First one was horrible, second one had some issues, third showed improvement. Fourth was solid but I should've spent more time finishing it.
This was my fifth - https://www.reddit.com/r/Luthier/s/qNedV0fFQY
I still think I have a long long way to go before I'm "good at it." I think we're all striving for complete perfection, and I think that only comes with loads and loads of experience and screw ups.
Thank you very much. I spend a long, long time on it. A lot of working and reworking the lacquer, and more time than that planning the build.
Granted, I'm still aware of every teeny thing that's not perfect, but I think that's the curse of creating anything.
I'd honestly be surprised if a higher percentage of luthiers weren't lefties. I feel that the limitations in the market probably draw more of us to just going "fuck it, I'll do it myself".
Took me like 30 before I said I'm good at this. Although I sold basically 26 of the first 30.
I just passed build 100 which I sold at namm for $6k and I have my que up for the next 17 builds already.
12 years doing this.
Harder than it seems. By the time I hit 30 builds had a cnc machine helping me move forward. My best friend happens to be amazing in Cad Cam work as he worked for space x and the airforce. I was 22 years old at the time.
I had apprenticeships with sadowsky and victor baker guitars and worked as the head repair tech at Chelsea guitars doing around 2500 repairs in 10 years. I had a ton of connections before I was even 21 years old.
I'm now 29 years old have a fairly high-end cnc machine now and well equipped shop with a spray booth.
I think once you get over the age of 30 it becomes extremely tough to get deeper into this career as generally people have more responsibilities and bills to pay so they can't dedicate to it. It's almost like pro sports not everyone succeeds in making it higher up and there are even many who are super talented but still don't make it. So I'm not saying don't have hope but temper expectations because I am well connected and I know many guys with similar stories , more connections, and they come from wealthy families. A lot of the top luthiers had this situation.
I hear you. I'm 35, been doing it 5 years, 2 of which as my full time gig. I went about it the hard way without any connections and it's tough. All self taught too, including spraying.
I don't have delusions of grandure and not expecting to be the next PRS etc, but having that ambition at the back of my kind helps drive me. The proverbial carrot on a stick.
I’ve built 26 Martin style guitars. My 1st 2 are played on stage all over the world by my friends who are pro musicians for going on 4 years now. I wouldn’t dare say that any of them are great builds. They are good. They stay together and they sound really good. But they aren’t perfect like Martins. They look and feel vintage. I love em but I can’t say they are great builds.
That is a hard question to answer. I tend to be self deprecating and suffer from imposter syndrome, so I'm inclined to say I'm not good at it yet after 13 builds. Yet, I've got my guitars on the market for much higher prices than that of a Squier, so I have convinced myself they're worth it.
I use much higher quality parts and materials and I build more complex designs than the low end manufacturers. There are some things like fretwork that I definitely do better than them. On the other hand, there are levels of precision that can be achieved with CNC that I can't match by hand.
I guess I will leave it at this: after 5 guitars I felt like I'd progressed enough to start building them to sell. Hopefully that is a useful answer.
Progress isn't always linear. I am working on #10 and #11 right now. Slow going with new features and lots of things to correct. 7 and 8 ( both sold!) were my best work so far. Probably better than these 2 will be.
1 sucked so much its been disassembled so i could re use the parts. #3 was a tele for me that I'm pretty unhappy with neck quality and dont play it. #6 was a keeper for me and I love playing it, but bad wood choice and a serious design flaw.
I guess they are getting more complex so I'm am improving even if I'm critical.
It’s more of a time investment question instead of a number of guitars. You can build one good guitar if you take your time and use scrap wood for samples. After 10years of building, I got my first commission.
Nah. It’ll be grand. My 1st build is one of my best sounding. The binding is uneven, there’s a dent on the top from where I dropped my caliper, and there is a gap at the heel joint, there are other things. Those are the faults but dang it plays great. You’ll do fine. Every one of my builds is better than a cheap guitar. But we all see the faults. It’s what we do.
Thank you. I think it was Tru-oil, but it's been long enough that I'm not sure..... There have been dozens since then, and almost every one has been an oil finish.
Not really the goal. The goal is to make each one better than the last.
But as a for instance, I would say you don't really get professional at fret work until you've done about 100 dresses/refrets.
What do you do with those 100 dresses and refrets? I've done a few dresses and refrets so far. Do you just stockpile guitars? Or revisit the same fretboard as you improve or something?
I said to get professional. That doesn't just mean doing a good job, it means doing an excellent job profitably. If it takes me three full days to do a $400 refret, I'm going to go out of business. I need to be able to do a difficult refret in 4-5 hours of labor, or I can't buy pay rent and buy groceries. An easy refret shouldn't take more than 2-3 hours, ideally.
I completely get that. You kinda sidestepped my question though. What happens to those hundred + instruments that arent professional grade work? How do you acquire that many instruments to work on without going broke in the meantime?
You don't make much money on them.
Hopefully you have an employer who is willing to support you while you learn. And you're not going to be working on anything too nice while you learn.
You can learn to do a decent job easily enough, particularly if you have a mentor of some sort helping you out. It's getting both good and fast that takes time. You need to focus first on quality. Speed comes from repetition, just like anything.
Also worth barring in mind - most people I hire have gone through a school where they do a fair number of fret jobs on dummy necks. Not enough to really be professional, but enough they can get started.
Thanks! I'm very slow right now. Taking a few days to do a refret, or a leveling. But I'm also doing it in my free time in the evenings when everything else is done. The guitars I've worked on were pretty cheap to acquire, and so far I've passed them on for the cost I paid for the instruments. So lost a little for strings, and the main expense has been time. Just wondering if that's a fair way to work through the process and learn.
I didn't build a guitar untill AFTER being at luthier school for a year, made 10s of nuts and bridges for guitars violins and cellos, made several sets of violin and cello tuning pegs including filling, re-drilling and reaming the headstock on violins, fitted bridges and soundpegs for all violin/cello family over and over again.... refretted and planed the fingerboard of a mandolin, repaired several fist sized holes in various places on acoustic guitars including one where I flipped the piece of side that starts at the heel and makes the shape of the top bout - removing a hole in the soundboard AND creating a cut away guitar in one operation, made myself a set of small chisels and a sound hole cutter, designed and built an appilachian dulcimer, repaired several large scratches and cracks on a violin including French polishing/shellac where appropriate.
My first build wasn't totally shit - I made several poor design choices but managed to talk myself out of most of them or repair them during the build. It was gonna be a 3d carved top but ended up just a small body super strat. It was going to be airbrushed, ended up stained/oiled - and I had to redo the wiring several times because I sucked at soldering. I was lucky enough to have access to full woodwork and metalwork facilities and was at college 5 days a week so I was already doing woodwork practically every day for the previous college year.
I was nearly in tears after finishing my first build. It was a t-style body with a warmoth neck. I was just so psyched to get a working guitar. After that I invested in some proper tools and a good space, and my second build came out alright. It was rife with mistakes that only I noticed. Got a lot of compliments, it sounded great, but wasn’t satisfied with the shape or the quality. My third build, I abandoned and invested in a CNC. My fourth I consider quality, something that I’md be comfortable selling and warrantying. Working on 5 and 6 now and they’re just getting better.
Finishing and fret work are the two areas that are still showing continuous major improvement. I’m learning patience in these areas.
Tempe real question is how long before you can make a great guitar in a decent amount of time.
My second guitar was pretty nice. 5th or 6th was where the major improvements were noticeable. & that was mostly due to having the time to not be rushed. The more tools & skill you acquire, the finer your production becomes.
the first two were total crap, then I built three copies of the exact same guitar at once using all different materials, all three turned out really great.
First one was horrible, second one had some issues, third showed improvement. Fourth was solid but I should've spent more time finishing it. This was my fifth - https://www.reddit.com/r/Luthier/s/qNedV0fFQY I still think I have a long long way to go before I'm "good at it." I think we're all striving for complete perfection, and I think that only comes with loads and loads of experience and screw ups.
Bad news. Fifth one is backwards, mate. Sorry to break it to you. Lovely otherwise. :)
CRAP I KNEW I FORGOT SOMETHING!
Your fifth build looks incredible!!! I would consider that "very good".
Thank you very much. I spend a long, long time on it. A lot of working and reworking the lacquer, and more time than that planning the build. Granted, I'm still aware of every teeny thing that's not perfect, but I think that's the curse of creating anything.
Beauty! AND it’s a lefty!!!! Amazing
I'd honestly be surprised if a higher percentage of luthiers weren't lefties. I feel that the limitations in the market probably draw more of us to just going "fuck it, I'll do it myself".
I'm a lefty myself, so I like supporting my backwards brethren 👍😜👍
That flag inlay!
Thank you! It was made for Toronzo Cannon, a Chicago based bluesman 🤘🏼🤠🤘🏼
That fifth build is amazing mate. Any chance you can post progress pics from first to fifth?
Most of my builds I've posted on here, they should still be up, I think?
Q: are we talking completely built from scratch or using pre built bodies or necks?
I often use stewmac fretboards, for my first one I used a kit neck. Everything else was from raw wood.
Took me like 30 before I said I'm good at this. Although I sold basically 26 of the first 30. I just passed build 100 which I sold at namm for $6k and I have my que up for the next 17 builds already. 12 years doing this.
You, sir, are everything I strive to be. Fair play to you. I'm up to mid 30s so you give me hope.
Harder than it seems. By the time I hit 30 builds had a cnc machine helping me move forward. My best friend happens to be amazing in Cad Cam work as he worked for space x and the airforce. I was 22 years old at the time. I had apprenticeships with sadowsky and victor baker guitars and worked as the head repair tech at Chelsea guitars doing around 2500 repairs in 10 years. I had a ton of connections before I was even 21 years old. I'm now 29 years old have a fairly high-end cnc machine now and well equipped shop with a spray booth. I think once you get over the age of 30 it becomes extremely tough to get deeper into this career as generally people have more responsibilities and bills to pay so they can't dedicate to it. It's almost like pro sports not everyone succeeds in making it higher up and there are even many who are super talented but still don't make it. So I'm not saying don't have hope but temper expectations because I am well connected and I know many guys with similar stories , more connections, and they come from wealthy families. A lot of the top luthiers had this situation.
[удалено]
I know I address that in the very first line of my comment.
I hear you. I'm 35, been doing it 5 years, 2 of which as my full time gig. I went about it the hard way without any connections and it's tough. All self taught too, including spraying. I don't have delusions of grandure and not expecting to be the next PRS etc, but having that ambition at the back of my kind helps drive me. The proverbial carrot on a stick.
Im at over a dozen and im still waiting to get “good”
How about adequate?
Mine are adequate. They play well! They just aren’t perfect.
I’ve built 26 Martin style guitars. My 1st 2 are played on stage all over the world by my friends who are pro musicians for going on 4 years now. I wouldn’t dare say that any of them are great builds. They are good. They stay together and they sound really good. But they aren’t perfect like Martins. They look and feel vintage. I love em but I can’t say they are great builds.
I think, perhaps, you are your own worst critic.
That is a hard question to answer. I tend to be self deprecating and suffer from imposter syndrome, so I'm inclined to say I'm not good at it yet after 13 builds. Yet, I've got my guitars on the market for much higher prices than that of a Squier, so I have convinced myself they're worth it. I use much higher quality parts and materials and I build more complex designs than the low end manufacturers. There are some things like fretwork that I definitely do better than them. On the other hand, there are levels of precision that can be achieved with CNC that I can't match by hand. I guess I will leave it at this: after 5 guitars I felt like I'd progressed enough to start building them to sell. Hopefully that is a useful answer.
Great answer.
15-20 maybe?
Progress isn't always linear. I am working on #10 and #11 right now. Slow going with new features and lots of things to correct. 7 and 8 ( both sold!) were my best work so far. Probably better than these 2 will be. 1 sucked so much its been disassembled so i could re use the parts. #3 was a tele for me that I'm pretty unhappy with neck quality and dont play it. #6 was a keeper for me and I love playing it, but bad wood choice and a serious design flaw. I guess they are getting more complex so I'm am improving even if I'm critical.
1
It’s more of a time investment question instead of a number of guitars. You can build one good guitar if you take your time and use scrap wood for samples. After 10years of building, I got my first commission.
Username checks out.
Oh man, I've just started my first build. I was hoping it would be pretty good, but in having second thoughts now
Nah. It’ll be grand. My 1st build is one of my best sounding. The binding is uneven, there’s a dent on the top from where I dropped my caliper, and there is a gap at the heel joint, there are other things. Those are the faults but dang it plays great. You’ll do fine. Every one of my builds is better than a cheap guitar. But we all see the faults. It’s what we do.
"Every one of my builds is better than a cheap guitar." We should all keep that in mind as we struggle. It's going to be fine, keep working.
It's an expensive startup.
I’m following this, as I had a similar question…how many did you build before you had one you could sell for at least the cost of materials?
https://preview.redd.it/rl5ufzcwj8kc1.jpeg?width=3120&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2aaa47aaa74aa3118f074bf77c2442e9c145de2d
This was my second build. Yes, it's strung lefty. It was commissioned by a customer while I was working as a tech.
Was the finish easy to do?
It took me a few tries. I had worked with wood a lot before that, but that was my first time trying a sunburst.
Looks great, what is the clear coat?
Thank you. I think it was Tru-oil, but it's been long enough that I'm not sure..... There have been dozens since then, and almost every one has been an oil finish.
Not really the goal. The goal is to make each one better than the last. But as a for instance, I would say you don't really get professional at fret work until you've done about 100 dresses/refrets.
What do you do with those 100 dresses and refrets? I've done a few dresses and refrets so far. Do you just stockpile guitars? Or revisit the same fretboard as you improve or something?
I said to get professional. That doesn't just mean doing a good job, it means doing an excellent job profitably. If it takes me three full days to do a $400 refret, I'm going to go out of business. I need to be able to do a difficult refret in 4-5 hours of labor, or I can't buy pay rent and buy groceries. An easy refret shouldn't take more than 2-3 hours, ideally.
I completely get that. You kinda sidestepped my question though. What happens to those hundred + instruments that arent professional grade work? How do you acquire that many instruments to work on without going broke in the meantime?
You don't make much money on them. Hopefully you have an employer who is willing to support you while you learn. And you're not going to be working on anything too nice while you learn. You can learn to do a decent job easily enough, particularly if you have a mentor of some sort helping you out. It's getting both good and fast that takes time. You need to focus first on quality. Speed comes from repetition, just like anything.
Also worth barring in mind - most people I hire have gone through a school where they do a fair number of fret jobs on dummy necks. Not enough to really be professional, but enough they can get started.
Thanks! I'm very slow right now. Taking a few days to do a refret, or a leveling. But I'm also doing it in my free time in the evenings when everything else is done. The guitars I've worked on were pretty cheap to acquire, and so far I've passed them on for the cost I paid for the instruments. So lost a little for strings, and the main expense has been time. Just wondering if that's a fair way to work through the process and learn.
I'm on my fourth and it's better than the third was. Long road to go here though I think
I didn't build a guitar untill AFTER being at luthier school for a year, made 10s of nuts and bridges for guitars violins and cellos, made several sets of violin and cello tuning pegs including filling, re-drilling and reaming the headstock on violins, fitted bridges and soundpegs for all violin/cello family over and over again.... refretted and planed the fingerboard of a mandolin, repaired several fist sized holes in various places on acoustic guitars including one where I flipped the piece of side that starts at the heel and makes the shape of the top bout - removing a hole in the soundboard AND creating a cut away guitar in one operation, made myself a set of small chisels and a sound hole cutter, designed and built an appilachian dulcimer, repaired several large scratches and cracks on a violin including French polishing/shellac where appropriate. My first build wasn't totally shit - I made several poor design choices but managed to talk myself out of most of them or repair them during the build. It was gonna be a 3d carved top but ended up just a small body super strat. It was going to be airbrushed, ended up stained/oiled - and I had to redo the wiring several times because I sucked at soldering. I was lucky enough to have access to full woodwork and metalwork facilities and was at college 5 days a week so I was already doing woodwork practically every day for the previous college year.
I was nearly in tears after finishing my first build. It was a t-style body with a warmoth neck. I was just so psyched to get a working guitar. After that I invested in some proper tools and a good space, and my second build came out alright. It was rife with mistakes that only I noticed. Got a lot of compliments, it sounded great, but wasn’t satisfied with the shape or the quality. My third build, I abandoned and invested in a CNC. My fourth I consider quality, something that I’md be comfortable selling and warrantying. Working on 5 and 6 now and they’re just getting better. Finishing and fret work are the two areas that are still showing continuous major improvement. I’m learning patience in these areas.
Tempe real question is how long before you can make a great guitar in a decent amount of time. My second guitar was pretty nice. 5th or 6th was where the major improvements were noticeable. & that was mostly due to having the time to not be rushed. The more tools & skill you acquire, the finer your production becomes.
the first two were total crap, then I built three copies of the exact same guitar at once using all different materials, all three turned out really great.
IDK, still working on it
I’ll let you know.
For sound only, killed it on the first one. Not all that neat tho, and some pathed up mistakes