Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello friends
heres my new attempt
tuning keys for acoustic and classical guitars.

i am making 2 types of keys
1. Worm brackets are rivetted and epoxied has brass gears and steel worms and delrin rollers.
its price is $160
single units is $35
2. High end is milled from solid brass block. it has aluminium bronze gears + stainless steel worms + delrin rollers.
its price is $260
and single units is $53
with shipping charges included by air.

i hope all of you like it

They look great! Nice work!

That is awesome! I would love to see some tutorial pictures just for fun.

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Pat

They are very nice, but I am not clear if you are building them for yourself or to try to sell?


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Thanks for appreciating.
they are for sale in closed market for now.
only private sale to luthier friends

Not to be a dick but I have some concerns:

1) Why would I ever trust an unknown supplier with something that will be critical to my valuable personal property OR the valuable personal property of my clients when you have no successful track record of producing these and the tuners have no successful history, unbiased of their time in service and the value that they provided?

2) Why would I trust this selection over something that I can purchase from a supplier who will back me up years later and replace only one if necessary and has done so dozens of times with millions of tuners on the market providing value as I write this?

3) Why would I trust a supplier with no warranty (none mentioned...) and no stateside distribution channel?

4) Why would I subject my clients, after all many of us are or have been builders here.... to all of these unknowns making my own reputation on the line when I don't know you from Adam? Supply chains really don't need or benefit from weak links....

No offense intended, these are business considerations and there is one more too. Lance likes us to get commercial in accordance with his forum rules using the classifieds. It's cool to show your chops making tuners and all but if you are going to be commercial maybe talk to Lance, that's the way it's always been done here.

Lastly and not to be that jerk again why? These prices are NOT a bargain especially when I can purchase world-class, number one rated alternatives for less today and have them backed up for the rest of my days where I live.

And really, really lastly the title of the thread "Tuning Machines Attempted" led me to believe that this thread is about making them. What I see instead is a thread about displaying them, saying very little about them, and selling them for financial gain. Not what I expected to see.

Somebody had to say it....

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Yeah I hate this. I thought about it and came back wanting to delete my post but now that others have seen it I kind of have a duty to let my poor judgement speak for itself.

I should not have posted this. My apologies to the OP and the rest of the forum for introducing BS. My bad.

Hey Hesh,
Points 1 to 4 you made are the same ones we deal with as amateur and lessor known professional luthiers. Luckily there are a few people willing to take a chance. That being said, every point you made is true - most people will stick to a known supplier, unless you can sell them on the idea that yours is a better product.

If looking for marketing advice --- way way too expensive, without engraving they look unfinished $.02

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Hesh, I think your comments are spot on (and frankly where I was going with my question). No one here is negative for negativity's sake. We all love the craft, and would love to see everyone who wants to make a living at it do so. But creating a viable business in today's America by making hand crafted artisan products is just about as difficult as creating a viable private space vehicle.

There is a lot of resentment among craftsmen and professionals that our economy has gone from being about quality to branding, from producing to owning, from meritocracy to monopoly. If Hesh's comments seem harsh, it is only because the reality is harsh and few of your fellow craftsmen have much patience left for naiveté.

Alessi and Rodgers are BRANDS. They sell for two to three times your prices. They are more beautiful, as they are hand engraved (however, I suspect you can have a master craftsman engrave yours to match in beauty without significantly increasing your costs). Despite that, they may not be in any quantitative way better than your tuners. In our market THAT DOESN'T MATTER. Not one bit. People buying $700 tuners are buying brands. Simple as that.

Sloane is also a known brand. Every bit as good as the Alessi in function and beauty. However, not as valuable a brand. So they sell for less than half of the Alessi.

Gotoh Premiums are very good. People would be hard pressed to say that the Alessis or Rodgers function better or are any more beautiful. But they don't have the brand that the Alessi have, or even Sloane, so they are even cheaper than yours. And it is not as if Gotoh is a non-brand. Gotoh is a huge brand that people buy regularly.

So as nice as your tuners are, it is not clear what market you are looking to serve. In the world of tuners (and guitars in general), it is clear that BRAND is #1 followed distantly by price. You have to be less than a third of the price to compete with a stronger brand. Quality is clearly a very weak buying criterion. You can have three brands with quality and functionally very similar to each other and a 3 fold difference in price.

You have neither the brand nor the price. Since you cannot invent yourself the brand, your only option is the price. I suspect, however, that being an unknown brand you will have to come in at a third less than the Gotohs, if the data is to be believed, and yet be at the same quality if you want to sell in this market. Can you do that and have a functioning business model? This is where most of us craftsmen realize that our dream of making a go of our craft is untenable.

Lastly, of course, is that given the absolutely dire prospects of craftsmen in this economy we would be inundated with spam and faux post by people trying to create a "web presence" if Lance didn't impose some fairly strict rules against posts intended as advertising products. I hope you understand where that criticism is coming from. I know you aren't like the endless spam bots that create an account just to flog a product, so I trust you see that these kinds of prohibitions are better for all of us in the long run.

NB: All of this relates to the markets of the US and Europe, since that is who frequents this board. You may have entirely different dynamics in your domestic market. Not knowing anything about the internal guitar market of India, I am in no position to comment about that. I encourage you to continue developing your business plan to see if it can be made to work somewhere.

If you are interested in making tuners one possibility might be to reproduce Stauffer style (6 on a side) and Preston's patent type tuners. There might be less demand, but also less competition. It may allow you to build in a niche most are ignoring, and eventually get into the main stream.

Hesh, they are all fair comments and Aquilab has been there before in terms of trying to sell here, he should know better.

I believe, as a member of classifieds, aqualibguitars can post items for sale there.
And I have seen several other members posting notifications of classified sales posts in the main forum - perhaps that would be more appropriate way to go about it?

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

IMO they need further refinement. There's a slight lack of elegance to some of the aspects. I don't mind the plain plates, I buy Alessi tuners that have very minimal engraving. Probably best to see these as a starting point and everyone has to start somewhere. It really wouldn't take much to achieve a more elegant, classic look. Of course they need to be very high quality in terms of their gearing.

Except it is only for individuals, not business sales unless a sponsor

Jeffhigh, earlier post -

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Yes, I am aware of that, it means anyone who is prepared to send him money

I have to admit I was thinking the same thing. But long ago I decided to keep that stuff to myself as I hate controversy. It is true that we have a number of great sponsors who pay good money to support this site and promote their product. Well, the can of worms is opened, so I don't mind stirring them a bit. Anytime somebody promotes a product or service on the open forum (without being a sponsor) either directly or indirectly, I get a bit aggravated. Nobody likes people knocking on their doors trying to sell them stuff. Its no different here. I hope this thread remains calm!

I think it's awesome that he's making tuners. Making tuners is something Burton gets acclaim for as well. It's a good thing any time someone expands on our typical skill set. The more people do so, the bigger our collective skill set becomes, the more likely that skill is to be normalized. Remember when CNC was just a novelty? I was just turned off when I realized it was an ad rather than a show and tell.


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Personally, I'm pretty impressed. That's certainly out of the realm of what I would consider myself to be currently capable of. I would love to hear about your process, Mr. Waghmare.

I do get slightly annoyed when someone tries to sell their products on the forum outside of sponsorship or the classifieds and I think that's what everyone here is up in arms about.

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sweat the small stuff.

I think, from what he has said elsewhere, the process is to engage a local machinist.

Hello friends. really sorry for late reply as there was medical emergency in my family.
i have read some posts but not in detail. but i think everyone is annoyed with pricing as its not famous till yet.
it took me 9 months to complete this my dream project and im getting some positive responses from my customers.
Micheal thames. kenny fordham and john parchem have booked each set.
pls wait some days to get some good reviews.
i hope friends like u will always there.

and im really sorry that i posted this post in this forum. i should have opted for classifieds.
but it was unknown mistake from me
i really appoligize and if i have violated any forum rules. then pls remove the post.
its was meant to show my creation but unknowingly it fell under other category

It seems you completely miss the point. People were offering you honest business advice. But if you are having success, you don't need our advice.

Several people here know the luthiers you mentioned and I am sure they will eagerly hear their report and share with us.

Good luck with your venture.

.


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Can you share some details of your Quality Assurance/Quality Control programme