Official Luthiers Forum!

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.

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.

I can’t remember the last time I had my but slot properly set up.