Official Luthiers Forum!

Spot on with the DOS comment. I get it all the time... “XP was just fine, why did we need Windows 7 or Windows 10”

Notice I skipped 8.

Another aspect is that as developers move to newer frameworks that have new features, more secure, current support lifecycle, etc.... the user experience is naturally going to change as UI elements, controls, etc... are all modern (touch friendly, support gestures, etc... all the stuff we like to do with our phones).




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Insta - https://www.instagram.com/cbcguitars/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/cbcguitars

Most often these changes are made for easier maintenance . Did you notice that the new site is responsive? Same site for a cellphone or tablet or pc. I would imagine they had to decide on if they would write an app to keep up with the times. That will be much easier with this style of site.

Some people have given up their laptops and use their phones exclusively to browse the net. It's us luddites who work wood with our hands that still cling to desktops and keyboards.

I am a true luddite that uses a keyboard. I do get what LMI is doing and as a developer know that they had to make changes to make the site maintainable and reactive. They did add good features as well especially the feature that allows the to add a customization to a product.

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http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

jfmckenna - Unfortunately, the "hover menu" creates problems for a lot of customers. We dropped it, as many are these days.
bcombs510 -Email us if you need a copy of an old invoice. The new site will make your order history easier to access and work with than the old site, but the old order history was not moved to the new website.
DennisK -There is only one pop-up on the site, on the front page announcing our Free Shipping program. It will only bug you once per visit. There is a checkbox for getting on our email list (usually no more than 2 emails per month!) when you sign up, but no pop-up.
-Chris

So it is. I guess I ran away before actually reading it

Once per visit is enough to guarantee no visits from me. StewMac has run me off with one of those things as well. But theirs is even worse because it has a pretty long delay on it, so it gets you while you're in the middle of reading something.

For me, I'd have been happy to see the site go more in the direction of McMaster Carr. Now there's a site with pages packed with information.



I don't understand why the LMI site had to go the other way. Was it because of a trend among developers, using boilerplate retail sales front end?

Also, for me, the loss of order history is huge. It was just a database; migrating is a common thing. Stew Mac did it.

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

A joke my wife, a Presbyterian minister, often tells:

Q: How many Presbyterians does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: CHANGE!!!??? My GRANDFATHER put that light bulb in there!

My point is that some folks are just inherently adverse to change, period. You can't please everyone. I think the new website is fine. I had no problem finding things.

Shipping is never, ever free; it can, however, be included in the price. I dislike the fact that calling it free is now synonymous with including it in the price, but it is not LMI's fault that e-commerce has adopted that convention.

It is probably a good thing that LMI has advantageous contracts with one or more of the major shipping companies, and those contracts allow LMI to include shipping in their prices. But that means the math necessary to compete for business is now different for LMI, in a few ways. I look forward to seeing how it works out, particularly for my own purchases.

In pre-web days, LMII's advice was a nice second or third source of information to balance that given in a book or magazine article, or received from a local builder or repair person. Today? It seems to me to be another data point of the hundreds or thousands available, so not likely missed much by those with the ability and desire to run a few web searches.

Beyond that, I like the new look of the site and find myself pleased with the range of choices I have as a consumer.

On pricing and shipping, Mr. Parker makes the most salient of points and one which should be understood by every consumer: there is no such thing as a free lunch. Restated for the case in point, there is no such thing as free shipping or free services...someone, somewhere is footing the bill. To illustrate:

1 x 4" x 8" cam clamp with standard shipping:
LMII: $22.02
Highland Hardware: $24.98
StewMac: $28.91

6 x 4" x 8" cam clamp with standard shipping:
LMII: $132.12 ($22.02/clamp)
Highland Hardware: $114.93 ($19.16/clamp)
StewMac: $109.47 ($18.25/clamp)

It is obvious that LMII is the least expensive option where a single clamp is needed, while StewMac is the least expensive for 6 or more clamps. We prefer Klemmsia brand cam clamps, and for others that do as well, Highland's pricing would be the lowest price from the vendors offering that brand.

The other point to be made (if not done already) is that LMII and Stewmac are specialty vendors with product specialists capable of supporting luthiery-specific applications, so pricing might be expected to be somewhat higher than for commodity vendors. Further, many items used by luthiers have been repurposed for the craft, so are likely available at lower cost in the markets in which they see the most demand and thus support a larger number of possible sources. An example of this is fiberglass rod stock (aka, go-bars), which are used in a number of professional and hobby applications, but ubiquitous in the construction of a very popular toy used world-round: the kite.

The following comparison of pricing between specialty vendors and a primary market vendor was made for 96 x 24" x 0.187" diameter solid fiberglass rods with vinyl end caps (or equivalent...StewMac rods are flat fiberglass rods with larger contact points, so do not employ vinyl caps to reduce stock marking) and standard shipping:

LMII: $460.32 ($4.80/rod)
StewMac: $439.71 ($4.58/rod)
Goodwinds: $140.59 ($1.46/rod)

It can be seen that buying from a vendor operating in one of the primary applications markets is a less expensive proposition, with specialty vendors in the luthiery secondary market more than tripling the cost for the privilege of buying from specialists in that application. In the case of the LMII and Goodwinds items, this is an identical item, while the Stewmac go-bar is of identical material and functionally similar, but differs slightly in configuration. It is a question for the individual consumer as to whether the application-specific support received from the specialty vendor is worth that additional markup.

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

Being opposed to changes that result in an inferior less useful product doesn't mean a person is "adverse to change, period".

By inferior less useful product, I'm referring specifically to the pages on the new LMI site that cover items like purfling, saddle blanks, nut blanks, fret wire, tuners, binding, shell inlay dots, fingerboards, and others that used to have concise lists on a single page with all of the information needed to make a purchase on that one page.

How the new pages that cover those items can be seen as an improvement over the old site's pages is beyond me. Maybe for those who get some special joy from clicking their mouse a lot or get some sort of thrill out of having to navigate back and forth between multiple pages lots of times it's a good thing. I'm very intolerant of having my time wasted (unless of course it's by my own choice ) and the design of the new pages I'm referring to does exactly that.

For other areas, I think the changes are fine. The pages devoted to tools, supplies, and finishing, for example, work nicely.

Btw, for anyone who might be interested in directly comparing the old and the new versions of the pages I mention above, you can see the old website here: https://web.archive.org/web/20180831034616/http://www.lmii.com/.
The pages load a little slow but you can see for yourself how much different they are in usability.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

I wasn’t referring to anyone in particular, Jay, and didn’t mean to offend. Certainly, if there are specific things about the new website that you feel can be improved, and if enough customers agree with you, then LMI will have a good incentive to make it more like it was before. But, in general, there will always be some folks unhappy, no matter how well it is designed. It’s just the nature of things.

No worries and no offense taken. I just want to be sure not to be associated with stick in the mud types who can't or won't see new and improved when it actually is new and improved.

I had the misfortune of working for about five years with an fanatical MS-DOS stick in the mud guy who had control over computer and software decisions long after DOS had passed it's expiration date. Very frustrating for all of us who were held back from using better options by him. So I do have an appreciation for change for the better.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

For us Canadian customers, it appears the "free" US shipping is built into the price increases as noted above, then we get dinged with the full International shipping cost....

I have been reminded that I neglected to add the cost of Goodwinds cutting the 48 pieces of 48" rod stock into 24" lengths. Totally my fault.

That adds $0.00 to the cost of each Goodwinds go-bar, as trimming to length is included in the cost of the material...just request that it be done when ordering.

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

I used to use Cardinal Luthier Lac BUT with a 33% increase in price I no longer will.They can say what they want about prices not being that bad and free shipping but they lost me as a customer after comparing prices to what i was paying.

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"I've been had again"
Tim Benware
Creedmoor, NC

In this modern "information age" it would seem like a company could offer both the new format and the old and allow the user to select the one they prefer with the click of a button. Obviously it would require updating two "catalogs" when changes are made, but may pay off in the long run.

I think it’s an upgrade. I don’t mind a few extra $ to cover shipping, I was going to pay it anyway (in shipping).


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I just paid for a year of free shipping from StewMac and now this. WTH. Until my free subscription runs out, you know where I'll be spending my dough. After that, I'll be considering LMI.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Well, StewMac doesn't have everything.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

These new type of sites are annoying in that you can't just look at a whole bunch of stuff on one page to see what you might want. For example, I just bought a thermal coupler. Instead of going to the bending page or bending machine page, I had to click through four pages and scroll down each one and sometimes I would miss the page-turning click because there's so much stuff at the bottom of the page (footers?) and I would have to scroll back up to turn the page. It ended up being the very last item. I could have just searched for that item in the search bar, but I prefer to browse by category to see if there is something that might work better or maybe a new item that I didn't know about. It's just much easier to glance down a single page seeing what's available with the cost right next to it.

No worries, because I knew exactly what I wanted. But as far as surfing around looking at cool stuff to buy that I didn't know that I needed, that is probably not going to be happening on this site.

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Pat

Isn't part of the Stew Mac membership also a discount on pretty much all items though?

Late to the party, but I have to agree with all others who believe that certain aspects of this upgrade have been poorly executed.

I don’t want to be forced to scroll through 4 pages of purfling to find what I need. What’s worse is that while doing so, the photographs are essentially worthless for differentiating these products and LMI has buried the specs for each such that you have to click “view product” for each similar type of purfling to get the actual specs. Super annoying. Same for nuts, saddles, and fretwire.

I’m not saying the old single page model was perfect. But I am saying there is a much more logical and user friendly way to group these types of items that would allow the user to quickly get to where they need to be without having to scroll though 4 pages of items that look nearly identical except for a few thousands difference here or there.

The new layout works much better than the old for some products, like tools, wood, and finish where I like to see individual photos of LMI’s offerings. But I think LMI’s customers, old and new, will find it much more difficult to locate and order the aforementioned products than before. And, recalling what it was like when I was starting out, LMI has done all prospective/newbie builders, as well as itself from a sales prospective, a huge disservice by omitting, for example, the information providing a brief summary of when and where certain fretwire is typically used. Tell me wire X is the standard at the top of page one so I don’t have to feel may way around in the dark until I, hopefully, stumble on it when clicking “view product” for every product and scrolling down to the product description. This seems straightforward and logical to me. Google “choice overload” sometime. Experience tells me that web designers often have little to no marking skills. It seems like the tail maybe wagging the dog a bit here.

New doesn’t necessarily mean better. LMI, I salute you for attempting modernize its webpage, but you’re not quite there yet. Please don’t stop improving.


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Aaron Craig

While there are some specials for StewMax members, the StewMac Wholesale Program replaced an earlier discount program earlier this year, and is separate from any other discounts. A minimum $2500/year and status as a business is required for the wholesale program. We paid our StewMax membership with the discount on a single set of Schertler tuners, and those discounts apply to most of the recurring purchases we make, to include nut and saddle blanks, bridge pins, most tuners (Waverly, Sloane, Schertler, Grover, Gotoh, etc.), and a few other items (700+ at last tally).

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan