Official Luthiers Forum!

Hey Hesh! Thanks bro! Yep still kicking! lol

The sad truth is that that are some hacks that believe their guitars are top notch. Please don’t take offense as none is intended but I’m speaking of facts. This year marks my 20th anniversary of guitar building. I still remember when I built number 7. Camatillo Rosewood. What a beautiful guitar. Sent LMI some pictures and they used it on their catalog. I sure was proud. Then I took it over to my buddy Kevin Ryan. Of course he didn’t say anything negative but I could see by comparison. Nowhere near what I thought it was nor anywhere near what people told me. Everyone said it was a work of art and got me convinced.
Well, I knew at that point what to strive for.

My point being that lots of people don’t have the chops, and others haven’t perfected their craft. But everyone encourages them especially online where you can’t feel the action, hear the sound or see all the mistakes you thought was acceptable.
You should sell them they say. However they don’t speak from experience on the matter. I have met a few people that got turned off to hand builds a because of the crap they received, they rather buy a Martin or a Taylor because they know exactly what to expect.

Look at some of the beginners websites. See how they describe their instruments. They talk about tone, projection, articulation and quality. Some are accurate but others are far from it.

Even on some Facebook groups very little constructive criticism is given. Everything is great job, well done, congratulations. What good does that do? I see gaps, stains, dents, file marks, off center necks and worse and no one points it out? I’m sorry but that doesn’t help in the long run.

You’re selling your guitars? Good for you and I wish you well.
Is there a problem on them you hope it’ll slide? Is there something you wish it wasn’t there? Do you keep having the same issue on every guitar? Hump at the 14th fret maybe?
If it’s the case imo it’s not ready for sale.

My opinion is, work on perfecting your craft before you have your flaws representing your brand.

I’ve been doing this as my full time job for 5 years now. It’s my only source of income. Took me 15 years to get there.

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Peter M.
Cornerstone Guitars
http://www.cornerstoneukes.com

I think you should judge your guitars harshly and price them for what they are, not what you’re trying to get them to be, starting out. I sold a good number of my first 50 guitars as b-stock, and as long as you point out the flaws beforehand and explain the reason for the pricing, there’s a lot of people who won’t care about gaps in the bindings/rosette or a 14 fret hump (no one plays there anyway), as long as it sounds decent and plays well.

In fact I think if you’re intent on doing it for a living, you HAVE to sell imperfect guitars. You can’t just fill up the shed until you’re a ‘master luthier’. But you also have to take the rose lenses off and price according to what you are actually producing. I’m in agreement that there’s a lot of overpriced guitars out there.

But to answer your question more directly, it means high stress and low pay and the loss of an enjoyable hobby.., but also a great deal of satisfaction knowing that I’m giving people access to a type of quality instrument that they normally would not be able to afford. And I’m just getting started!

I don’t understand getting hung up on the term “luthier”. I know a lot of “hunters”, none are shooting deer for a living.

I personally dislike the, “I don’t need to know nuthun the Good Lord don’t show me” culture. “Guts”, “gumption”, “grit”, or any other 50’s “G” word is no substitute for the methods decades or even centuries of our forefathers worked out and passed on. At least in my experience.

But these are separate topics. “Luthier”, to me, doesn’t imply any expertise; just an activity. “Surfer”, “spelunker”, “runner”, “gardener”, “woodworker”, “baker”, etc… I know people who call themselves each of those things. Kudos to Europe for having a system for identifying those craftsmen who have put in the time to learn a trade as opposed to those who watched a YouTube and Intagrammed their first effort. But nothing about the term “luthier” seems at odds with that.


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I like to think that the label does imply a level of adequate experience. Just like in carpentry, you can't call yourself a "carpenter" until you pass the test for master level. Before then you are just an apprentice or a journeyman, according to union rules. Surely guitar making should be held to at least that high of a standard.

Call me anything you want, just don’t call me late for dinner…


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Lols. I said that to the rec site operator at Box Lake on Thursday and he laughed and then lent me his canoe…

If you say that the term luthier doesn’t mean anything to you then I strongly disagree. You build a few guitars, get a website and list your instruments for sale and most likely will add some fluff, “exceptional tone and craftsmanship”. The goal of all that is for the perception of excellence and expertise. However most of those “luthiers” are the ones deciding whether or not their work qualifies for those comments. Them, online comments or their friends who may know just as much or less.

You call yourself a luthier you should be held up to a higher standard than the fellow amateur builder…

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Peter M.
Cornerstone Guitars
http://www.cornerstoneukes.com

Dad? Is that you?

Not sure if I should dive in… but here goes. I like to live dangerously.

I have been fixing, then setting up, then repairing guitars as long as I can remember(since I got my first one in '72), and I'm going to turn 66 in a week.

I have owned a guitar repair shop since I retired from my "real" job 10 years ago. (Hey Hesh!) And I must say it's been a pretty successful operation since. A deep love for the instrument and a lifelong pretty intense dedication to learning helped.

But alas, in no way am I willing to present myself as a real, honest to the powers-that-be (pick your own preferred choice of God) "luthier". I guess my French lineage, which goes back to my ancestor following Champlain in Québec City is at work here. I have never, and probably never will, build an acoustic guitar from raw wood, although I have repaired a fairly bloody share of them, hundreds, with all sorts of problems you can all imagine. I suppose I subscribe to the old-world ethics in that I was never trained one-to-one by a master so I will never be worthy of the term unless I start building rather than repairing. Unless those old Guitar Player columns by John Carruthers and later Dan the Man can be seen as "apprenticeship".

So I have a hard time describing what I do in French. You guys and gals CAN say you are guitar techs, and it seems closer to describe what I‘be been doing all year long for many decades. We have no words in my language that’s a good translation of "guitar tech", and I'm forever stuck with explaining all of this each and every time someone asks if this is the "luthier" on the end of the phone.

What a lucky bunch you are…


Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

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Pierre Castonguay

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat. (Henry Thoreau)
It has been my experience that those who worry about what others call themselves should worry about their own competence.

Hate to break it to you Pierre, but you are a luthier: one whose profession is the construction or repair of stringed musical instruments. Ten years in business with the lights still on means you’re a successful luthier too!

Your customers are calling up wanting to speak to the guy who is going to work on their guitar and who they can trust has the expertise to work to a professional standard: that’s you, Mr Luthier! And you are an expert!

When guitarists are sitting around chatting and they say: “there’s something wrong with this Les Paul, I need to take it to a luthier”, they do NOT mean:

- Someone who studied under a wizened master in the Carpathian Mountains and then, after decades of service, relocated to the Americas to set up a workshop
- Someone who builds guitars as a hobby in their spare time, no matter how nice those guitars are
- A handy buddy of theirs who has put together a couple partscasters before.

No, they mean someone like you, a full-time stringed instrument technician / artisan, who offers a professional instrument repair service with the necessary insurance and expertise. A LUTHIER!!!!

The term is actually very practical for pros - it’s generally understood by a significant portion of the guitar-owning public and is a simple, mutually intelligible way for service provider and customer to understand the service being sought and offered.

I don’t think anyone is worried. Just wondering what makes everyone so eager to want to be known as a luthier as if it is some glorious job.

Someone once said, to make a small fortune building guitars you need to start with a big fortune…

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Peter M.
Cornerstone Guitars
http://www.cornerstoneukes.com

But seriously, folks…
I do consider myself a Luthier.
It actually took me about six Guitars before I started feeling that they were good enough to sell.

After retiring from my day job as a municipal building inspector I do this usually six days a week.

Every now and then I get an early one back in the shop and am surprised at how well they’ve held up and how well crafted they are even though my craftsmanship is much better now.

I have built hundreds of instruments mostly acoustic guitars, flattop and archtops.
I have done all my own nitro, finishing on those guitars as well

I have repaired, restored and adjusted hundreds of instruments.
I just finished a three-year stint as a subcontractor to a busy repair shop, doing the heavy, lifting with jobs such as fretwork, major restorations – sometimes these guitars needed a neck, reset, fret job a new bridge.
I had one 70s Gibson acoustic in the shop that literally had one hundred percent glue failure so it basically had to be completely disassembled and reassembled as well as the binding deteriorated new binding .
Another challenging one was a 1905 Martin guitar that I can’t even figure what happened to it but the whole top was peeled back
I also ghost built some electrics for that shop in their entirety.

But, I decided my heart is really in the building and I only have so much time, so I’m no longer doing the repair work on that scale just some minor stuff for my good customers.

I’ve always had a hard time selling my Guitars….
I’ve dealt with about six different shops over the years and they all take 25% on consignments.
They usually sit in the store for a year or two so I’ve gone to selling them directly through Reverb and various other places places like Facebook chat room/forums. I’ve had pretty good success with that because you can get a real nice target audience.

But in the final analysis, it’s really not about money to me at all. I do it because I love doing it. I have other streams of income, so it takes the pressure off.

Recently, I became a little burnt out from doing it so much so I needed a diversion, so I built myself a pocket knife from scratch… but guess what… I don’t consider myself a Cutler – lol !Here’s a picture of it:



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I'm not a luthier. I have built and sold some guitars. Don't have a website, not trying to do this full time, matter of fact lately I've been questioning why I'm doing this.
Then I get more requests - which means more opportunities to get better, try things, etc.
And they've all got to go somewhere, otherwise I'd have the proverbial shed full of guitars.

I had an interesting related conversation with a fellow OLF'r the other day (Hi Zac!) - we talked about not putting any identifying marks on your earliest builds if you were actually considering luthiery as a profession, because you may not want your earliest work out in the world and attributed to you. Mine all have my logo on there and the tops signed. I also discuss in depth my limitations with anyone interested in a guitar.

Peterm, you're just over the mountain (I'm in TN) - any chance of a shop visit?

How well does 'stringed instrument repairman' translate to French?

I’m in Bakersville. Sure thing, feel free to come over sometime. I work Monday through Friday.

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Peter M.
Cornerstone Guitars
http://www.cornerstoneukes.com

With difficulty. Seems like the only acceptable terme is "luthier". So I guess that's what I am after all. Just not feeling a full-patch one as I don't build (apart from bolt-on electrics, and that's hardly lutherie to me).


Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

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Pierre Castonguay

Very kind of you, Josh. Thanks for the thumbs-up.


Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

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Pierre Castonguay

Luthier is what people say I am when they refer me to other people or it's what people say they are looking for when they ask me if I can work on their guitars/mandolins/banjos. I advertise very little but when I do I just say I repair guitars. This is my only job since I retired from engineering. I'm not terribly worried about it.

They gotta call you something

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Considering how many of us don't make our living working on stringed instruments and so are "non professional" perhaps the name should be changed to the "Unofficial Luthiers Forum" .

I like that!

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Hutch

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

I get the impression that this place originally was for "official Luthiers" but it got overrun by people like me and we chased off all the pros. But, that was before I found the place so I don't really have a feel for what it used to be like; I could be way off base.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I would like to know that too. Where did they go? Probably not Facebook, it’s a mess unless it is private groups.

Ian Davlin promotes his LoothGroup forum as a place for pros and hobbyists to converge without all the BS. I thought that was what this place was for?


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

I'm not really sure. Back when I found this place I had suddenly realized there were probably other fora besides MIMF and I figured more would be better. I seem to remember there being another forum that I heard about and you had to ask to join. I was not given access. I think that might have been a more private place where the pros didn't have to deal with all the riff raff. Again, I'm not sure.

I feel like this place is a place where Pros and Hobbyists CAN converge without all the BS but I'm sure there are multiple definitions for BS. I'm glad this place is around and active though even if it is different than intended.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

The OLF has never had very many pros here at any given time and when we do they often don't stay.

I went out in 2010 and surveyed 24 pro (making their living in the trade) Luthiers as to why they left. This is actual real-world data on why the OLF does not retain very many pro Luthiers ever.

By far and almost universally the reason why was that they, we have skin in the game and feed our families from being a Luthier and on forums like this one some snot nosed punk, know it all comes along and gets in a knock down drag out with a pro where everyone loses. When the ugliness makes them both look bad the hobby builder has nothing to lose the pro can lose business and have poor judgement forever enshrined..... on..... the...... OLF.

I'm being honest these are not my words but I agree with them and of the few pros still here we talk privately about this and there is near universal agreement that there is nothing for us here but the opportunity to help folks like someone once helped us. So some of us stay even though it's a waste of time in terms of us going away from a session here with some new found knowledge that will make us better Luthiers.

So the next time you try to protect your perceived place in the forum pecking order (if there even is such a thing) and disrespect the folks that feed you guys information please know it's noted, we do keep score and you are not only hurting yourselves you are hurting other OLF members hungry to learn but who are harmed when a knowledgable person leaves thinking we are a waste of time.

It's been really the one sad failure in my opinion for the OLF the entire time it has existed that we can't keep pros. But OTOH this is Lance's business model to cater to folks who are not pros likely because you guys are a bigger business opportunity than I and my peers are. You might buy that new tool from StewMac we might make it or already know it's BS and avoid it.

A good example is the neck jig. You guys often want one Dave and I miss ours because now we have to hang our coats on the wall....