Official Luthiers Forum!

Ha! Ain't that the truth.

Tuners are something where you can get most of their value at a minimum of the cost. More expensive tuners are arguably better up to a point. A $12 set of tuners will give you 75% of the utility of a $60 set of tuners, which will give you 95% of the utility of a $600 set of tuners. I think watches and cell phones also fit this model.
Most of the guitars I build come in at around $100 for materials +the cost of tuners. Partly it is because I have accumulated materials over a long period of time and partly because I use unusual and scrounged stuff to build with.
A guitar I am presently making has a Formica type material for the back and sides and a $3 spruce soundboard. The end blocks are Baltic birch that was headed for a skip. The neck will be from some scrounged mahogany, the fretboard from a cutdown bass guitar fingerboard I paid $1 for (or $1 worth of Pau Ferro if I get more ambitious).Braces, linings, purflings, and miscellaneous bits were free or
nearly so. If I spend $12 for tuning machines it will be the single most expensive component of this guitar. Tuning machines usually are the single most expensive component of the guitars I build.

I can't imagine... good on ya!

Yesterday I spent $2k buying all the materials for two parlors... and they aren't getting pickups. Sounds like I'm paying about 10x more than I should be

Well, the most expensive thing we put into just about every handmade acoustic guitar is labor, so I don’t try too hard to save every possible penny on materials. Having said that, $1,000 per guitar for materials seems like a lot. Does that include a bomb-proof case?

Unfortunately, no. They are Koa bodies with $240 custom tuners, so there's over half the cost in those two parts alone...

FRom what I've seen, all tuners work well when new these days. The gears and worms tend to be very nicely made by computer controlled machines. Better tuners have better bearings that are more solid and less likely to get out of line. That's one of the advantages to the Waverlys, the worm bearings are part of the base plate casting, rather than being riveted on in the usual way. Once the bearings get loose the gear and the worm start to chew each other up, and things go down hill fast.

From your post I was was expecting to see some kind of roller bearing on them. Even though the bearing surface is built in, it's till a wear point is it not?

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

My post wasn't intended to be about how cheaply a person can build a guitar, or a criticism of those who spend more on high quality materials. Sorry if it came off that way. It is more about the fact that people have different goals in their work, and that not everyone is trying to build a "ne plus ultra" instrument every time. Many of us do this as a hobby, so we can afford to "play" and experiment as we please. If someone likes it enough to buy it, that's fine too, but perhaps not the primary reason we do it (addiction ).
When Peter asked for some low cost tuner options I suggested the $12 Stew Mac offering because they work and have standard hole spacing and can be easily swapped out later if he so desires. Some of the cheap Chinese offerings do not.

Right on, I didn't take it that way at all. I know "hobby" means a lot of different things to different people. For example, I like to golf, but I'm a much better wood worker. Both hobbies, but my golf goals are nowhere near my guitar-building ones!

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Right on, I didn't take it that way at all. I know "hobby" means a lot of different things to different people. For example, I like to golf, but I'm a much better wood worker. Both hobbies, but my golf goals are nowhere near my guitar-building ones![/quote]

I finally broke down and got some contact lenses as I could see the ball fine for the first 250 yards and then it was just gone!

None of the five scratchbuilt guitars I've made has cost as much as $200.00. They're all solid wood, all have Alaskan Sitka soundboards and bracing, rosewood fingerboards, some have ebony bridges, all have nitro finish. It's been a wonderful journey. My most recent build, a 12-string, is the sweetest-sounding 12-string I've ever heard, which my instructor has first refusal on (there is some karmic protection for idiots). Biggest economy: tuners. I'm delighted to be pointed towards $12.00 tuners that work.

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Peter Havriluk

Right on, I didn't take it that way at all. I know "hobby" means a lot of different things to different people. For example, I like to golf, but I'm a much better wood worker. Both hobbies, but my golf goals are nowhere near my guitar-building ones![/quote]

I finally broke down and got some contact lenses as I could see the ball fine for the first 250 yards and then it was just gone! [/quote]


Same here. I found that any sort of sport with glasses was giving me a distorted perception of where the ball/frisbee was and I had trouble catching and never really "knew" where the golfball was when I addressed the ball... Finally got some contacts that work for me on anything 4' or more and it was a game changer... no pun intended.

I bought some cheep fake 510 Mini's off Ebay. I had to know. I used them on a guitar. I have to say they worked very well. The machining of the hole pattern was in perfect alignment of the genuine 510's I was waiting for to arrive from Japan.