Re: $65-80
Wireneck said:
wow the guys in my area must be working for dirt cheap, or either they suck and I don't know it lol. I can usually get my les pauls setup for anywhere around or under $30.
Well, first of all, a Les Paul does not have a tremolo, which adds a LOT of work. Second of all, I would not trust someone who charges that little for a setup. I have see work done by people who charge that little. A lot of it. And if I have seen a lot of someone else's work, that is not saying anything good about their quality. I don't see when other people do good work, only when they do bad work. It is never up to the standard I would consider acceptable. We have had a lot of people over the years get upset with us because of our prices, and take their guitars somewhere else. Then, they come back a few months latter, and have us setup their guitars because they were not satisfied with the cheaper guys. And remember, it is ALWAYS more expensive to have us fix someone else’s mistake than to have us fix the problem in the first place.
A setup is not just, "a twist of this, a turn of that." There is quite a lot more to it, and it take more than just being shown once to learn how to do it. We hire our employees out of a technical college in our state which has a one year luthiery program. We think it is the best program of the sort in the country. At the end of that program, we trust them to watch over our shoulders while we work, and when they do start doing repair work for us, it is always with very close supervision until they have proven to us, repeatedly, that they can do the work right.
A setup on a Strat starts with cleaning the fingerboard and oiling the fingerboard (if it is rosewood) or just cleaning a maple board, polishing the instrument, and cleaning the electronics. We also tighten up all of the various parts and such, as well as making sure the neck angle is right. These are among the things I would imagine you are not getting for a $30.00 setup.
Next, we move on to adjusting the neck properly. If this is not right, it is impossible to get the rest of it right. This is one of the areas of danger for the inexperienced. It is very possible to crack the nut so tight you either strip the nut (which is usually made of soft brass) or to break the truss rod. I would not say this happens often, but it does happen.
Next we adjust the nut. This involves using special files to file the nut slots so the bottom is level with the top of the frets. This is VERY important for both the playability (the action will never be right if the nut is not right) and the intonation (if the nut slots are not right, then the string stretches more, and so the string gets sharper as you go up the neck). I can flat out guaranty you that, after you have spent the $75.00 or so on the right tools to do the job, you will damage at the very least the first 5 nuts you try to adjust. This is a skill job, if you want it right, and it is extremely easy to mess up if you haven't done it before. If you are getting your guitar setup for $30.00, I would bet you are not getting this extremely crucial step done.
Once the nut is done, we string it up, and adjust the springs on the tremolo. If you ask us to, we will block it (for a small extra charge), but it still needs adjustment.
Next we adjust the height of the saddles. This is relatively simple, until those little Allen screws get all corroded and frozen. Fun, fun, fun.
Next we adjust the intonation. We have a strobe tuner, and if you don't, you can not get this as accurate as it should be. I would never try and adjust intonation without a strobe tuner.
Next, we adjust the pickup height, making sure they are not too close to the strings (they can pull the strings out of tune, and have an effect on the intonation), but also that they are close enough to get the best possible sound. We also make sure they all have the same output. This is just a matter of listening, but we do it all the time so we can probably do it faster.
All in all, this takes us an hour to an hour and a half. Our shop rate is $65.00 an hour (which is low compared to some of the other good repair shops around the country, but we live in an area with a lower cost of living than some others.) $65.00 to $80.00 is not that hard to get to.
So let me ask you mrface2112, why would I want to show you this stuff. I make my living doing this. Do you ask your doctor to show you how to do an appendectomy, or your mechanic how to tune up your car? I have no motivation to teach you to do my job, even if I could. Much of what we do is experience, not just knowledge. If you haven't made the mistakes, you will never learn how to avoid them. We have made the mistakes in the past. We don't any more. Our newest employee right now has been with us for ten years. She does almost 700 guitars a year. How can you possibly compare with that kind of experience, much less that of the guys who have been with us for 25 years? Leave it to experts. That is what we get paid for.
On the off chance we make a mistake on your guitar (it is extremely rare, but it does happen) we will fix it. If you make a mistake, you have to pay us to fix it, and that costs more than having us do the work in the first place. All of our work is warranted, and when we do a setup, we work very hard to make sure you are happy with it. We generally start with what we consider "spec" action (Martin spec for acoustics, and I believe the electric spec is set by Gibson.) You take that and play it for a while, and if you need it higher or lower, or if something just is not right for you, you bring it back (within a reasonable time limit. Don't come to me six months or a year later and say, "It was never right") and we adjust it, free of charge (or more accurately, you have already paid for that part of the service).
You want a professional working on your guitar. Look for someone who acts like a professional, and a part of that is expecting to get paid like a professional, and taking the time to do the work right.
Light
"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
I do have a new credit card to break in, and just think, Id only be completely broke and and in a whole lot of debt 
