements. Taylor (and others) cranking out thousands of very average guitars annually for relatively low prices due to mass production does not help at all!

_________________
It will probably be alright.

"Only he who does nothing makes no mistakes..."

The internet has been incredible for information sharing. Even on this very forum the top dogs in the business will chime in once in a while. I am always grateful for that.

"Taylor (and others) cranking out thousands of very average guitars annually for relatively low prices due to mass production does not help at all!"

Actually I think they help a great deal. They help generate a large pool of guitar players, a few of whom will want a better quality instrument. I think the resurgence in the popularity of the ukulele is substantially due to the availability of cheap mass produced ukes on the market.