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Hi everyone. I'm very interested in getting a job in instrument repair. I was wondering what employers are looking for in hiring new people. I have limited experience and would have to learn some things before doing hard jobs. I would probably start out sorting out electric guitar wiring, doing setups, and any easy yet tedious jobs that the top repair people would rather not bother doing. While I do that, I would learn how to do the more difficult procedures like neck resets, headstock repairs, finishing, etc. I've been messing around guitars and other instruments a while, so I feel I'd be a fast learner, but I know that term is usually quite a turn off. Everyone thinks they're a quick learner. I've also built a few instruments and have studied pretty constantly for the past three years. I was wondering if that is an asset that is taken seriously with prospective employers.
I appreciate you reading this and any advice you have to offer.

Ian

No one would even talk to me until I new how to build a complete guitar from scratch, and had made several, in the neighborhood of twenty, including several for local musicians and one for Wayne Turner of the Hank Williams Junior band (he still loves that guitar!). I also paid someone to let me work alongside them in their tech business. That's right, I didn't call someone up and say "Hey, I'd be willing to work for free if you teach me!" that's a waste of their time, anything worth learning is worth paying for, and if someone shows yu for free, they didn't show you what you REALLY need to know, they showed you a little something just to make you happy.

Then I found a job at a small local music store that was willing to hire me based on my instruments, good customer response, and a current employee of the store that knew what I was capable of and was willing to tell the store owner about me, as well as several references from existing customers. I was paid a salary, which isn't the best situation for a store tech, but it was my foot in the door. When I was ready I moved on to a chain store as in independant contractor. When the company started to change their policy toward cheaply paid in-house store techs (really salesman who they "trained" as techs) I went completely independant and have been doing well on my own.

You have to find someone who's willing to give you a shot at your current experience level, and build your reputation from there.
Keep in mind that if someone's first impression of you is that of a kid with little exprience but are a fast learner, ten years later that's how they'll still think of you, no matter how much you learn or improve, and word travels fast in the musician community if you mess up someone's guitar or can't get it exactly right for their particular style, touch, and feel. Knowing how to set up guitars for yourself is not the same as knowing guitars inside and out and being able to set any guitar up for any player, and be able to handle any situation during setup that arises.

I would reccomend before you go out and start building a reputation in the community, find someone who knows guitars and pay them to teach you what you need to know to handle a store position.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

BTW the things you described as tedious I don't find to be so. Strings, electronics, and setups are the basic jobs that pay the bills, and they are quick and easy to do, far from tedious, don't expect someone to hire you based on the fact that they won't have to do those things anymore, unless they just hate doing repairs in general, in which case why would you want them to show you stuff?

I can rewire the most difficult guitar in about a half hour, restring a guitar in 5 minutes including stretching the strings and tuning it to pitch, and setup a Les Paul optimally in about 20 minutes.

It's the bigger jobs that I find tedious, the neck resets, refrets, structural repairs, and other big jobs that pay better, but take longer. Tedious doesn't mean boring or that I don't enjoy doing them, it just means it takes longer.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Ian…the best advise that I could give is to go down to your local guitar/music store that does instrument repair and apply for a job doing something, be it sales or what ever. If they aren’t hiring and if you have the time, tell them that you are willing to work for free stringing or polishing guitars for them, what ever it takes to get your foot in the door. Just be patient and let things run there course.

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Rich S

"The inconvenience of poor quality will linger long after the thrill of a bargain has been forgotten"

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Rich S

"The inconvenience of poor quality will linger long after the thrill of a bargain has been forgotten"

Interesting... I found that building and repair are two different sets of skills - that just because people know how build doesn't mean they know how to repair. By the end of the first week, a repair person might have set up 20 guitars, while a builder may have only set up 12 in one year. A repair person might have made 20 nuts, 20 saddles, etc. Plus, a repair person will see dovetail joints, bolt-on joints, glued set-necks (and the list goes on), while a builder may have only seen the neck joint he or she uses.

Conversely, a repair person doesn't need to know how to join a top, bend sides, and other skills a builder needs to be successful. But I think the more repairs a person does, the better of a builder he or she becomes. As Rick Turner said, "One year I reset 175 necks. Who do you think knows how to put a neck joint together, me or someone who's built 20 guitars?"

You're describing a professional tech vs a hobbyist luthier. To be fair, you'd have to compare the hobbyist luthier to the hobbyist tech, the guy who changes his strings once a week and resets his guitars up once a month, he might do 3 setups a month, maybe 24 a year, and that's pushing the number up as most guitarists who do their own setups don't do it nearly that often.
A professional luthier who's built a couple hundred guitars of all styles, acoustic electric and bass, is well qualified to handle any guitar that walks in the door, and can handle the widest range of customers and jobs, and in my experience, most luthiers also offer repairs as well, so yes, someone who builds can also repair.
If you've made a neck, you've also learned how to refret.
If you've wired up a guitar, you've learned how to rewire a guitar. If you've set up your guitar from scratch, you've also learned how to set up an already assembled and previously set up instrument.
If you've carved and glued up braces, you've learned how to repair a loose brace.
If you've manufactured a neck joint and set the angle, you've learned how to reset a neck joint.
There's really nothing that a profesional tech knows that a professional luthier doesn't, although there is much that the luthier knows that the tech doesn't.
The part-time hobbyist luthier wouldn't be qualified to work in a store, but neither would the hobbyist tech that knows how to tweak his own guitars, either.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Knowing musicians will definitely get your foot in the door, and I can't be sure that working as a music store will help (although it will help you get to know musicians).

To be honest with you, music stores are looking for people with SALES talent rather than repair talent, since most stores will probably have "in house tech" who are just salesperson who knows a little repair skill. That is actually the situation in Taiwan and I wouldn't trust an Affinity squirer to them. The only plus for the customer of that store is that they can do those work for little to no cost.

I did get one or two paid repair jobs from musicians, and I did a major work for someone free of charge (as a favor). The major work was repairing Les Paul custom neck that was "fixed" by an "in house tech" who thinks drywall screws can fix any problem. I have also done a minor (at least to me) repair work on another les paul custom that had a cracked neck at a small cost.

The point is, get to know some musicians, and if you discover that one of them have instruments that needs repair, offer to fix it either for free or for a low cost. At first they may not trust you with much (like just set up jobs), but once they discover that their instrument is much more playable after you've fixed it, they will begin to trust you with more expensive instruments (this is one indicator that they trust you) or with bigger jobs. When those musicians like what you're doing with their instruments, they will tell others about you (like the second les paul I fixed, which belonged to a friend of a musician I know).

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

What worked for me was building guitars. I put an add out locally to try and sell guitars and a local music store owner contacted me. I got lucky too because I wasn't making it as a luthier. After about a year I was doing work for 4 stores and had so much work I couldn't build much any more. But the repair work was good pay, dang good pay at times. Also when I was thinking about doing this, god some 20 years ago now, I would hit yard sales and find cheap old beater guitars for $5-10 and fix them up. Break the headstocks off and repair them, refinish, retop, reset necks etc... That helped quite a bit.

Now that luthierie is not my main gig anymore I don't do repairs for any stores except for the big jobs like restorations or neck resets and I have several customers from the past that always take their stuff to me so it's nice. I can build at my leisure and make a few hundred bucks here and there on repairs.

Like whisperer said, the set ups and simple stuff pays the bills. I was making $30-40/hour doing setups. Once you get good at it you can fly through them. Once in a while you get one that takes a lot of time but so it goes. I always found set ups to be very rewarding work, nothing like a satisfied customer with a real professional set up.

I agree with what you're saying. But the OP asked about getting into repair work, and in my opinion building 20 guitars first isn't the way to repair work.



I think that's excellent advice.

Right, you don't need to be a builder to get a job as a repair tech, you just need someone willing to hire you where you're at, skillwise.
Prestigewise, Luthiers get more points, with owners and customers alike, and therefore a wider range of jobs.
It helps to be fully prepared to avoid making novice mistakes on customer guitars.
I was just responding to the one guy's post about Rick Turner, whoever that is.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Does "whoever that is" refer to the guy posting, or to Rick Turner ?

Who's Rick Turner?

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Rick's the guy who will probably chime in soon with a gigantic essay detailing his beginnings and probably offer some pretty good advice along with it. I might see about getting a job in sales at a store to get my foot in some. My best bet though to make money doing repairs is to just talk to my musician friends more on the subject.

So Rick Turner is a master luthier and not simply a tech, nor is he a hobbyist. I'm sure he'll have some great advice then.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

It's like anything, you need to work in the field you want to succeed in, and be willing to work your way up from the bottom. However, once you find yourself not learning anything new at the place you are, you need to start looking for the next step to advance your skills. As far as building to learn repairing, I do agree that most building processes lend themselves to at least one corrosponding repair process. That being said, I disagree that someone who can build a guitar is as good a repair person as someone with equal time and training in guitar repair. The nice thing about building from scratch is that eventually you dont need to diagnose an many problems because as your process refines, you make less errors. I can put a neck on a guitar, I've done it many times, but I would not have the foggiest idea how to seperate a neck from an acoustic guitar thats already built. Im sure I could figure it out, but that's not what you want to tell a customer as they hand their grandfathers guitar over the counter.

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To the OP-

Lots of advice here. Even in light of your experience, I suggest finding
guitars that don't work and finding (for yourself) ways to make them
play well. These instruments will be your teachers, if you're willing...
Feel free to PM regarding setup questions.

Carey

Have you been to Frets.com? Frank Ford has a wealth of practical information on many acoustic repair problems.

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com

Getting a job is very specific to your local situation. Where, specifically would you work. If there were three local music stores, do any of them have repair departments. Do they send stuff out. Are there music schools, whatever. Because at the end the day, unless you are moving, you need to tailor your job search to what you have to work with. So what you need to become can be more easily answered once you know (as you may) the actual targets.

Also, if you want to do stuff that involves messing with wood, you need to be a woodworker. You don't need to be an all around one. I can do anything with wood, been at it 40 years. I used to teach a course with the sub title "how to chop, saw, and plane to a line". You need a good quality handsaw for rip and x-cut, a couple of chisels, and one or two planes. Learn how to break wood down and make edges straight with those categories of tool. You do not, and in fact should not, be doing projects. You need to go to the driving range, and hit buckets of balls, woodworkingwise. Use some easy straight grain wood like clear pine.

Actually writing this I remember how I got my start in repair. Midlife I decided to take classical lessons again. I pulled out my old student guitar, and took the lessons, presumably planing to make a guitar at some point. I became aware that my student guitar was really badly set-up. I replaced the nut the overly low frets, the Bridge, I thinned the top, refinished it with french polish. The scale length was uncompensated, which is why I messed with the bridge, I replaced the bad tuners with less worse ones, etc... Anyway, my teacher was a little surprised to see the dude in the 3 pieces suit messing with his guitar, so he asked me to fix some of his oddball Japanese instruments. They were really good quality, but they we not at the time usable, so he didn't feel he was risking that much. Everything starts somewhere.

not to mention the stuff he did at Alembic...

I got into building my first guitar just a little over 2 years ago after working on other peoples personal and company instruments for 30+ years and repairing and refinishing my own stash of guitars over the years. Its a never ending learning process and the more of any of it you do, the better. I see so much good advice and access to techniques on the computer than you may ever get from working at a repair shop. If you are searching for a apprentice with a repair shop, be careful who you work for. There are as many bad repair people as there are good ones.
Kent

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