Will taking finish off my guitar effect the tone much?

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muttley600 said:
The expression is used a lot on this side of the "pond". Basically someone who does a shoddy job and then does his best to convince everyone he knows what he's about. In truth they don't kniow how to do the job right in the first place. As soon as they are found out they move on and do the same in some other district with the same result. You guys must have em too??
I don't really know, to tell you the truth. :confused: Every luthier or guitar tech I know of works in either an independently-owned business as an authorized service center or in a chain store such as Guitar Center.

But I'm sure there are a lot of guys out there who aren't credentialed. And the reason I would not go to them:

Back in the late '70s I owned a Gibson ES-335 that I had aquired used, and even though it had a lot of road rash it was a beautiful-playing guitar. It was my working guitar for a few years and I loved it.

Eventually the guitar needed a fret job badly. I lived in a medium sized town here in Texas at the time (College Station), and there was a "luthier" that had quite the reputation as being quite the cat's meow among the hip, folksy, acoustic crowd. He built his own guitars and was said to do good repair work, so I gave him the fret job.

I should have known better when he told me that he didn't have any jumbo fret wire and convinced me to use what he had in-house.

It was a disaster.

He removed the neck binding to do the fret work :eek: :eek: :eek: , and you can imagine how that looked when he glued it back on (it actually shrunk and of course could not be stretched back to the original length, leaving a gap.) The frets were undressed, and he actually slopped glue on the neck of the guitar. It looked like the work of a fucking drunkard, which it turns out he was.

The guitar was rendered, by my standards, unplayable. He was unresponsive to my complaints (of course). I did not have the resources, time, or knowledge to fight him in court. I ended up trading the guitar for my LP, which I still have. My only recourse was to smear his workmanship as far and wide as I could, and I cost him a lot of business - more than I lost on the value of the guitar, for that matter, so I came out ahead in that he lost mcuh more than I did.

I often wonder if he was just a con - buying cheap MIJ acoustics and finding some way to pass them off as his own. At any rate, I think he's dead now from an overworked liver. A pity.

That's my "cowboy" story! :( :mad: :o
 
TelePaul said:
He wrote "Guinnevere", "Almost Cut My Hair," "Long Time Gone", and "Delta". He also co-wrote "Wooden Ships".

Believe me, I know. I was listening to him when you still thought the world stopped and started with Zeppelin. And yes, he can write. All I'm saying is that he was nothing special as a player. 2 different things, IMO. (You forgot Triad - the song he was fired from the Byrds for writing, which was later recorded by Jefferson Airplane).
 
muttley600 said:
Oh I get it some fairy godmother is going to pay heat light electric, materials rent rates tax etc. How stupid of me I've been doing it wrong all these years. Seriously that £25 dollars is going to be down to single figures pretty easy when you take all costs into account. Tax and VAT alone will take more than $10.

Materials? For a set-up? Oh, like your allen keys and screwdrivers. In all fairness, that's kindof a one off payment. Vat? On a service? That's news to me.
 
32-20-Blues said:
Materials? For a set-up? Oh, like your allen keys and screwdrivers. In all fairness, that's kindof a one off payment. Vat? On a service? That's news to me.

-Material cost-

Setup: shop supplies $0? (the customer pays for strings)

Nut job: $5 for a bone nut, some sandpaper, glue

Fret Job: $10 for fret wire, sandpaper, glue, and polish.

Buying in bulk would be much cheaper.
 
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32-20-Blues said:
Materials? For a set-up? Oh, like your allen keys and screwdrivers. In all fairness, that's kindof a one off payment. Vat? On a service? That's news to me.
From HMRC
At present, when a trader supplies a service to a private consumer, the trader is responsible for applying VAT at the rate of the country where he has his place of establishment.
But it is a little more complex than that I'll grant you. And if all you want me to do is use an allen key and a screwdriver then were getting closer to a $25 setup.
 
Just for the record I charge between £50 and £80 for a straight forward setup depending on the guitar and its condition, which isn't far off most of the competition. Parts and extras are advised first. A rough guide would be profit of about 40% on that after all cost are considered (not counting heat light rent) would raise that to around £100. I do live and work in one of the most expensive parts of the UK but hey thats where I've always lived and my choice.

Anyhow guys lets stop the bitchin and get back onto helping each other out. I'm not as pissed off as it may sound :)
 
muttley600 said:
Anyhow guys lets stop the bitchin and get back onto helping each other out. I'm not as pissed off as it may sound :)

Incidentally, nor am I. Good of you to list your rates - that was probably more than anyone expected you to do. And yes, I know that more than an allen key and a screwdriver go into a set-up. ;)
 
32-20-Blues said:
(You forgot Triad - the song he was fired from the Byrds for writing, which was later recorded by Jefferson Airplane).
David Crosby was fired from the Byrds for writing Triad? :confused:

Great song - I love his solo version from the Woodstock LP and Grace did a fine job on it as well.
 
Zaphod B said:
David Crosby was fired from the Byrds for writing Triad? :confused:

Great song - I love his solo version from the Woodstock LP and Grace did a fine job on it as well.

Apparently they weren't comfortable with his new directions. Or his growing drug use.
 
muttley600 said:
Just for the record I charge between £50 and £80 for a straight forward setup depending on the guitar and its condition, :)
I'm simply curious here .... exactly what do you consider all the details of a straight forward set-up?
I've always considered a set-up to be adjusting the intonation ..... truss rod ..... and string/p'up height. I'm assuming you mean to do more than just set the string height and intonation. Do you also mean dressing the nut ..... doing minor fret work ..... what all do you do?

Of course ..... to properly set up just the intonation/truss rod/ string height/ p'up height would take ...... hmmmmm .....well, at least a couple of hours and if you had any nut work or fret dressing to do it could easily go into 3-5 hours. Well let's see ...... actually my day gig is a piano tuner/tech and I charge $45 an hour for my labor plus parts ..... so $90 for two hours of my time ...... seems like ya'll are charging fair prices to me.
Other things that people don't realize is that you have to stand behind your work which means a certain amount of free work for most customers even if they don't need it 'cause so many people call you up and want it tweaked a bit more.

Crap ..... I'm rambling so let me sum up:
$45 an hour-fair
constitutes a set up to you - query
black light painting a git-query

Well ..... gotta go gig ..... later.
 
32-20-Blues said:
You couldn't survive on 25 dollars an hour? Even allowing for costs of ten dollars an hour, that's still 150 per day - 750 bucks a week. Who couldn't live on that?


Well, let's see - our shop manager has 5 daughters. If you think that he could afford a basic middle class lifestyle on $750 a week (assuming that your math on hourly rates is right, and it isn't even close), then you obviously have no kids. That wouldn't even pay for food and his mortgage, not to mention a car, electricity etc...

More to the point, you obviously have no idea what it takes to run a business. $25 an hour doesn't even cover the overhead. Also, you are WAY off base in assuming that a one hour setup means you can do 10 a day. That's one hour of billable bench time, but that is not even close to the actual time spent on the job. In addition to that, you have anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour of time spent with the customer when they bring the instrument in, and another 5-15 when they pick it up. That is not billable time, but it still takes time out of the day. And of course, sometimes the setup isn't perfect the first time, and we need to do some adjustments (not all that often, but sometimes). Do you think we should be charging our customers for that time? Because I don't, and we don't. Still more non-billable hours. And of course our most regular customers are also our friends, and when they come in we will chat with them about their lives - that's just good business, not to mention one of the fun parts of the business. Cutting any of that stuff out would make our quality of work suffer, and that is not something we are willing to do.

OH yeah, and who wants to work ten hours a day? (Well, I frequently do, but then I don't have a wife and kids, or even a girlfriend - and I may just have touched on one of the reasons why.) We are open from 9-5:30 on weekdays, and 9-5 on Saturdays. Our employees work during those hours. Oh, and then there is lunch. That knocks another hour or so off the day.

And then there is the amount of time we spend dealing with the actual business concerns. Our shop manager writes the checks for most of the bills, deals with scheduling issues, and does payroll. Which one of our customers should we bill that too? If you are lucky, about half of your total work hours are billable. The other two repair folks are probably closer to 60-70% billable, but between the shop manager, dad, and myself the overall total is about 50%. Bookkeeping, inventory, talking on the phone with potential customers (including quite a few who will never actually be customers, the occasional drunk, and a few who are so fucking stupid it is a wonder they can even string two words together, much complete sentences), sales with customers who are not there for repair work (strings, picks, accessories, guitars, etc.), yelling at solicitors who can't read the No Solicitors sign on the door, and all the rest of the little day to day concerns with running a business mean that you simply can not actually make your billing rate your gross pay. Anyone who thinks you can simply doesn't understand how it works to run a business.

And then there are overhead costs. Did you know that businesses get charged a higher rate for electricity? And our phone rates are a LOT higher than for individuals (our monthly phone bill for our two lines, DSL, and our yellow pages ad is over $600).

As far as why we do it, why do you think? We love it. In addition to that, we don't make any money on the repair business, but it is a great advertisement for our guitars, and while it is not in and of itself profitable, it pays for the overhead on the building which is the only way that dad and I can make a profit on our guitar building. Also, we love seeing cool guitars, and we would never get to see as many any other way. They come in and out the door all the time. Also, we love our employees, so there is no way in hell we would tell them, "fuck off, your not making us enough money." We are not in this business to become rich; we are in it because we love doing it, but that doesn't mean we should have to live in the fucking poor house. I'm not whining about anything here. I love the life I live, but I do get pissed off when people act like I'm trying to rip off my customers for wanting a reasonable middle class lifestyle for myself and my employees.

Oh, and we don't charge $500 for every fret job, just the ones which take six and a half hours (stainless steel into a twisted bound neck, for instance). The really expensive ones, though, are the old Martin bar frets. A complete refret with those things is gonna be over $1000. Then again, the guitar is gonna be worth it. I think our most expensive refret was a old Martin with a badly worn fingerboard (it was missing about a quarter of an inch of the surface of the fingerboard on either side, which had to be rebuilt), and of course it had bar frets. THAT cost about $2,000, but the customer was ecstatic. Great sounding guitar, too.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
You guys are slow. :p

I can carefully change strings in 5 minutes, stretch and tune in another 5. Wipe down the body and fingerboard, check for loose screws in 5. Adjust pickups, action, truss rod, and intonation in another 15. I'm talking hands on time, not considering giving the neck time to settle a bit after truss rod adjustments. I've done this just before a gig more than a couple of times.

I have to mention that I've primarily worked in manufacturing where speed is king and process improvement is etched in my brain.
 
Lt. Bob said:
I'm simply curious here .... exactly what do you consider all the details of a straight forward set-up?



Clean and polish, clean electronics, tighten loose screws, restring, adjust the neck, adjust the nut, adjust saddle height, adjust the intonation, adjust pickup height. It takes about an hour, unless you have a trem, in which case it takes a little longer, and if you have a Floyd Rose it takes quite a bit longer (about an hour and a half - intonation on those things is a bitch).


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
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TravisinFlorida said:
You guys are slow. :p

I can carefully change strings in 5 minutes, stretch and tune in another 5. Wipe down the body and fingerboard, check for loose screws in 5. Adjust pickups, action, truss rod, and intonation in another 15. I'm talking hands on time, not considering giving the neck time to settle a bit after truss rod adjustments. I've done this just before a gig more than a couple of times.

So if you come upon a bear in the woods, do you just walk up to him and poke him in the eye with a stick? ;^)
 
ggunn said:
So if you come upon a bear in the woods, do you just walk up to him and poke him in the eye with a stick? ;^)

I don't know what the hell you're rattling off about. :p
 
Okay, you make a reasonable case, until this point:

Light said:
Oh, and we don't charge $500 for every fret job, just the ones which take six and a half hours

That's 80 dollars per hour. Are you telling me, in all honesty, that you can charge 80 dollars an hour for a service and make no profit? Because I have a hard time believing that.

On another point, did you ever consider that not every job entitles you to enjoy a basic middle class lifestyle? It's nice to aspire to, but you don't automatically have the right to one. Perhaps working on guitars is not a profession suited to earning enough to be middle class?
 
32-20-Blues said:
On another point, did you ever consider that not every job entitles you to enjoy a basic middle class lifestyle? It's nice to aspire to, but you don't automatically have the right to one. Perhaps working on guitars is not a profession suited to earning enough to be middle class?

That's always a good question, but the market makes the decision. He can charge $500/hr if he wants, and if he can generate business for himself at that rate, then more power to him. By the same token, if he has more work than he can do, then he needs to charge more.

My dad had a sign up in his office that said, "I have no problem with competitors who charge less than I for their merchandise. They know what their stuff is worth."
 
32-20-Blues said:
That's 80 dollars per hour. Are you telling me, in all honesty, that you can charge 80 dollars an hour for a service and make no profit? Because I have a hard time believing that.

Our shop rate is $80 an hour. It used to be lower, but with inflation, it goes up, and that is what it takes for us to make it.



32-20-Blues said:
On another point, did you ever consider that not every job entitles you to enjoy a basic middle class lifestyle? It's nice to aspire to, but you don't automatically have the right to one. Perhaps working on guitars is not a profession suited to earning enough to be middle class?


No, because I think that EVERY job should afford at least a basic middle class lifestyle. Why should anyone (particularly someone with a VERY high level of skill, such as our repair people) have to make do with less? Our labor is just as valuable as anyone else's, and to suggest otherwise is offensive. We work just as hard as anyone, so why shouldn't we be paid just as well?


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
I don't see why Light or Muttley should have to defend themselves against their work rates.

It's not a captive customer base - no one is forced to pay their rates. Customers are free to seek cheaper alternatives.

Obviously there are plenty of customers who do think their work is worth the money, and are willing to pay it.

'Nuff said, in my opinion.
 
32-20-Blues said:
Okay, you make a reasonable case, until this point:



That's 80 dollars per hour. Are you telling me, in all honesty, that you can charge 80 dollars an hour for a service and make no profit? Because I have a hard time believing that.

On another point, did you ever consider that not every job entitles you to enjoy a basic middle class lifestyle? It's nice to aspire to, but you don't automatically have the right to one. Perhaps working on guitars is not a profession suited to earning enough to be middle class?
Maybe not and I wouldn't call my lifestyle middle class whatever that is these days. I would put my skills and experience alongside other trades such as as cabinet makers, plumbers, electricians, mechanics to name a few. Makeing and repairing good instruments sucessfully isn't something you just get good at overnight.

As to what constitutes a setup. I have a check list that includes all that is mentioned above and also includes reporting on the condition of the guitar. So you can add check electrics where needed, tuners, advise on general wear and possible future problems that are not an issue yet.

In truth a lot also comes with experience of knowing how to get round certain problems that often present themselves. Getting that grub screw out that has had the hex rubbed off it or its rusted in. Getting out those little screws that have lost thier heads etc and getting them re-seated. Quickly and successfully pin pointing that really small buzz that the guy says is sometimes there. Knowing exactly which fret it is that needs a tiny tiny dress to remove that tiny tiny buzz. Doing it right because you have the experience can be the difference between a five minute fix or a complete fret dress if you get it wrong. Same for tiny adjustments to the bridge and nut, example, someone comes in because they keep breaking strings in the same place knowing how to cleanly file a nut slot and string break angle or finely tweak the bridge or saddle is part of a setup service and is vital. I'm not saying that you can't sort those issues yourself but having the expereince does count for a lot IMHO. At least I hope it does.
 
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