Official Luthiers Forum!

I have always just printed out care information but I'd like to get a bit more fancy about it and print a nice maybe even folded card that fits in the case with care instructions. Does anyone already have something like that designed up in Word or some other publishing software? I know there is a certain personal nature to this and of course I would change anything as necessary and add to it as needed. But I generally suck at design stuff like that and would love it if there was a template out there.

I have nothing for you, but it's a darn good idea. Wish I had thought of it.

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

MS Word has a bunch of templates to use. There also tons available on net.

That's a great idea Jim. Larrivée has a great PDF about care, with special emphasis on maintaining correct RH and details about what might occur to the guitar if it dries out or gets too "wet".

We might get some inspiration from this document as far as contents goes.


Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

_________________
Pierre Castonguay

Here's a link to Larrivée's document. Not suggesting anyone should copy it, because it obviously belongs to them. I'm just saying it strikes me as a particularly well-written and designed piece of work. I've never seen any other maker offering anything this well-made.

https://www.larrivee.com/pdfs/Larrivee% ... enance.pdf

I know it does not answer Jim's question, but we could find some inspiration in this so I wanted to share.


Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

_________________
Pierre Castonguay

I wrote one up and used it for a while. I intended it to be a concise card but it ended up as a pamphlet once I’d included all the usual stuff about extremes of humidity, heat yada yada as well as warranty info etc.

In addition to the care instructions I also had a technical info section that contained everything I could think of that would help a future luthier who was working on the instrument. I listed out the species for every wooden component, listed what type of adhesive was used anywhere two parts were stuck together, part numbers for fretwire, tuners etc, bridge pin taper, neck joint construction details including spec for bolts and wrench required for neck itself, and for truss rod. Nothing earth shattering but I hoped it would save someone a few minutes.

I also listed all the outgoing setup specs for the instrument as delivered to the customer, including neck-angle stuff like string height over soundboard. The idea was to give the future luthier a data point to evaluate the geometry they were seeing vs where it started, and how long the change took. Never received any feedback on it from either owners or other luthiers so not sure whether it was actually useful to anyone.

Thanks y'all. Yeah probably too much info to fit on a simple card.

If it's a cool guitar and the work went well I throw my business card in the case. It it sucked and I never want to see it again I throw Dave's card in there.

He caught me doing this once and the next week there was a Ov*tion that he took in for me to work on on my bench...... Payback sucks.

Nice one Dave!

_________________
The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.