Official Luthiers Forum!

This guitar was obviously not built from scratch. No one would put pickup cavities or holes for controls that aren't going to be there, then fill them in. This was put together from pre-made body. Hopefully this is not someone from this forum, but I would be embarrassed to send that out from my shop and try to pass it off as custom built. I also don't know what type of finish this has, but I would not use any sort of wood filler under a translucent/transparent finish, if the hole or blemish is big enough to need wood filler, the body should be re-built IMO. It will never look right because there is no way to perfectly match wood filler to the wood. I am curious to know what you paid for this guitar.

Since you named the builder I think we need some more information.

Did you change your order when the guitar was being built? Did you decide on the pickup arrangement before he routed the body?

Did he fill the entire cavity with wood filler or did he insert a wood plug and fill around that? Is what you are seeing a line around the cavity or is the entire cavity sunk in?

Personally if I were in your shoes, I would want to know how he planned on making it right. What would he do to fill it? He offered another guitar in its place. With no refund on the table at this point, I would either send your back for repair or take the more expensive one he had offered. Then at least you would have a guitar for your money. You could always sell it. Ask for some detailed pics.

Don't drastically change the guitar before he gets a chace to fix it. You will be putting yourself in muddy waters at that point.

I built the guitar in question, and it has just come to my attention that this thread has was started.

First of all, the shape and design of this guitar is mine and mine alone. There are luthiers who will claim not to have used any filler on a "painted" guitar. I have built many with minimal or no filler. This particular customer wanted an unusual setup (no neck pickup and no controls) This required using a bondo type filler to modify my current design.

I did not say "the filler gave the guitar its own tone, due to the filler", what I
said was that the filler did not have any negative consequences to the tone of
this guitar. The customer had admited he was pleased with the instruments sound, and I was trying to convey the simple fact that if the guitar had been made any other way, the guitar might not sound as good... you could not have asked for any better results for this instruments tone and sustain.

The guitar when it left my shop did not have any sinking in the finish. The pictures of it are here: "http://www.zsthomas.com/no15.html"


Some sinking occured in the finish, and I offered to fix the problem free of charge. The customer declined. I offered to exchange it for a more valuable instrument, one that I have in stock that has no filler in it. The customer declined that offer as well.

I offer a straight forward legitimate service to my customers at an affordable price. My guitars are original, they're unique and they're high quality. I'm proud of the work I do, and I will maintain that you can't find a better guitar for your money, at this price range, anywhere.

Hi Quigs,
Welcome to the OLF, I just wanted to remind you that the OLF is not to be used as a personal platform to work out these types of problems.
I have removed the persons name in your thread, he is welcome to remove
his name from his thread.

Please do not take this as a smack, it's not, but rather I welcome you to our community!


LanceK

First of all, the shape and design of this guitar is mine and mine alone. There are luthiers who will claim not to have used any filler on a "painted" guitar. I have built many with minimal or no filler. This particular customer wanted an unusual setup (no neck pickup and no controls) This required using a bondo type filler to modify my current design.

This particular customer wanted an unusual setup

That´s the whole point of custom guitars! Otherwise you would just get an “off the shelf” ax!

True, but it must also be pointed out that the original poster wanted the rock bottom price. He states that he passed on the original price, forcing the luthier to either forgo the sale (which I would have done) or find some other means of producing a guitar that was worth less money, and therefore less effort. It apparently wasn't worth the money to the builder to make a complete body from scratch, when he seems to have had a finished body already in his shop that he just wanted to complete and get out of his shop and recoup something for for his time and money, and give a good price on in the process. IF I were to have done this, I would have stated beforehand to the customer how the body was going to be produced to meet the price point. This may have been done, but we don't know.

I state again, you usually get what you pay for. If someone says they want a custom guitar but all they seem to really care about is the price, I tell them the same thing. If they want a guitar cheaper than what I'm willing to build, I tell them if they can find one for substantially less, corners will most likely be cut somewhere.

The builder does seem to take pride in his work, and from what I've seen, seems able to produce a quality instrument when it's made worth his while.

I don't think we got the full story.

Sense? I think it makes NO sense to send back a guitar without any sort of refund!? Now you have no money AND nothing to show for it.
Chris