Official Luthiers Forum!

Had one last week that wanted me to remove the frets from his P-Bass from the 12th on up because he was SURE that was causing the buzz on the E string at the 6th fret. (WTH? - Not possible!)

It was a loose screw on his bridge saddle resonating at B flat.

I made him buy me lunch.

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

1st post here!! One day an old timer came in with his female couterpart. After I asked if they need any assistance or questions I left them alone to browse but kept an open ear to their conversation. The old timer goes on to describe an Ibanez RG series guitar that we have hanging on the wall behind me. He goes on to describe relevant things like rosewood blah,blah,blah but when he gets to the trem system he called it a "wobble stick"!! I almost crapped myself and had to back to my shop to laugh it off! Wobble stick! Flash forward 5 years later, I'm in Tulsa visiting my father. I always go through the employment pages of the local newspaper when I stay there to see what the job market is like. As I read through the help wanted section I read an advertisement for some one wanted that could drive some sort of tractor or heavy equipment and in the ad it stated "must be familiar with wobble sticks"!! I fell out again, due to my overactive imagination! All I could see in my head were farmers going crazy with their wobble stick equiped Ibanez RG guitars! Ive got too many after 35 years of music store.

Lou - welcome to the OLF.

I've been working on trem systems with vibrato arms since the late 70's. I've heard them called wobble sticks, wiggle sticks, whammy bars, flipsticks, gear shifter, bomber bars, dumper bars, even screaming bars. I've probably forgotten some of them I've heard through the decades.

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

Welcome Lou!


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Welcome Brent!

Just had a guy email to say the soundboard has come away from the sides on his dread - but he insists on watching me fix it so he can “learn how it’s done”…

Here's what I used to tell them.
"Not only NO, but HELL NO!".

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

Sound advice Chris! Passed on the job anyhow once I saw it. Wide open side crack from upper bout to end pin, old and full of dirt, missing wood and a significant amount of dried CA from a failed home repair. Didn’t seem like a good way to end the week.

Guy today walked in and said “my guitar is broken, I need a lutheran.” That count?

Perhaps these were two separate statements?

why rout and fill such a wide section just to convert to lefty?



oh…

Did it used to have an adjustable bridge?

I think you’re right, it must have been. My first thought was that it was screwed down but adjustable bridge makes more sense.

Also, I just realized I posted this in the wrong thread, meant to start a new one. Sorry!


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I'm going to mae a separate thread on this asking for some advice on the actual repair, but here's one thats appropriate for a dumb stuff thread:

Today I had a customer that wanted to bring in his daily player, a 00-size acoustic, for a setup. He threw it in the back of his truck under a black vinyl truck bed cover. Then decided to stop off on the way and park in the blazing summer sun for a for a few hours.

When he finally arrived at the shop he handed me the guitar case and alarm bells rang in my head when it was almost uncomfortably hot to the touch. We opened it together and found his 00 no longer had its bridge attached. "Well," I told him, as he stood there hyperventilating slightly, "I'm afraid this is going to be a kinda expensive set up..."

His loss, your gain.

Definitely a good example of glued surfaces yielding to external stresses of heat and tension. Josh can make it playable again, so well that no one would ever know it was once broken.

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

Just had a fella call up to enquire if I could replace the bridge on his Martin “Fearnought”.

not an Englishman I suppose…


Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

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Pierre Castonguay

That's what Ov*tion called their dr*adnoughts "fearnaughts" because when we Loofiers (attribution to the Padma) see an Ov*tion coming we run like hell, pull down the shades and lock the doors to keep them out. It's like an invasion of the White Walkers on GOT.

I remember a guy coming in the shop and looking around while I changed the strings on his kid's guitar, and he finally said, "So you're a woodworker. How much to build my wife some new kitchen cabinets?".

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

Another time a kid who had just got signed to a small metal label walked in with a grand burning a hole in his pocket, and wanted me to drop everything and build him a new guitar RIGHT NOW. It took me over an hour to run him off, explaining that a grand would make a nice down payment, I'd have to order some parts, and besides - see all those guitars hanging on the wall? They are AHEAD of you. He threatened to never return, and he was going to badmouth me all over town. I didn't miss him, and my business continued unabated....

Had some clod come in once with a Harmony Broadway that must have been floating in a flooded basement for a couple months. The finish was gone, the neck was loose, and the top and bottom were clapping on the ribs like castenets. He insisted it was a Fender L-5 that had been in his family for decades and that Johnny Cash used to play it on his TV show. It did no good for me to point out that Gibson made L-5's, and this wasn't an L5. He wanted it completely restored, so I told him how many thousands it was going to be, and he could pick it up in a year. His face fell, and then he said flatly, "You can keep it". I had my apprentice glue it back together and get it running before selling it to a student as a beginner guitar.

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

I had a caller tell me that they had been banned from Elderly Instruments repair department so I told them where they could go and that they were banned with us too. I went on to say we are friends with our colleagues at Elderly and if they thought you suck I'm sure you do

So I got a bad review for that one and then I went against the grain and did what you are not supposed to do and that is attack the reviewer..... I told the story just as I have here what he said and how I refused him service over it. That review has become famous and dozens and dozens of our clients have said that they knew we were the place to go because we told the fool to stuff it.

Go figure.

A fella came in last week with a mid 70s p-bass, finish in terrible condition peeling off in chunks. Although for many that paint job was priceless “mojo”, the owner wanted “nothing less than a full restoration”, a total respray of neck and body so that it looked brand new.

Ok man, I told him. But before we worry about the paint we gotta address this neck, it’s bent so much you could use it for archery and the truss rod has busted right through the fingerboard at the first fret.

“No thanks,” he says, “just the respray and buff to the best gloss possible.”

But it will be completely unplayable, I tell him.

“Unplayable??!,” he cries. “I don’t intend to play it!”

Hesh just for a laugh I went to have a look at your customer reviews, sorted them by “lowest first” and spent an enjoyable couple of minutes reading your response to this person and a couple other malcontents and troublemakers.

Yeah I actually enjoy responding to those. We had never had a single bad review or less than 5 stars until we got attacked by a Facebook group over politics and something my business partner posted on his Facebook page. People objected to his post and made up over 35 fake reviews. These fools had never been to Michigan let alone been our clients. Many of you here heard about this some years back and offered countering reviews and that helped us a LOT!!! We are still very grateful especially to a few here who helped us and likely did not like use very much either. That meant a lot to us, thank you again folks.

Anyway I would go into the shop and the answering machine had death threats on it for two weeks every morning. One caller wanted help removing the chip that Obama installed in his head or so he said. I wanted to suggest to them that it's an opportunity for free WiFi is you know the password to your chip. Not getting political just stating a fact, what the callers said to us on the messages. Police were involved and Facebook eventually shut this group down and considered it a hate group. But it took them over a year to pull their finger out.....

After our business was threatened and attacked by dozens our business levels immediately increased from the exposure I measured nearly 40% and that bump was durable and persisted for the most part.

So if there is one take away from my comments here it is that even when a customer is unreasonable it may be an opportunity. An opportunity to stay the hell away from them and send them packing.

I was reminded of some other old stories.....

When I first opened my shop in a local music store, the store was initially not very big. We were located in the very middle of this tiny little strip center on a main thoroughfare between a couple of other stores. We opened at 10AM every day. I got there early along with another service guy and let myself in the front door. A couple rough looking characters were sitting out front in an old Chevy, waiting on the OPEN sign to be displayed.

The salesman (Jimmy) that morning was running late, and showed up about 2 minutes late. He hurriedly unlocked the door, slid the sign to OPEN, and stepped behind the cash register just as the two fellows came in the door. They looked around a couple seconds, stepped to the counter and the biggest one laid a silvery .38 revolver on the glass. "How much will you gimme?" Jimmy's eyes were big as saucers and he was shaking in his boots. "All of it, man. All of it" and began pulling bills out of the register.

The other service guy and I were standing in his shop just off the sales floor observing the fun. I cleared my throat and loudly said, "The pawn shop is next door, guys". "OH!" said the big fellow, who grabbed the pistol and spun on his heel to head for the door. Jimmy was still shaking 10 minutes after they left.

Another time a guy came in and looked around a bit, finally asking "You guys got any minnow buckets?" Jimmy (again), "No, this is a music store. The pawn shop is next door". "OH. I thought you had an awful lot of gee-tars!".

We had a new UPS guy tell a customer we were screwing him over. He thought we were offering too little for the guys beat-to-crap Les Paul. The store owner called the UPS office and reported him as soon as he left. We never saw him again.

A couple years later we moved into a much larger building - super nice. It used to be an auto parts store, and the first year it wasn't unusual for guys to come in with brake drums to be turned, or looking for sparkplugs.

By the way - the store was called MILLER MUSIC. We had guys come up to the counter and order a beer.

Never a dull moment in the retail music business, I tell ya.

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