Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm curious. . . . Does anyone have any idea of the state of amateur lutherie? Population? Reason I ask is that we've seen LMI shut its doors without another owner willing to pick up a popular and respected source of the 'stuff' amateur Luthiers can use and Peter Cefalu (RC Tonewoods) in his introduction to his current monthly newsletter mentioned that his dad's and his business has been slowing down and he's shrinking the business footprint in order to survive. A while ago Ken Cierpolowski (KMG Guitars) didn't survive an illness and his business died with him. Various online discussion groups seem to have less traffic and fewer posters.

So I'm asking, any ideas, experiences to share?

Thanks!

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Peter Havriluk

Seems to me it's as popular as ever, that's why we're here, right? I would guess the reason business is slowing for the big luthier houses, is that they are so expensive, when there are cheaper alternatives out there, and amateurs especially don't want to be spending vast amounts on materials.
I often buy wood sets and bridge blanks etc . from Ebay and sometimes from China at a fraction of the cost of buying from SM for example. Just my thoughts.

Basically what Michael said - Ebay and other online discount suppliers from the Far and Near East have become so common that it's hard for the hobbyist to justify spending the $$ to go to LMI, StewMac or RC Tonewods.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

As for population, one time on this forum someone linked or quoted an article that estimated there were 5,000 amateur and professional luthiers in the USA. That was along time ago so who knows now?

At the rate schools are putting out graduates, I would imagine the number is ever increasing.

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https://www.instagram.com/fostinoguitars/
https://www.facebook.com/PuraVidaUkuleles/

It does seem highly concentrated and moving more that way. I recently spent some time researching this for a side project and what I was able to find via Google and GPT seems to show 10k TAM or so in the serious hobbyist / professional categories.

The market scales dramatically of course with the DIY and player / enthusiast categories. Think - someone planning to build just a single instrument from a kit, enthusiast players (especially electric) who mod / fix their own stuff. Not luthiers or aspiring luthiers.

More anecdotally, from what I see across social media, it seems that many of the serious hobbyist level / CNC owners are making their own tooling, including myself.

There are a few seemingly startups acting like clones of SM sort of.

I would love to see some of SM market research.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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

My totally un-validated observation is that with the continuing ease of access to previously difficult to find information from the web, videos, books, etc. there is a luthier under every rock

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

I just assumed everyone was a luthier…

Howard Klepper once said here on the OLF that he started playing guitar to get all the babes and it didn't work....

These days the demographic that is the vast majority of our guitar repair clients are 55 - 65 year old white males. They didn't get the memo about the babes and by the way, what's a memo...

During the pandemic more guitars were sold new than ever before in human history so there is interest in the playing side.

But who's buying those guitars, 55 - 65 year old white men are and that has been concerning to me for a long time. I'll add there was significant inflation in new guitar prices during the last five years. My Collings I35 that I paid $4,600 new for is now going for $7,500 for the exact same guitar.

Dave tells me that it won't matter to us we are brick and mortar, very established and turn away 60% of the work that comes our way. But I would not want to be just starting out these days and we did see 5 - 6 competing shops in our area all fail usually in 18 months or so.

On the OLF index page there is a field for "our latest member" or something like that. It's been the same person for months suggesting no new membership here for months. It could be that it needs to be manually updated but I always thought that this field was automatically populated.

My own belief and observation is that the "Golden Age Of Lutherie" was around 2005 - 2008ish and the forum had new members nearly every day back then. We had a couple dozen, real deal professional Luthiers who interacted here with reckless abandon... Most left and I did survey them and know why they left but that's a different discussion.

What may be a very relevant question is what is the interest in woodworking these days? Most of you came here from there. I was never a woodworker and the only thing I ever made before my first guitar were reservations.

I also don't think that the passing... of LMI can be attributed to the size of the market. We don't know what it looked like for them or why. StewMac is seemingly ever expanding like the Borg.... and as mentioned there are others now too with an Amazon presence that can have my new electric guitar knob puller in my hands 12 hours after I ordered it.

Overhead for brick and mortar businesses can be a killer. We shed 2/3rds of our overhead when we moved out of the People's Republic of Ann Arbor into the woods of Michigan. We love our new digs too.

Our business is booming, most ever experienced by us and guitar sales remain way up but it is who buys them that concerns me the most. Younger folks are off with their iPads and not learning to play guitars like my generation did. Maybe you can get more babes with an iPad....

well I turned 71 this year My wife, son and I are still working 10 hr days. I would like to slow down but with the stew mac bender at 1999 and mine at 900 I am selling them like hot cakes. With LMI going out sure has help my business.
I think in all the luthery hobby is as strong as ever. Being co president of ASIA I am happy to see we have some new and young faces at the symposium so in all the health of the hobby is very strong and I love seeing new builders making a living at this trade.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

In my 70's too, and seen the music scene change a lot. There was a time when most artists had a guitar in their hand when performing. Nowadays it seems people playing instruments are somewhere in the background if there at all. I think that has to have an influence on young folks wanting to get into music and how they might do it. Look at the music idols of today for an idea of where young people want to go.

15 years ago bluegrass was all the rage and banjos were hot, not so much now - times change.

Sites like the OLF also suffer from folks moving to FB and Linkedin and others.

It will be interesting to see where it all goes in the time we have left.

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

China- that's what putting US lutherie tool retailers out of business.
But judging by the number of custom guitar builders on the internet, I'd say lutherie is very popular.

On a similar note, Hibdon Hardwood is another company that has reduced its footprint by roughly 90%.
Hibdon still imports tropical woods, but the wood room (showroom) is gone, and the internet selection is dwindling.
His market is mostly major manufacturers now, using more common tropical woods, such as Honduras Mahogany.
I think wood guys do it as much for love, as money, like lots of builders.

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

This thread reminds me of a story on a well known one man shop bicycle frame maker in one of the cycling magazines back in the 80's. He said something to the effect of-

"people think it's this romantic zen thing. It actually hot, loud, dirty and low pay. I see guys at parties bragging that they are frame makers when they haven't done squat. What's the point? It won't get you laid."

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

I remember fondly Terrence!
The over romanticized, hand filed, silver brazed lugs of the impoverished custom frame builder in the eighties.
One is an old friend of mine who gave up the romance long ago.
We will one day be like him, playing the latest greatest carbon fiber guitar even though we still know how to make them from trees?
I hope not!
Thanks for excavating the memory!

My pleasure David. I think the quote came from Al Eisentraut.

(BTW I’m still riding a steel frame but not very fast or far anymore )

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.