Official Luthiers Forum!

Oh sure, I'm going to put "inspected by LeRoy"

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Say what you do, Do what you say.

Below I'm quoting what Howard posted on a follow up thread on the AGF. His insight I believe is spot on and gets at the root of the problem.

[quote=Howard Klepper;1585236]One more thing about this:

The builder in question is grossly undercharging for his work. I would speculate that he has gotten a lot of orders because of that and knows how little he is making for his work, which inevitably leads to burn out and resentment of the customer, no matter how saintly his personality. Meanwhile the customers are expecting the fit and finish of a guitar for which the typical established builder would be charging twice as much. A collision is inevitable. He should raise prices by a lot, and then feel good about taking the time to live up to expectations.[/quote]

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"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." G. K. Chesterton.

I appreciate the spirit and intentions of Ken's policy, but the first thing I thought of when I read that was that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry gets a guy to custom build him some kitchen cabinets and he constantly asks Jerry what he wants for even the tiniest decision.

As a customer I'd feel like I was being put in an awkward position having to green light tiny mistakes. And the thing is, I probably would give the go-ahead even if a small mistake bugged me, just to avoid seeming like a problem customer. I wouldn't want the luthier irritated at me while he finished my guitar. I would rather that the mistake were just fixed if it was a big enough issue to warrant an email, or if it was very insignificant I'd rather not let it spoil my buying experience if I likely wouldn't notice it.

But I'm not an expert on yours or anyone else's market, so you hereby have my permission to do what you think is best for your own business.

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Jonathan Kendall, Siloam Springs AR

When working at a production shop I saw guitars come back, not because they weren't "perfect", but because the FB binding, for example, wasn't the expected colour. Not -not the "right" colour, it matched the specs perfectly- but -not the "expected" colour-. That's how fussy some rare people are. And the shop obliged, by building another neck, or another body, or whatever, not to lose a customer or compromise reputation.
As independent luthiers we should at least equal that.
If anyone inspects Bourgeois, SCGC, Goodall etc. guitars, one never sees a "purfling that doesn't line up"…
S…t happens, everyday, even to the best, but then, doing it again may just save the day.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Lance,
You actually hit my point exactly. If you see a mistake or a shortcoming.....do it again. Sure it cuts into
your profit margin as the hours invested in a guitar's build increase, but do it again.

And if you don't get it right the second time, never say, "Well I tried.", and move on. Tear it out or cut it off
and do it third time. Do it as many times as it takes for you to learn how to do it right. That way your customer
gets a guitar with everything done to the absolute best of your ability and you get and education.

I don't think that my example above was extreme at all, but more common then it should be. I've played
both ends of the spectrum.....great looking with terrible tone, great sounding with poor workmanship and
I've played guitars that had the best of both worlds....wonderful tone and flawless workmanship.

The funny thing is that the poor workmanship seems to come more consistently from the same guys than
great tone does.

Do it a dozen times to get it right if that's what it takes. The customer shouldn't have to pay for our education
as builders.....we should be willing to.

Regards,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars

And most of the time that is exactly what happens, even without a picture.

I didnt mean to sound like i was blowing off all mistakes as minor issues and passing it along to the customer. That is NOT what happens at all. The reference I made about purfling was an exaggeration, but something I pulled out of the air to show how picky some customers are.

As usual, the point I was trying to make about keeping the customer in the loop with pictures sent every day was completely overlooked.

It is simple enough to take a couple of pictures along the way and shoot them off to the customer so they can see what they are getting. That way there are no surprises and no feelings of getting something unexpected when their instrument arrives. With pictures of the progress, they at least know you are working on their instrument and not just sitting on their money wasting time. That was one of the AGF guy's complaints also....no communication with the customer.

I have a strange build going on right now with a customer who is posting every picture I send him on the AGF. He doesnt want koa bindings, but he wants me to stain maple bindings to look like curly koa. That is not an easy task, but I am doing my best and sending him picture after picture to make sure that the color of stain I have is exactly what he wanted. I even sent him a movie file showing the whole guitar and even included some tap tones. He knows he is not getting any surprises. I dont particularly like the look, but he is loving it. He is also paying for the build on time and keeps sending me emails telling me how good it is looking and how excited he is about the build. Those kind of reactions are quite common when I do commissions.

It only takes a little bit of effort to keep a customer happy. If you arent doing that, then you are setting yourself up for a disaster.

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Reguards,

Ken H

SteveS started a good thread over on the AGF. I'm going to link to Paul Woolson's full post, but I thought this was awesome:



http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/foru ... tcount=153

I miss Paul, btw.

I feel it needs to be said too that there are levels of fit and finish. If you are starting out and building for a friend or even a friend of a friend for cost who is excited to have a guitar by you and one of your purfling lines or miters is off by a tiny bit I do not see that as the end of the world. A deep gouge in the finish or a deep open gap in the binding maybe is a real eyesore but the context matters here. If you have a website, are courting interest on the internet and attend shows then that is a different story. I feel like that is understood, but I want to say it. No matter how much pride you have in your work everyone should be forgiven mistakes as they learn (and continue to learn) basics. Also, I think it is a little intense to expect the inside of the guitar to be 100% as clean as the outside. Things like spending lots of time removing every single little glue drip from gluing on the top and sanding the inside to a higher grit than the outside I don't understand. I appreciate that some people require that in their instrument but in terms of who your customers are, do you want your guitar to go to someone who would be scared to give it a full strum in the heat of the moment for fear of scratching the top? (and no offense if you do) I know that many of you pride yourselves on your ultra clean work, inside and outside, and I am not trying to say that it is unappreciated because from public feedback it obviously is not. I do feel however, that something like that is more of a unique selling point rather than an expectation for everyone. I could very well be wrong, maybe all of you are doing this, but I am not sure.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

Burton...I've seen one of your guitars at Joe's...you have nothing to worry about! It was pristine and incredibly clean.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

When you have 3 customers whose guitars you're working on, it's no problem taking those few minutes to get out
the digital camera, shoot a couple of photos and then take it in to plug it into the comouter and downlaod them for
emailing them on a daily basis.

It's a different story when you have 150 or more orders and you're still the only guy working in your shop and you
have as many as forty guitar moving along in different stages of construction at any given time. Then it turns into hours
of photo shooting and computer time to email those daily pictures.

I shoot a few photos of the major steps in the construction to keep a customer updated if they request those kind
of updates. When the guitar is done, I shoot some portrait style photos for the customer and for me to have on hand.

Communication is important, but daily communication is not necessary. The customer needs to understand that
even though they have a single guitar commissioned to think about, the builder has many guitars and their future
owners to take care of.

I used to keep a phone in my shop and happily grab it every time it rang. I quickly found that I was either spending
five or six hours a day talking and explaining to customers what I was doing that day or was spending a good portion
of that time working with a phone on my ear and giving the work only part of my attention while it really deserved
100% of it. It's like the idiot driver swirving all over the road because they're on their cell phone. Driving requires our
full attention and the person we're having a conversation with does too and both get shortchanged when we try to
handle both at the same time.

After months of daily phone calls from a customer who had a lot of down time in his office during the mid afternoon
hours and thought that the "squeaky wheel" adage would get him a quicker delivery time, I adopted a new phone/work
policy. When I answered the phone one day and heard that it was him, I calmly asked him to hold for a minute while I
put away the guitar that I was working on for another customer and got his off of the shelf to work on while I was on
the phone with him.

That way, he was the one getting 100% of my attention with half going to his guitar and the work I was doing on it
and the other half going to our conversation. He got the point and the time between calls mysteriously increased and
he seemed to appreciate the amount of work that could be done between them more.

With all of this talk about purfling lines and miters being off by a smidge, some of you guys need to get ahold of
some very high dollar guitars from the elite builders and take a close look at those details on them. We all try to get
those little things as close to perfect as possible....or should try at least....but few hit it right on every time. Be aware
of the real quality of the fine guitars coming out of shops all over the world.

Two things happen when we're not really aware of the work of other builders....we either set goals and requirements
for ourselves that no human can achieve or we think that we're doing a much better job than we actually are. Real life
comparison is a valuable thing. That's why it's so important to get your hands on guitars from as many builders as
you can....from the ones you've heard are the creme de la creme to those you've never heard of before.

This does two very important things as it shows us how good we are and how much better we can be.

Regards,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars

Thanks JJ! I appreciate that.

I certainly try to make everything as good as I can but there is a level between normal and robot-perfect that I find perfectly acceptable. (for me, of course) Not to downplay fit and finish either, but something Sam said before I think is important too. For a commissioned guitar I do think that playability, feel, specific tonal requests etc... are more important than fit and finish. That is not to say that f&f can be lax, but I would rather have a long talk with someone about accenting the volume and projection in a certain area of the neck to meet their playing style than talking about how figured their rosewood is going to be. I also love talking about how figured their rosewood is going to be, don't get me wrong. But after.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

I think that if you want to play with the big boys you need to all bases equally, One is not more important than the other.
There can be no compromise or you will be outed.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

There's an expression in yacht building that I apply to my work.

"50% of the money gets you 90% of the boat".

Think about it for a moment. That final 10% is the difference between very good and something more than that. What does that final 10% cost? What do you get in that 10%. Which 90% do you provide?

I've followed this whole thread, and gone over and read the AGF thread. Its a big can of worms, and one that we all have to be very aware of. We set our policy and our work practice, establish and try to maintain our reputation. Communication and expectations have to be clearly identified. I've found that my clients are prepared to wait for their orders if they know clearly what sort of wait is involved.

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Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

Lance, please know that I respect your work very very much but I disagree here.



Obviously.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

Not a problem!
I am happy to disagree here.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

I agree with the standards you are suggesting, Lance but I see little or no effort by anyone to actually call someone out on shoddy workmanship. There's no guarantee that anyone will be outed as long as the "be nice" policy supersedes intellectual honesty and critical thinking.

In a recent AGF thread, a poster was critical of a sponsor builder's work and said so. He was castigated for not "being nice", kicked off the forum and the offending posts were expunged....something about which a totalitarian dictator would be proud! I can't comment on the veracity of the critique since it "disappeared" by the time I got around to reading. Paul Woolson later posted his well spoken critique of the "be nice policy" and stated that it is dishonest and disrespectful to those builders who do in fact take the high road. The point is that situations like this will only continue to prevent the slackers from being outed. And as long as nobody calls them on it and they continue to sell their wares for the same prices as the real pros, then the level of the bar will fall precipitously. Yet we all hear the whispers about those who have the balls to exhibit at shows where they have no business being there...so is that really being outed? Since they further their resumes by attending prestigious shows, they are becoming falsely ranked and rated. Of course, it's a free market, and if they are able to convince customers to buy their wares we can always say "buyer beware" and let it go at that. But IMO, builders should hold the craft of Luthiery in a higher regard and protect high standards...not subscribe to the lowest common denominator

If anyone is interested in protecting the integrity of the craft, this is not the way. End of rant!

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

There is one very easy way to tell whether your tone and fit and finish are adequate for a dive into the world of boutique guitars. Find your favorite small speciality acoustic store that has many years experience in the real world of merchandising. Show them your stuff and ask for an objective opinion from the owner and whether they would hang your instruments on their wall and promote them. They will give you an honest answer and if not acceptable, what needs to be done to correct the deficiencies. Fit and finish is a big deal.
Terry

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

JJ, I agree with most of what you have said.
I will add that in reference to the AGF, they are talking about rewriting some of there policy in order to allow critical review.
This was in part because of the excommunication of said member and several of the sponsors my self included expressing our concern that our advertising dollar is pretty much wasted if the members of the forum are forced to say only good things about our work for fear of being kicked off the board.
As for builders being outed, its happening. You don't have to look to far under the surface to see it.

Terence, dead on right! "Fit and finish is a big deal."

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Do you think that the reluctance for forums to permit derogatory content referencing a builder/business has anything to do with the potentially aggrieved party becoming litigious?

Although forums may enter into agreements with members where the members are supposedly solely responsible for their own words/contributions this disclaimer/agreement does not entitle a forum to be reckless and uncontrolled in terms of what is disseminated. If a party is harmed there is no telling how courts and jury's may view this. Add the potential for a conflict of interest where a forum's ownership/management/hosts have a competitive relationship with a potentially aggrieved party (everyone builds and sells guitars) and I start hearing in my head that old Connie Francis tune "Who's Sorry Now"...... And yeah - that was A LOT before my time........

Don't get me wrong here my comments are from 30,000 feet so-to-speak and I DO appreciate the need for a substandard guitar builder as well as any maker of ANY substandard product to be outed. Free speech and free markets are the world that I want to live in. I am simply commenting on why "be nice" rules have perhaps existed and why "be nice" rules may need to exist with certain venues, perhaps forums, perhaps not, I am not sure. But I do agree that there does need to be an outlet for honest, unbiased, unrestrained information so long as this information can be substantiated and is presented without malice. Promote or permit reckless, malicious, unsubstantiated damaging information and there might be a price to pay.

Guitar builders are dealing with the public in general and anytime one deals with the public the potential for a disconnect of expectations, standards, what ever is very high. Just as many of us have just as many differing opinions so too will customers and potential customers.

We have no regulation in this industry and that rarely works anyway (not trying to be political here) so the only protections that exist are free market pressure.

I can think of many disciplines in which a substandard participant will not survive and in some cases literally. I have no doubt that buyers of custom guitars do network to some degree outside of the view of what we see on forums. And I would wholeheartedly recommend that they do exactly this too. Be an informed buyer, do your homework, ask for references and explore the references as well. Talk with your builder and consider actually investing a bit more of your time AND money in the selection process which may include visiting several, short-list builders. I suspect that if the degree of importance that is placed on selecting a builder alone is elevated to the importance of the instrument being first class the possibilities for a win, win for all will be greatly enhanced.

And just so that there can be no misunderstanding of my own position here let me make it perfectly clear - if you are a guitar builder and you elect to "go pro" you can kiss your possible former reliance on the "be nice" rules good bye. Your work WILL be evaluated by all manner of folks with all manner of perspectives and what may result may not be to your liking. Your build standards must be of the highest caliber that you can muster and I would add that your personal standards in general better be pretty high too - it's all related. If you are comfortable with "good enough" expect to be considered not-good-enough by some or many.

If you think that you can finance your Lutherie education by selling early OR cheap to anyone besides friends and family you will be risking your entire potential reputation AND damaging our industry as well.

Do substandard, charlatan builders need to be outed? Absolutely BUT I find this personally as sad and distasteful as putting down the beloved family pet. It needed to happen but no one is feeling good about it.......

Thanks.

As far as the "Be Nice" policy, maybe it would be more profitable for discussion if they made it "Be Civil." I'm guessing forum civility was the intent all along, not fear of litigation. The problem is when people mistakenly substitute the requirement for civility with a requirement for positivity and forced politeness. Some folks just honestly can't tell the difference and that's a shame.

I also think it's a shame that there often seems to be more handwringing about the welfare of sponsors or other businesses than there is for consumers and forum users... on that other forum as well as here. It can be a good situation for everyone, but there's often sort of an implied understanding that regular forum users need to come in holding their hat in respect of the mods and sponsors who make this forum possible... Fact is, what makes a forum possible is people that want to come talk about guitars and guitar making.

I bet the builder in question wasn't lamenting all the business he initially got from the quick word of mouth on the forums. Easy come, easy go...

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Jonathan Kendall, Siloam Springs AR

I was the luthier in question, and the scenerio you see posted here is not what happened at all. Since there seems to be some questions about it, I will elaborate on it.

I have been sending my customer pictures, which he is posting on the AGF. This is the same customer mentioned above that wanst me to do some really strange stuff to his guitar that I dont normally do, and I have told him so. He doesnt care, he wants ME to build the guitar and is VERY specific as to how he wants it built.

After the back plates were joined (australian blackwood), he decided that it would look better if it had a "mini wedge" with curly maple down the center of the back, so I started over and put the wedge in. I also put some 10/10/10, BWB purfling along the edges of the wedge on the back.

When that build got as far as putting the strangly colored binding on, I also put the same 10/10/10 BWB binding around the binding on the back and the sides. This purfling was all wood with the center wood being a dark colored brown and the white being maple. Bending wood purfling, no matter how thin, is not an easy task because it breaks so easily. It literally took me ALL DAY just to put the binding and purflings on the back side of the guitar because I had to hand chisel all of the channels for both the binding and the purflings by hand in order to leave enough of the back wedge and purflings to miter together. This meant a total of 4 miters and channels to hand cut.

After the tape came off of the bindings and I could get a picture of how the miters looked(before scraping and sanding), I took a picture and sent them off to my customer since he had already emailed me twice that day asking about it.
Of course he posted the pictures because of his excitement about how well all 4 miters turned out (he didnt even realize there WERE purflings on the back wedge prior to this. I had hand sanded the bindings a little at the time until they just would fit together, leaving no gap at all in the joint where the two halfs came together.

This is where the butthole came into the picture. His first post read "why is there is gap showing?" I had to go back and look at the picture (which was taken in macro mode and extremely magnified) and the only gap I could find was the one on the tail of the guitar where the tail wedge would later be installed. I install my tail wedges last, because I want to leave that fractional part of the purfling on each end sticking out so that I can miter the side purflings with the tail wedge purflings. I have a jig for this and it works for me 100% of the time to produce flawless joints in the tail wedges with purflings on all 4 corners perfectly mitered. I made a post telling him not to worry, that a tail wedge would later be installed there.

The guy didnt accept that there was going to be a tail wedge installed where he saw the gap and went off on a rant, calling me and my work every name in the book. Enter the moderator and several others, who tried to talk some reason into him to just calm down until he saw the finished end of the guitar, with the tail wedge installed. All this time I was out in the shop working and had no idea that a storm was brewing on the forum. By the time I had got back on line, I had literally over 100 emails and PM's asking me not to over react to the problem that I didnt even know existed. By this time he had been thrown off of the forum because he got into verbal arguments with one of the moderators which had nothing to do with the gap he saw on the forum. The guy had also called anybody who asked him to calm down and wait and see the end product an idiot along with other deleteable names and had tried to run me down to the level of an illegal alien's shoddy craftsman. It was the personal attack on the moderator that got him thrown off of the forum, not what he was saying about my work.

A couple of days went by before I got the binding and purflings done on the top of the guitar, and since this is an extremely tight waist and upper bout curve, I even shot off pictures of the binding with tape and clamps holding everything in place until the glue dried. They all turned out flawless and pictures were sent again. Let me also say that I normally dont send out that many pictures, but since this guy is posting every one of them, I wanted people to see why hand built guitars cost so much and how much labor goess into them.

Next came the tail wedge installation to cover the gap that had started this all in the first place. I did a detailed documentary on how I do them, even showing the jig that I made using my CNC router. I even showed a picture of the gap that started it all off, including a ruler for comparison to show just how minute the gap left where the side pieces had come together was. For a rough sawn joint, it was pretty dang tight. I showed every step of the process, including how I leave the BWB purfling at each end so that I can chisel it out slowly by hand to make a perfect mitered corner on all 4 corners of the tail wedge. Even our great leader Lance chimed in after those pictures were shown saying that he does it the same way, but with a laminite router instead of a dremel tool.

After the wedge was installed and everything scraped down and sanded, I sent along the resulting pictures, with macro mode pictures showing all 4 corners. It was then that I got another 100 or so emails and PM's thanking me for the tutorial and also thanking me for not loosing my cool with the guy that had got out of hand in the first place. <enter personal note> NEVER argue with an idiot as they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience </end personal note>

For what it is worth, I got yet another commission off of that fiasco after they were able to see the level of craftsmanship that went into the guitar. As of right now, the guitar is 100% flawless, even when taking pictures that are macro level and highly magnified. No runs, drips, gaps, or errors. It is all sanded as smooth as a baby's bottom and awaiting final pictures to the customer before I start pore filling and the finishing process. My digital camera died and I am awaiting the return after repairs before I continue with the build. I may borrow a camera from a relative if that takes too long.

In the mean time, after everybody was able to see the level of craftsmanship I am capable of with magnified pictures to prove it, I still find that there are those (mainly my peers on THIS forum) that want to insinuate that my craftsmanship is shoddy and I shouldnt even be building guitars as I am an embarassment to the craft.

you wonder why successful pros leave this forum behind.....??? I give up

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Reguards,

Ken H

Lets slow this down. You had more than 200 PM's and emails in response to the person's critiques and your follow-through tutorial?

On a different note, I would really enjoy playing one of your guitars. I hope you might be able to get one out to the west coast some day.

that is a fact . I had so many that I had to delete some of the earlier ones in order to read the later ones because their forum only allows for 100 PM's to be stored and viewed at one time.

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Reguards,

Ken H

Ken, it's a different AGF thread that all this hubbub is about... Unless I'm just really confused. There's one titled something like, "When a custom build goes sour" or something like that. It didn't take too long to snoop around and figure out who the luthier was, it wasn't anyone I was familiar with.

edit: This is the thread in question: link

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Jonathan Kendall, Siloam Springs AR

A previous client pretty well broke me of the habbit of providing photos during the build. He would second guess every piece of wood and ask for things to be removed and replaced because he didn't like the color or grain. This became beyond rediculous. I finally had to put down my foot and refuse any further changes.

I also think that posting in-process photos on-line is asking for trouble unless everything is really clean. Finished photos are fine, but you have to be really careful with what gets out there on non-builders-only websites.