Getting a Guitar Tech gig at a Music Store...

[Jackson56]

Do any other qualified forum members have an impossible time trying to find a Guitar Tech gig at their local music stores? I am a Roberto-Venn grad and have been building/repairing for 6 years, but every place I contact seems to have a "luthier" on staff.

I know Wisconsin is not a musical hotbed, but I find the good-ole boy network around here very frustrating. Just because someone is a cousin of the owner and knows how to resting guitars and maybe re-solder an output jack, or has done a weekend repair course, does not make him a Luthier.

 

[Panthur]

It's the same over here in South Wales. Every singel music shack, of which there aren't many, has a guy sat behind the counter who can 'do a setup'. I've never paid for a setup because you just don't know who your handing your instrument too and what sort of setup you actually get. Perhaps if there was some sort of formal accreditation that people could display on their wall that says they are a qualified luthier, that might help separate the wheat from the chaff.

 

[AGWAN]

Our Guitar Center's "Master Luthier" Couldn't tell me how much neck inserts cost. or even what they were.

Somehow.

For some reason.

I don't want this guy carving out custom Contours on a 400+ dollar Black Korina body.

 

[Paul-less]

The best luthier I have ever met, who has made guitars for Ronnie Wood, Bobby Vee, and Paul Diethelm (off the top of my head), was completely self taught. He got into the game in the early 70's, and never had any professional training.

Do you need a diploma to be a luthier? I say no.

Are those jokers at EVERY music store (I'm talking to you, Guitar Center) luthiers? I say more than likely, no.

 

[ORCRiST]

Ummmm... what part of Wiscosin??

 

[Jackson56]

I live in Manitowoc, which is about 45 minutes south of Green Bay on Lake Michigan.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

The best luthier I have ever met, who has made guitars for Ronnie Wood, Bobby Vee, and Paul Diethelm (off the top of my head), was completely self taught. He got into the game in the early 70's, and never had any professional training.

Do you need a diploma to be a luthier? I say no.

I think so, not because of the example you gave, which is no doubt the rarest exception where a guy is self taught and as good or better than one with formal training.  Rather, some sort of title that has been earned through a curriculum to prevent the average guy from calling himself a Luthier.

For anything I would need, I would never need a Luthier so it's bit of an overkill.  A fret level or nut filing need not have a guy that knows how to build a violin or acoustic guitar.

 

[-CB-]

If your work is good, set up your own biz.  Visit, get to know local bands, hand out a card.  Do the work on time, to their satisfaction.  Stand behind what you do.  Treat the customer right.  Before long, you'll be the "go-to" guy.

 

[ORCRiST]

I live in Manitowoc, which is about 45 minutes south of Green Bay on Lake Michigan.

Booo!  :sad:

Total Travel Estimate:   5 hours 18 minutes   /   326.22 miles

Wish I could find somone in Minnesota.

 

[Paul-less]

If your work is good, set up your own biz.  Visit, get to know local bands, hand out a card.  Do the work on time, to their satisfaction.  Stand behind what you do.  Treat the customer right.  Before long, you'll be the "go-to" guy.

I agree.

 

[Jackson56]

If your work is good, set up your own biz.  Visit, get to know local bands, hand out a card.  Do the work on time, to their satisfaction.  Stand behind what you do.  Treat the customer right.  Before long, you'll be the "go-to" guy.

That is my plan right now.  Only problem being their isn't much for the local music scene.  Good thing being I have a daytime desk job that pays me more than a guitar tech gig ever could.  Although it would be nice to have some side work to keep my sanity and to fund my guitar buying habit. 

I'm also considering selling my 1966 Pontiac GTO so I can start my own Custom Guitar Company.

 

[jackthehack]

If your work is good, set up your own biz.  Visit, get to know local bands, hand out a card.  Do the work on time, to their satisfaction.  Stand behind what you do.  Treat the customer right.  Before long, you'll be the "go-to" guy.

That is my plan right now.  Only problem being their isn't much for the local music scene.  Good thing being I have a daytime desk job that pays me more than a guitar tech gig ever could.  Although it would be nice to have some side work to keep my sanity and to fund my guitar buying habit. 

I'm also considering selling my 1966 Pontiac GTO so I can start my own Custom Guitar Company.

Keep the Goat....

 

[stubhead]

It's never going to be a high-paying job. 22 frets = 44 fret ends = 88 fret corners, and trying to convince people that they need to be attended to individually, well... I've been doing my own wiring and fretwork since the early 80's, all my students and bandmates want me to "set up" their guitars, but they don't want to pay more than $5 an hour  - I make 5 times that on my "day job" sitting at a computer writing. People like Paul Reed Smith & Ken Parker "made it" on initial hard work, then marketing, marketing, marketing... now John Suhr. It really depends on what you want out of it. If you love working with wood and have an obsessive, finicky detail-oriented personality, great. In reading "Premier Guitar" and such, it seems to me that the market for super high-end custom guitars and boutique amplifiers is ridiculously over-saturated. A whole lot of people - hundreds - got into it just before the economy tanked, and there is also a ridiculous oversupply of great, good, and adequate guitars out there in a crashed economy. However, if you want to do the hard work of working through prototypes to come up with something special - not just another clone - there do seem to be a number of people who make a decent living wage making 5-8 guitars a year in the $4,000 range. Terry McInturff, etc. Does Alembic really stay in business with the $6,000 basses? Guess so. There are still a large number of people who simply don't want anything other than Fender, Gibson, Gretch, and Rickenbacher.

http://www.mcinturffguitars.com/06-Guitars/TaurusStandard/TaurusStandardSpec.asp

 

[Superlizard]

If your work is good, set up your own biz.  Visit, get to know local bands, hand out a card.  Do the work on time, to their satisfaction.  Stand behind what you do.  Treat the customer right.  Before long, you'll be the "go-to" guy.

That is my plan right now.  Only problem being their isn't much for the local music scene.  Good thing being I have a daytime desk job that pays me more than a guitar tech gig ever could.  Although it would be nice to have some side work to keep my sanity and to fund my guitar buying habit. 

I'm also considering selling my 1966 Pontiac GTO so I can start my own Custom Guitar Company.

Keep the Goat....

+1,000,000,000000000000000000000000

Jackson56, don't make us bitch-slap you into sensibility....    :icon_jokercolor:

 

[AGWAN]

if anything I say sell it to open a guitar store, that is capable of making one off guitars.

make your bread and butter selling epiphones and schecters to the neighborhood kids. so that when their dad wants a bitching Axe. he knows who to call.

 

[erogenousjones17]

if anything I say sell it to open a guitar store, that is capable of making one off guitars.

make your bread and butter selling epiphones and schecters to the neighborhood kids. so that when their dad wants a bitching Axe. he knows who to call.

Ghostbusters?  :icon_jokercolor: Sorry, it had to be said.

Seriously though. Keep the Goat. At the very least, sell it to someone who knows what it is and what it's worth, and not just to some punk kid who'll run it into the ground doing donuts in the high school parking lot. A friend of mine burned through a Duster and an old Maverick by driving like a moron hopped up on goofballs and testosterone. Shame, really.

But Agwan's idea of the guitar store/custom shop is a good one. There's a place here in Québec City that sells guitars (usually vintage electrics and basses), but also builds high-quality acoustics. If only I could remember the name... :doh:

 

[Jackson56]

I have had the goat for 12 years.  I bought it when I was a 18 year old punk kid.  Had a lot of great times with it, but basically I don't love it like I used to and I am never going to give it the frame off restoration that it deserves.  And if I can get more enjoyment out of doing guitar work, that seems like a win to me.  That being said, I know what my goat is worth and won't basically sell it for crack money.  And if I can't get what I want for it, it won't be sold.

 

[stubhead]

One of the things I like about Premier Guitar is that they do interviews with some normal people, it's not all Slash/Clapton/Paul Reed Smith. There's an interview with an up-and-coming luthier named Randy Parsons who has done stuff for Jimmy Page, Jack White, now Gretsch:

http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2010/Aug/Builder_Profile_Parsons_Guitars.aspx

quotes to remember:

I locked myself in my basement for two years. This was before YouTube, so there really wasn’t a lot of information out there. I just started cutting wood and trying to invent how guitars were made based on what I knew. I would buy some crappy guitars and take them apart, but I was just a madman. I think I made over 100 guitars in those two years in my basement. They were crappy and I didn’t even finish a lot of them, but I was on this mission. I told myself, “I need to spend two years and learn this craft the best I can.” That began this serendipitous journey where the right things, the right materials, and the right people just came into my life at the right time.

Who were some of the folks that helped you?

Well, there was Boaz Elkayam. He’s this underground gypsy guitar maker and he’s well known in the classical world. He would travel from country to country and build guitars with small tools. I was so obsessed with building guitars that I decided to build some flamenco guitars, and I thought, “If I’m really going to learn how to make these, I need to learn how to speak Spanish.” A Spanish instructor introduced me to Boaz, and it began this friendship. Boaz actually lived with my wife and me for a year. We would stay up at night and drink wine and talk about guitars. The most important thing he taught me was when he pulled out this Mexican knife he carried around with him everywhere and said, “This is all you f-ing need. Learn to make guitars with this and this is all you will ever need.” And that began my relationship with low-tech tools. And he was right—technology really gets in the way. If you can make your guitar with hand tools, then you’re better off. Famous people will contact a major company and say, “Hey, I had this idea…” and the manufacturer says, “Geez— no, our computerized machines aren’t calibrated to do that.” But I can do anything, because I can make a guitar with a hand knife. I can just conjure up a way of approaching any request. In my shop, there are no CNC machines, there are no Plek and fret machines. There’s none of that crap. It’s all just small tools.

I agree with this - if you can't route for a pickup with a chisel and rattail rasp in a few hours, you're really not ready for router class yet.... :hello2: