Official Luthiers Forum!

Here is the latest Luthier Tips du Jour video - In this video I give an update CITES and traveling with your guitar. This video as well as all my other videos are available via my website, http://www.obrienguitars.com/videos , LMI's website or on youtube.

Thanks for posting robbie , but I am, as usual, truly disgusted and revolted by the unelected so called officials deciding the economic fate of luthiers my 2 cents

I'm not sure what unelected officials have to do with it in consideration of our current elected officials O.o

Fact of the matter is the world is a much smaller place now and becoming overpopulated and as such it's resources are dwindling. If you want to blame anyone blame the commercial enterprises for exploitation for profit. It's the governments of the world that are trying to do something about it. I for one am happy to see that people care about saving elephants and so on.

I just had an interesting experience. I had built a guitar for someone living in New Zealand and had been worrying about shipping, customs, and CITES - the guitar has a rosewood neck and fretboard. About half way thru the build my wife and I decided that we had always wanted to visit NZ, maybe we could hand deliver the guitar. I was still fussing over permits and paperwork and loosing a lot of sleep when my customer called the NZ customs department, explained the situation, that we were not trying to evade or do anything illegal, and asked their advice. They said have your builder bring the guitar in as his personal property, if he decides to give it to you while he is in NZ they could care less. I did just that - carried it thru customs (they didn't even open the case). Later that evening my customer hosted us for dinner, I presented the guitar to him and he gave me some NZ cash that I would need for our trip (saved me the trouble of exchanging money).

It was amazing to me how easily the NZ customs people were to work with, kind of makes me want to move there.