Official Luthiers Forum!

My sister just bought 2 guitars with the intention of keeping the one I approved and sending back the other. One of these was a fairly expensive guitar, you know the ones with bolt on neck and reputation for great action and the other, a $600 Yamaha. I couldn't believe how bad the action was on the expensive one that begins with a T. It sounded better than the Yamaha but needed immediate shim change neck reset. She is very happy with the Yamaha witch plays really well all the way up the neck and has a cutaway, built in tuner and over all prettier guitar.

Why can a guitar with a set neck, that came from over seas, have better action than the 3x more expensive US model? I don't get it.

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Hutch

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

the Taylor can be reset in about 20 min your yamaha will have to be pulled

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

That may be true if you know how and have access to the shims. I had one and when I decided it need adjustment under warranty, I brought it to a local well known guitar repair service. He wanted to charge a lot more than Taylor would reimburse him so I said forget it and sold the guitar, I really didn't like it much anyway. If it's that easy, I don't understand why they would sell them brand new off the shelf with bad action. I feel like a GC repair guy would just reduce the size of the saddle and say here you go.

Anyway, I told my sister how to take care of the Yamaha and I don't think it will ever be a problem in her lifetime.

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Hutch

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

I can make my own shims for Taylor with it being new that should have been in better shape I agree. I been resetting necks for over 20 yrs
the shims are not that difficult to make but you are right the store should be taking better care of their guitars. I have seen so many good guitars at guitar center in dire condition because of lack of RH control

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

The user interface to the instrument is indeed "paramount" and it is this set-up and all things related, fret work, nuts, saddles, relief, neck angles etc. that rarely seems to be what people here on this forum are interested in discussing. It has to do with what one's view of a guitar exactly is. Many here seem to see them as woodworking projects when others see them as I do as tools for musicians.

One of the most rewarding things I have ever done is to listen to people rave about how their guitar is vastly improved over the poor set-up that came from the f*ctory.

Most f*ctories do not set them up or set them up well. They depend on the ole Mom and Pop local dealers to do that and we all know what happened to the Mommas and the Poppas music stores.

And many aspiring Luthiers tend to look down their noses at set-ups and instead target more difficult things, neck resets, fret work, restoration as their benchmark for their worthiness to call themselves Luthiers.

We do it all and I will add that 55% of our revenue is from the set-ups that we do. I do about 4 or more a day in addition to the other things I do which yesterday was a fret dress on a 72 black Lester that someone who should have stuck to repairing their brakes refretted before we got the thing. But I digress.

So Sarge yes set-ups are VERY important and thank you for pointing this out. You can't play that radial rosette or sound like Robben Ford because of the inlay....

I've always sort of lamented when walking into the climate/RH controlled Guitar Center acoustic room....only to pick up instruments that were never correctly set up in the first place. Kind of sad to have all that control and then not bother making the instruments playable.

When I was in So CAL there was McCabes. If you walked in there all the guitars were set up. In Spokane it was Dutchers.

I'm guessing (lol)....but the shops that have WELL setup and playable guitars sell more of them.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

[quote="Hesh"]The user interface to the instrument is indeed "paramount" and it is this set-up and all things related, fret work, nuts, saddles, relief, neck angles etc. that rarely seems to be what people here on this forum are interested in discussing. It has to do with what one's view of a guitar exactly is. Many here seem to see them as woodworking projects when others see them as I do as tools for musicians.

One of the most rewarding things I have ever done is to listen to people rave about how their guitar is vastly improved over the poor set-up that came from the f*ctory.

Nearly everything I've ever done related to guitars was focused on play-abilty. I have deft and delicate hands. The instant I pick up a guitar the action is the focus.

I had a boss once that told me "you win when they open the box and look at it when it's new"....from there you can only screw up that relationship. It either plays right out of the box or your initial impression gets overrun. He made propellers so you'll have to sort of grock that....but yes....you first win (maybe) with the first visual impression....and then lose that good will if you can't hold that impression through the performance of the item. I don't think it matters what the item is...the principle will always apply. Some spatulas look nice on the shelf...but they don't work and just you throw them away (I didn't need this analogy for further persuasion - I just did it anyway).

It would be nice if all had our own showrooms and could control everything about our presentations. Then you'd know who the good builders are...right quick I imagine.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

The interface sure does matter. 90% of my work is setups and probably half of them are new, or at least new to the owner. I have several clients that when they get a new guitar they just bring it to me for a full setup.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Very true the impression after the first date matters AND can be vey profitable too.

Steve I'm going to share this with Dave you will make his day and you just made mine! Great to see you putting this stuff to great use for others and yourself.

I used to do setups for a local store. The low-end factories they dealt with would ship the guitars with no tension on either the rod or the strings. The store would tighten the strings up and hang them on the wall. They often came back a year later or less with 1/4" action at the 12th fret and a neck that looked like the back of an old hoss.

I offered to show the help at the store how to do simple basic setups. The boss couldn't get past the fact that it would take a half hour or forty five minutes per guitar. Most days, of course, most of the help sat around a lot of the time anyway and played the guitars, so it would not have cost him anything. I did get to show one or two of the guys, and they'd take the time to set up the ones that looked most interesting. The problem, as one of them said, was that when they did, those guitars sold very quickly, so they never got the chance to play them. Again, the boss was aware of all of this, but didn't seem able to connect the dots. He came in from the wholesale end of the business, took over a thriving local store, and ran it into the ground in a few years.

Hi Hesh. Hard to believe its been 5 years, that setup class was in spring 2016, you and Dave showed me how to take my setups and fret jobs to a new level. Tell Dave I said Hi!

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

We have a client who until recently would go to the Heritage f*ctory and hand pick the best of the lots and then bring them to us for set-ups. He would advertise that his stuff was professionally set-up by Ann Arbor Guitars and would use our name with our permission. He always sold out right away and this just further underscored that the value-add of a quality, professional set-up not only sells more guitars it also inspires confidence in buyers that things have been checked and rechecked beyond the capabilities of a f*ctory on the other side of the planet.

Music stores are inherently cheap and being privately held the principals often see every dime that leaves their store as coming right out of their pocket. Ernie and I have discussed this at length. Although there is some truth to this there is also the idea of having vision and confidence in one's own presentation of their wares and how they are received by the market.

After I retired from corporate America I made my living for a few years consulting with mom and pop stores in small chains as to how they can have a parasitic... relationship with the marketing spend of their Internet competition. I believed in my mind and heart that people WANT to buy from people and not a web site.

So although I never approached small music store owners it's my belief that they can do better in how they present their instruments/wares and that even though this may cost a bit more in the long run not only will we all be dead but they will sell more guitars before they are dead Please note reference to Keynes quotation.

So yes Al this was a missed opportunity for that store.

Has it been five years, wow! Well I'm doing what you are Steve and enjoying the hell out of Lutherie every day and seeing this as my retirement gig. I start Medicare next month

I'll let Dave know he will be very pleased to know you took this to your own levels and are having a good time too.

I don't think it is surprising that many factory guitars come into the stores poorly set up. Many responsive guitars "move" and settle in over a couple of weeks - more time than the factory wants them to be there. The other end of J.I.T. is Ship it!

How much can someone legitimately charge for twenty minutes running bolts in and out and a set of shims?

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Peter Havriluk

There's also a possible string change though I've found ways to work around that.

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Hutch

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

One of the shops I used to work for sold T guitars and while I was never a big fan of them tone wise they were always the ones that were best set up from the factory. So I'm thinking that one was just mistreated or something. They also sold Yamaha guitars too and those always impressed me. I certainly gave Yamaha the best bang for the buck award. I would also add that Yamaha, as popular as they are, is probably the least brand of guitar I see come in for repair. So they are doing something right.

I used to sell Yamaha gear at a music store, and I remember thinking how weird it was for the rep to brag that the drum hardware was cast in the same place that the motor cycle parts were. Like shouldn't your instrument brand be exclusively musical, and stay separate from the other stuff. Then I realized, Yamaha doesn't make anything bad. Their brand isn't concerned with anything other than being affordable and excellent in whatever sphere it finds itself.

When I was a kid I had a set of Yamaha snow skis. It really is amazing how broad they reached out. The Japanese were really unmatched in quality. It was part of their culture.

I remember when "Made in Japan" was a sign of poor quality but then they turned it around big time in the late 60's.

The one thing that annoys me the most about factory setups is how crazy high the action at the nut can be. Had one expensive one the other day where the height at the nut wad 5/64. And that thing wad tagged at 4.5k.

Ok I took delivery of this Tele yesterday as a personal guitar, another one and because I didn't have a Tele I wanted one.

Here's how it came out of the box from a national reseller and this is not at all criticism or intended to be it is an honest to God, real life and real time example of what a guitar purchaser experienced today/yesterday.

Neck had zero relief and every note on the high E an B had a metallic tone to it. Had to add relief just to play it....

Nut slots are a mile high causing unnecessary string stretch and messing with the intonation.

Action is all over the place with the high E being 3/64th" and the B being 5/64th"......

Now I expect this. Hey I paid off my mortgage in 2.5 years and Dave just bought a new house on 5 acres because these guitar sellers can't.... or won't set up a guitar decently so I'm not complaining.

My routine (I collect guitars these days) is to let it settle in for a week in it's new 45% RH home and give it some time to get to know it's new siblings in the "burst room" where she will live and then I will set it up. Having set up thousands of new guitars (I live for metrics and am constantly measuring output and myself, I can't stop....) I expect there to be more that is simply not as it should be for a $1,500 instrument. The jack will be loose, wood will have compressed making the tuners not snug, pups will be not balanced, etc.

So all this is offered to show you how and why there are four more guitars waiting for me this morning that came in yesterday afternoon for set-ups. Half of them are new Dave said and this is a regular thing for us. Many of our clients bring us their new guitar right away just knowing that the f*ctory set-up will suck.

Now builders this is an opportunity for you. I kept a keen eye on Martin when I was building for build quality comparrassion but you have an opportunity to make your stuff play like butter and aid the bonding process with prospects. After all if you sell your stuff it really should be superior to a f*ctory guitar in most if not all ways, that's my benchmark past and present and it was not very hard to achieve either....... sadly.

Drooling! I like the guitar and the bench.

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Hutch

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

Nice Tele, Hesh. Another thing I check on "factory fresh" guitars is the tuning machines. Many times they are finger tight or even looser...

Decades ago when my shop was in a large local store, I would let new stuff sit for a week to acclimate to the local humidity and barometric pressure before doing setups. I could spend an afternoon going through them, and soon they'd be jumping off the wall or the ranks of guitar stands. I didn't charge much for the initial setup.

The store owner KNEW his sales were better because I was there. He offered any buyer a free setup with every purchase, too - and I charged the store for the service.

Another local store kept bugging me to do setups on new stuff up until recently. I got tired of doing uke setups, so I offered to train his staff on setups and suggested some tools to buy for the job. He popped for 2 sets of tools, and I spent a couple afternoons giving lessons as I'd train a couple employees . I'd do the first one, and in a couple hours they'd all done at least one and gotten a new skill. It was worth it to me to teach some new bloods and it freed me up to do work I that gave me more satisfaction.

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