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Hey everyone. I'd like some advice. I'm moving in a year, most likely to an apartment, and would like to start getting involved in repairwork as a way to make extra money while also getting better at working on instruments so I can build better ones later. I'd like to know what services I should offer first. I expect I would have more success with procedures that require minimal tools and space and don't require a whole lot of trust. Would nut replacements and fretwork be a good place to start? If so, what other ideas could I consider? I'm also curious to know from seasoned repairman if there are any rules I could apply to make sure I'm not in over my head right away or general advice for working in small spaces.

Thanks,

Ian

Hi Ian. In your climate you will have opportunities for crack repairs as well because of your winters. That aside set-ups are really the bread and butter of most Luthiers if they have a broad swath of the local music scene and market. Bridge reglues, making nuts/saddles, fret dresses and refrets are all part of it too but less common than set-up's.

Set-ups are also stalking horses for other things since the other things are often the limiting factors to decent set-ups AND it's the "user interface" to the instrument and noticeable at once once completed and done well. Or in other words a very fast way to establish a name for yourself is to provide real, noticeable value and results to your clients and there is no better way to do this than to help them with their musical goals and that's what decent set-ups do.

As Luthiers some of us like to talk about the obscure and more difficult stuff but in my experience with over 1,000 repaired instruments annually that's not what pays the bills, the bread and butter stuff, set-ups, fret work so it can be set-up, nuts, saddles, crack repair are far more common than say neck resets, etc.

There are issues too with working out of your home but that's a different topic.

Ian - Any repairman, ANY REPAIRMAN - lives on setups, new nuts, and fret levels. If you can't do that, forget it. Focus on the neck, get good at it, and you will always have work. That's my meat and potatos, and the source of my worldwide acclaim.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Hey Ian,
In my experience (and struggles), the single most valuable thing when starting out is access to someone who is successful at what you want to do.
There can be a world of difference between methods that work and methods that make money. When learning alone, you"re forced to take tiny manageable risks and then stick the landing, over and over. There is a lot of value from figuring things out on your own but it can be brutally slow.



That's the truth. You simply have to be able to fix the interface between the player and instrument. The rest is just a garnish.

Ian, you have just heard from three of the true professionals on this forum and their advice is spot on. I'll give a slightly different perspective. I am NOT a professional but I have been doing repairs for four or five years now for a local brick and mortar music store. I tend to do lots of repairs that Hesh and Chris and David might not want to take on - the poor little cheap broken things that might not justify the work a pro would charge for. I'm honest with my customers and usually they are pretty happy with what I can do for them.

Some random thoughts.

Setups will be your bread and butter and learn to do them perfectly. Also learn to listen to your customer - what exactly does she want in a setup. A bluegrasser will want a completely different action from a fingerstylest from an electric shredder. Learn to evaluate everything on the guitar before you do anything - it makes absolutely no point to spend 2 hours adjusting the action on a guitar that is badly dehydrated. Learn how each part of the setup interacts with each other - honestly you will make a lot more saddles than nuts.

Learn to do perfect fretwork - both dressing existing frets and replacing them. In my humble opinion you can't do a good setup with bad frets.

I reglue a fair number of loose bridges and fix way too many broken headstocks. I fix a lot of cracks, and I install lots and lots of pickups. I rarely do really invasive work like resetting neck (I send them to the pros) and I make it a point not to do finish repairs. I'm smart enough to turn down anything that I'm not comfortable with, but I try to have an option for my customer.

There are many good references for the work you are going to do but this sits on my workbench all the time

http://www.stewmac.com/How-To/Books/Gui ... Guide.html

As we have discussed in some other threads, I have developed a spreadsheet and a systematic way to evaluate each guitar that helps me talk to the owner about what I think needs to be done. Many of the pros can bypass this, for me it is time well spent.

Freeman, I'd love to see your spreadsheet. Would you be willing to share?

I've been thinking a lot about the subjective nature of set ups. I agree with what you say Freeman, communication is key. But I've been finding a couple challenges with this. First not every person can articulate what they like and don't like in a properly set up guitar, and most of the guitars I get my hands on belong to players that are not specificists when it comes to style, but rather are hobbyist guitarists that like a little bit of everything. Generally they may know what they don't like once something is in their hands but could never direct me from the outset. Secondly, I'm finding many people seem to have a huge aversion to hearing about and understanding what it is I plan to do with their instrument, they just want it "better". This is especially true of the guitars that the music store in town sends to me.

So, should a repair person simply go with what they prefer in a setup when the customer is unable or uninterested in communicating their own preferences?

That's what I should have said!

Ian what Chris said!

Oh no you don't my friend.... . In my view you are a true professional too! You routinely take on the hard stuff and your work is excellent!

If they just want it to play better (subjective term according to each person, I know), I have a set of parameters that I shoot for. What I'd call NORMAL. I want a newbee to be able to pick it up and not have it hurt their fingers, be hard to fret, or rattle if they have a stiff picking wrist. I want a reasonably experienced player to pick it up and say, "That's a good guitar - it has possibilities". The good players know it can be lowered to their individual tastes.

Those parameters are: Light strings - 12's on acoustics, 10's on electrics. A bit of bow in the neck is OK - maybe a 16th measured at the 12th fret with the string held down at the 1st fret and last fret. For acoustics, open string height maybe 1/8th on the bass, 3/16th on the treble. Electrics are 3/16th on the bass, 3/32nd on the treble (plus a smidge).

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

It's a blend of what Mr. or Ms. Customer wants and what you know from experience to be suitable, reliable, and won't come back to haunt you....

For example there are specs for setting up guitars that I use every day. I vary from these specs for things such as a ham fisted player, alternate, slack tuning such as Low C for heavy metal vomit music, etc.

But when you are a Luthier your good name and reputation are on the line. This means that you have to deliver real and noticeable value so that folks have an excellent experience with you AND you have to be open to special needs too.

You will on occasion have a whack job who should be thrown down the stairs and out the door. It's not uncommon in this business. Some people will ask you to compromise your values, skills, and integrity. Don't ever do so. It's possible to be diplomatic in turning business away, we do it every day.

Food for thought. I know hundreds of Luthiers and many of them who work in the trade some having done so for over six decades too.... Many of us agree that the single greatest occupational hazard for Luthiers is trying to be all things to all folks. Some Luthiers never learn this and it's the most common reason for a Lutherie business failing too. If fret work for example is not something that you do well, don't do it..... If you are not set-up to do finishing, don't do it.... One Luthier we know who has a very busy shop in an urban area decided he didn't like certain jobs so his wife suggested he try to not do any of them for a year and see how it goes.

He made more money, had higher client satisfaction and was a happier guy. He now never does the jobs he doesn't like and I think he's doing the right thing for him AND his clients too.

Consider as well that people at times want to "deposit" their "excretions" in your shop because it makes them feel like they're made it someone else's problem. Don't let them. If it not what you like doing and do well turn it away for everyone's sake.

This is also one way of eliminating some instruments being maimed and damaged by folks who may not be up to speed on certain things.

I know a Luthier who screwed up a vintage instrument attempting to have his neck reset learning curve on a paying clients rare instrument. He's out of business now........

Right off the bat...42% humidity. Reliable. NODAK is not a place to mess around with poor humidity control. I live in MPLS and the Trane variety of Aprilaire whole house cranked to the max will not get the humidity to 30%. No, there is nothing wrong with the system. I have to run 3-4 gal a day in a small room just to get to 42.
You would not want to be responsible for a new crack in someone else's guitar...

To put the newbee/non-professional repair day in perspective, here is how I spent mine. Several guitars came into the music store over the holidays - I moved my two building projects out of the way and spent the afternoon working on them.

Firs, a funky old Harmony hollow body. Needs frets badly but the owner doesn't want to put any money into it. One tuner is missing a bushing and they are really odd size (I have a box of old tuners and can buy bushings but I can't find one with a small diameter shaft like this). Oh, count a half hour on line looking, not billable. Can buy tuners for 15 bucks but I talked the owner into a set of SM's on sale for 42, they arrived today so I installed them. Fortunately I have the correct reamer and the screw holes almost match (how often does that happen). Cleaned the gunk off the f/b, polished the frets, shot some contact cleaner into the noisy pots, threw a set of strings on it and set the action to a reasonable level. Total cost, tuners and strings plus one and a half hours labor. I'll play the guitar tonight, its really kind of cool (one advantage of doing repairs is you get to play a lot of guitars).

No name classical with a top crack. Worked some glue into it, clamped between two pieces of UHMW. Cleated the insides. One half hour

Install a K&K pickup and preamp in an Alveraz 12 string. I normally charge an hour for a K&K, with the preamp I'll probably charge 1-1/2 plus a 9 volt battery. I bought the $80 end pin reamer a few years ago, its finally paid for itself.

A really beautiful Larrevee - work order says "guitar is not playing properly,might need some fret work". Actually the guitar is seriously dehydrated - top is flat, neck is overset by almost an 1/8, action is 0.030 to 0.055 and their is actually a hump at the 10th fret. Put two of my heavy duty humidifiers in it, called the owner and told him to read Jean Larrevee's excellent article on humidity and call me in 3 or 4 weeks. Half hour of diagnosis, no charge for labor or the sponges.

Takamine with split saddles - work order says "cut and replace saddle pieces" Action measures 0.090 on the high E and 0.105 on the low, relief is a high 0.016 to 0.018. Call the owner and ask what is really wrong. He says he shaved the saddles and lost some tone and projection and he would like it high again - I tell him that is pretty much "medium" action but I can raise it. He knows how to lower it if I make it too high. Saddles have UST's under them so shimming isn't a possibility (and I don';t like shims). Tell him I'll lower the relief when I make the saddles. No charge for a half hour of farting around plus the call - new saddles will take me about an hour.

Another classical didn't get looked at - customer says it buzzes in the high registers. I need to review my classical setup specs.

These guitars actually somewhat answer a couple of questions posted above - what do I use for setup specs? Well, obviously some folks don't have an opinion and some want something very different that I would like. In general I try to talk to them (like the guy with the Tak, in my opinion it was OK or even slightly high). I come back to my rant that before I do anything I measure everything. Most people want a nice low easy to play but clean action (if I had a dollar for everyone who said "I want it as low as possible without buzzing".... On an acoustic for me that is 0.002 - 4 relief, 0.060 on the high E and 0.090 on the low at 12 and around 0.014 toi 0.018 at the first. I also shoot for next fret clearance of around 0.003 - I'll measure it at the second fret and make sure I have that much all the way up the neck (it will never buzz). A bluegrasser or strummer will get 0.070 to 0.105 or so, I'll start an electric at 60 to 90 and go down if the frets are perfect. For a classical (I'll have to look at my notes)...

I have a lot of these specs as the second tab of my spreadsheet - that way I can easily look them up. I also have a lot of manufacturers specs as well as some people who I know and trust on that tab - again, that lets me talk to my customer as I'm measuring their guitar.

So, for todays work I'll get about four hours of cash and my parts which I don't mark up. Remember when they asked the luthier what he would do if he won the lottery he said "keep building until the money runs out"

Freeman, my (new) friend... I don’t get it that you take mo markup on parts. You DO use time to search for the right parts and order them. That’s valuable specialist’s time to me. So yes, I do apply some markup as a general rule, and I believe you should, pal.

That being said... who am I to call shots on anyone? ;x)

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Pierre Castonguay

Freeman.... mark up your parts! WHY? Because you can always discount them and look like a hero. And seriously, at minimum you need to cover your shipping, etc.

You want your client to make a quick intake of breath, and then say "I can do that". When my clients were saying, "I thought it would be more expensive", I took the hint and raised my prices.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Actually I handle parts in three different ways. I keep a small stash of strings, saddle and nut blanks, things like that that I buy in bulk and get a good price. I mark those up to whatever list would be.

If a part comes from the music store that I contract with I simply install it. Ditto if my customer brings the part and asks for me to install it - an example might be the K&K pickup in the above example. I have kind of a funny attitude if someone brings a part that they purchased on the old internet if I know the store also stocks it - I tend to take a little longer to install it and round my time up instead of down. Same thing doing a setup for a guitar bought off the web if there is one hanging in the store. Or maybe a better way to say that is for customers of the music store I tend to round down.

Third kind of part is something I have to order - the tuners on the old Harmony for example. That is always discussed with the customer before I order and I do cover all my costs - shipping was ten bucks on the tuners, it was included in my bill.

I also don't expect my customers to pay for tools - for the tuners I happen to have three of the different sized peg head reamers (wouldn't it be nice if manufacturers standardized?). And after the first time I installed an end pin jack with a uni-bit I went out and bought the $80 reamer from StewMac. After installing 20 or more jacks with no issues at all I'm glad I made the investment.

Since we are talking about humidity, when I dropped four guitars off as the store this afternoon (including the dry Larrevee) they showed me a little Martin with a crack down the center of the top. I laid my straightedge across the lower bout, showed the clerks that the top was actually sunken, showed them the sponge/baggies in the Larrevee and told them that I'd glue it up in a month or so when it was properly rehydrated.

That’s more like it.

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Pierre Castonguay

Parts and strings, selling them has been problematic for us and continues to be so but we like what we did anyway.

We are not a music store so we have lots of strings because we use them in our work. We don't and won't BTW just restring a guitar. For us to get involved with a restring, which is a bit more then just restringing when we do do it, someone would have had to have us set-up their instrument prior.

Reason(s) being that every day hundreds if not thousands of people approach music stores asking for a restring when the instrument has other issues and client satisfaction will not happen. This sucks time and hurts relationships when something that needs a neck reset is ignorantly requested that it simply be restrung and then the client discovers..... that the action is sky high.

Lately we have been refusing to even sell our string stash at retail unless, again, someone is an established client of ours. For us to stop doing our billable hours for 2 cents of string profit makes no sense so we won't do it. Remember too that single string sales I have to pay a bookkeeper to enter it into QuickBooks and an accountant to pay the sales tax and do the annual return. With all of this in mind we simply decided to turn it all on for our clients and not get caught in the time suck for people who are not our clients.

Regarding parts we have everything expected of a repair facility, pots, bone, screws, pick guards, etc. etc. But we won't stock retail parts like tuners or even bass guitar strings because there are so very many choices and different scale lengths making the idea of universal bass strings impossible.

When someone has a need for a tuner replacement we tell them to source the tuners where ever they wish and either have them drop shipped to us or don't even come here until you have them in hand and then we will flip the instrument in one day or less.

It's freed up our working capital to not have to have an inventory of crap parts that can have no end in sight in terms of the expectations of retail clients.

For the strings that we do sell we mark them up 100% over what we have to pay for them and most people don't care because the alternative is to drive for miles to save a few bucks. Most people understand that we are a repair facility only and once we explain that they seem to understand why we don't want to stock retail items. This is again not attempting to be all things to all folks.

FYI when someone needs a single, broken string we often stop what we are doing and replace the string and call it no charge..... The duality of man....

+1000!
Strings!
Add violins, violas, cellos, upright basses, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 7/8 4/4 sizes of each. Ebony pegs and bridges that must be acclimating in my shop for weeks/ months before they can be fit without issue.

mandolin, banjos, ukuleles, etc. on and on and on.

I remember thinking: "just doing repair will spare me needing capital and managing inventory".
My retirement plan will have to include hocking rolls of fret-wire and specialized reamers on a street corner.


Even if customers do the ordering of parts, they often must be coached on what (exactly!) to get. That often means me disassembling something, putting calipers on it, and checking availability. Usually it's faster for me to just order it myself.

You got it easy Hesh!
They say doing puzzles helps keep your brain young. It's about time you had a real business challenge. I'll bring you one when I come. You may be a toddler by the time I head home.

LOL! You've been there I can tell Dave!

I just reread my earlier post and I don't like my own tone.... I don't want to give the impression that Dave and I sit here in our ivory tower of song and look down on nasty little customers.... Far from it.

We bend over backwards to help people but we both have been around the block too many times to not anticipate many of the issues even before we open a case. For example a 72 D-35 that's never been out of the house and is in for a crack likely needs a neck reset too.

I have this one kid for a client who is a superb player but he likes to change his strings to dramatically different gauges on his L-5 and he plays out performing jazz. He's actually brilliant and I really like the kid but he asks for restrings when we have set his L-5 up before but his set-up is so very on the cusp of workable, very low......low.... action that when we change string tension even a little there goes the set-up. So I have him on time and materials when I restring his stuff and often do most of another set-up because of the string brand and gauge changes. His G*bson.... has a rubber neck too, breath on it and it changes....

Dave the violin world sounds like it sucks worse then the heavy metal vomit guitar world. When you are here there are some big name violin people here including Shar music. You may want to hook up with them too.

Thanks so much for your very helpful responses. I'm getting more helpful information than I could have hoped for and I'm loving all of your anecdotes. So great to learn from people with such awesome experience!

A music store in Carrboro/Chapel Hill, NC had a good idea ~15 years ago and kept a vending machine stocked with sets of strings and picks on their front porch.

Dave Collins thought of this too and we very nearly did it but our building got sold and we no long have dibs on the front porch. But the concept of letting mouse nut, string sales be self serve/struggle appealed greatly to both of us especially the part that they would not have to even come up the two flights of stairs to our shop.

We're in Ann Arbor so maybe we can go in with one of the three medical pot dispensaries within 500 feet of our shop on a community vending machine. It could be stocked with Sour Diesel, rolling papers, Lebanese Red, Maui Wowie and D'Addario.... Slinkies would be a good match too. And one more thing..... er I forgot what I wanted to say.... Every March we have the annual hash bash where thousands come from all over the world to openly smoke pot. It takes me an extra 30 minutes to get into town and out of town because all the driver are going 4 mph and struggling to stay on the road at that speed..... Maybe I could learn a thing or two from them.....

You can get a lot done in even a small apartment with a dedicated spot. When I moved to my new place about 4 years ago I set up a repair spot in a corner of my basement while it took me about a year to build my workshop in a separate building outside. I just had a nice workbench set up with my parrot vice and I was fortunate enough to be able to control the basement environment fairly easily. Some basements can be very damp, this one is not. But anyway I did everything from setups to neck resets. Just make sure you do any heavy sanding outside if you have too and of course finishing too. I had a small portable down draft table which was real nice when it's 5deg outside.