Official Luthiers Forum!

That we have such great sponsers here at the OLF.

I stopped by the local (40 minutes away) Woodcraft store this weekend to do some rummaging. To my surprise, they had some guitar tone wood. The price they were cgarging for what they had really made me do a double take. For example, they had some sitka spruce sound boards for sale. All were streaky, and I even had to question if they were bookmatched. $40 each . For back and side sets, they had one set of very plain mohagany where the sides weren't a close color match to the back at all. $50 for that one.

I am so glad we have the sponsors and the choices we do. I can't imagine an uninformed consumer walking in to the store and pating those price for that wood.

<end rant>

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Joe Breault
Merrimack, NH
Perpetual novice

Yes - A big hand for our sponsors!

We are very fortunate to have them here and their expertise in their products is top-notch!

Besides, they are nice folks too!

It is very comforting to us novices to hear all of the good things about how good all of the sponsors are to work with. I will be able to order with great confidence from any of them after hearing all of the feedback. In every case of problems, I seem to hear great stories "above and beyond" solutions. Great comfort to us all.

Donovan

Yup. we got la creme de la creme in terms of sponsors and friends!

For some reason the OLF attracts the very best suppiers.
The ones that understand how to create a loyal customer base. I always try to buy from one of our own and have been rewarded many many times. Thanks to all of you.

I have dealt with many of them and they are all class acts, we are very lucky in the world of luthiery, as many of the supplier could teach most companies a thing or two about customer service.

I had two very pleasant experiences with sponsors just this week, On Sunday I placed an order via Stewmac's website, when I place an order it gives me two shipping options, 1 for DHL and one for the normal post, I always use the DHL service as it gets here in 2/3 days, some how by accident I managed to select the wrong option and never even noticed, this would have caused me difficulties as one set of the tuners on the order are for a guitar I am just finishing up. The person at Stewmac looked at my order, noticed that it wasn't my normal delivery option and had the presence of mind to telephone me from the USA and ask me if I really wanted this order on a 14 Day delivery, and change it to DHL for me, now thats great service.


I had a request via my website to see if I could supply a Brazilian rosewood rosette, it didn't make much sense to me to do this from the UK, so I asked Steve at Colonial if he could help, and he has gone out of his way to help this person, again just absolute magic.

Contrast this with my credit card company, phone company or bank, and it's no contest our sponsors win hands down, all of the ones I have dealt with, which is many of them all offer first class products and service.

Guess that a long winded way of saying, well said Joe

I think the service from our sponsors is so great because they really care about what they do. We're all, sponsors and customers, in this out of a passion for instrument building.

I used to deal with a black and white photo supply company, called Zone VI Studios years ago. They sold some of the best equipment you could find anywhere, some of it designed and produced by the company. I remember calling late one night from my darkroom with a problem I was having with their paper. I knew I wouldn't be able to talk to anyone the next day due to time zone differences, so I'd planned to leave a message. Who should answer but the owner himself, at about 1 AM their time. He talked me through my problem for about 30 minutes. When Fred sold it to a big name, it was a huge blow, though the new owner was pretty good with their new line for awhile, for a big company, anyway, but then eventually stripped all the products that didn't earn them enough profit. Such is business, I guess. Anyway, when it sold in the early 90s, IIRC, it was the last great service I got from a company until now, dealing with the likes of Stewmac, Chris at LMI, Todd at Allied, BobC, Shane, John Hall, and Doug Kleist.

Something has been lost in people's idea of service. I think most of us are pleased when we deal with a big company if they just don't rip us off. But then how passionate can you get if you run a credit card or phone company if all you care about is the bottom line?

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com