Official Luthiers Forum!

I have to ask, for those who repairs for a living, how do you make a living doing that when most instruments around are cheap instruments that are not really economically repairable?

Do you only cater to the select few who plays more expensive instruments, or is there something about repairing cheap instruments that no one knows about?

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Tai fu,

Don't forget about upgrades, set up work, and the fact that a lot of people do not know how to change their own strings and actually PAY to have it done. When I recently bought strings while I was on the road driving to vacation, the clerk said, "We can change 'em for ya for a few bucks more." I asked how many string changes they do and he said much more than I would imagine. I suppose, especially on guitars with tie blocks, that it can be intimidating to change strings for someone who has never done it.
My point is only that straight out repairs are not the only way luthiers make money. I would not try to guess what percentage of their total revenue is derived from repairs, but it is probably not even close to 50% unless the luthier specializes in repairs to vintage instruments. But what do I know? I work for a bank.

Tony

_________________
http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Most of the people who own cheap instruments fall into two classes: Those who know, but can't afford more - so they are willing to have you repair it so that they can keep playing, or those who don't know it's cheap and not worth fixing.... but they do so anyway.

Either way, you charge them the same price.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

REPAIRS, sales, upgrades, set-ups very lucrative.

You must NOT price repairs based on the value of the instrument.
You must determine your shop time per hour, estimate the time for the repair + parts, and set the price of the repair, regardless of the value of the instrument.
I have set a "minimum charge" for any repair. Instead of figuring a estimate over the phone, without the instrument in hand, I tell the owner "my minimum charge is $... and I will give a firm price when you bring it" This weeds out people with junk looking for a cheap job, and saves me time and money.

_________________
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008907949110

If you can do setups, make a nut, and do a fret level.... you can make money working on guitars.

You don't have to know how to do everything. I am a terror with a soldering iron, so while I installed the pickups - my counterpart wired them up.

Be a specialist! Do banjos - I HATED working on banjos.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I did repairs professionally for about two years. I was building at the time too but the repair work was where the money was at so I hardly had time to build. You mostly get junkers in but when you think about it that makes sense the junkers need to be fixed while the expensive guitars are set up well enough and don't have bridge glued down to the finish. Once you get good at it you can really make a descent pay. I did work for 4 stores in my area but slowly they started closing down and doing more and more in house repairs so I got a day job

I've had many a conversation with customers trying to convince them that resetting the neck on their 70's Epiphone isn't worth it, or even re-gluing a bridge in some cases but $80 repair is still cheaper then $200 guitar and sometimes it was their grand fathers guitar or something. So I'd do it.

Most dedicated repair folks (i.e. those whose business is pretty much entirely repairs) do very well economically.

I think success in this depends on several key factors (in this order):

-Customer service temperment and ability
-Reliability, i.e. delivering the work when you said you would at the price you estimated
-Good Quality work

Preach it, brother!

Another caveat: When a client says, "Oh, I thought it would be more"... raise your prices!
When they suck in their breath, pause, and say "OK, go for it", then you have priced your work correctly.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

One of my old bandmates just got a guitar store job in an upscale neighbourhood & spends most of his days changing strings & tuning guitars for up & coming local rock stars whose Les Pauls' are brought in by their mothers. Hate to hear how out of tune they get before being brought in for a tuning.....

_________________
If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason. - Jack Handey

Oh btw Tony, how much did you end up paying for that string change anyway?

_________________
If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason. - Jack Handey

"Sucking in the breath" is a good sign, as long as the customer agrees to do the work!

When the customer says they expected it to be more, it is a lack of knowledge on their part.
I know how long it will take, and charge accordingly. I love to make the customer happy, and make good money at the same time.

I want to build my own guitars, it is my 1st priority. The repairs will help me do this.
I want to avoid a lot of small repairs at small fees, thus my "minimum charge".
By skimming away the small fee jobs, I clear away time for my 1st priority.

This works for me, your situation may call for a different strategy.

_________________
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008907949110

There's two types (basically) of guitar techs out there. I'm talking full time techs who do only (or mainly) that for a living.

Salaried employees, who get paid an hourly rate or monthly salary, and includes most in-house techs for small stores, and lately the big chains have made a big push to fill all their stores with "certified" techs (the chain certifies them after a short 2 or 3 day training session, they may or may not have any previous tech experience). Also, guitar techs that tech for acts on the road fall into this category IMO.

Independant contractors, who rent space, either from a chain or a mom and pop store, or go on their own and rent a small space to set up shop for building and repairing. A few independant contractors work from home. You can either rent space for a set fee and just run your business, or you can pay the store a percentage of your earnings, say 20%, and set your prices accordingly, which is what I did.

The salaried employee is a good start to break into the business, if you can find somewhere to hire you, but the pay isn't very good, the hours are long, and you end up doing much more work than you are being paid for, but if you apprach it correctly, you can gain a lot of experience and make a lot of contacts. Some stores have a non-compete clause they want you to sign, so you can't collect and store customer info, then quit on them.

My first tech job was as a salaried tech for a mom and pop store. It was a great experience that taught me a lot and prepared me to move to my next job as an independant contractor. I used space from a chain, inside their store, and got paid per job. I would charge the store, and they would mark up whatever I charged them 20 percent, so a $35 charge would become $42, an $80 would become $96 to the customer, and so on, that's how I rented the space. At one point, I had 70 guitars sitting on shelves in the back waiting to be fixed, I was working 7 days a week, 12 hour days, but the pay was QUADRUPLE what I was making at the small store, for the same type of work, but there was more of it because of the foot traffic.

The economy took a crap, and the corporate office needed to find a way to increase their cash flow, so they looked at what us independant contractors were doing, and decided to train dudes, pay them $9.00 an hour, and put them in the stores hoping they would do the same job, and also requiring them to setup every guitar on the wall and that got sold. They didn't kick us out, but instead started making it difficult for us to make money, by requiring stuff like free setups for the store, and setting limits on the amount of time it took to complete jobs. Same day service was optimal. That made it tough to have a backlog, since you had to argue with the GM every day about your back log, if you had one, even if you told someone ahead of time that their fret dresswould take 3 weeks to complete due to your backlog. I never got any complaints by the way, people understood and trusted my work. The kicker for me came when they decided to give half-price setups to first time buyers, and told me they would only pay me half. Then they told me to do a quickie cheapie setup, just to make the customer happy and get them out the door. Well, I didn't want someone's first experience with me to be a cheapie half-a$$ed setup. It stopped being worth it, and the environment was extremely stressful, so I created a web page, and now work from home. They took a sales guy, sent him out to a hotel for 3 days, and now he's the certified tech, doing mostly store stock, but I guess that's what they want.

I now have steady repair work at home, and also time to build instruments, which I didn't have before. I do mostly big jobs such as fret dresses, refrets, and structural repairs, and the store does string changes and minor setup work, so it actually worked out pretty good, and now I have 2 orders for electric instruments, and 1 acoustic commission, and more pending.

So I guess the point to this long tale, is, if you want to do tech work for a living, get a job in a small store, then work towards being an independant contractor, unless youcan find somewhere to hire you independantly to start, assuming your skills are up to par. My salaried position was invaluable, since I made a lot of mistakes and learned how to run my own business from it before going independant, but you may be different. The hardest part for me was customer service, and pacing.

_________________
Old growth, shmold growth!

Oh I forgot to add, if you don't want to deal with a lot of other people's BS, your end goal should be to be your own boss in your own detached space somewhere, that way all you have to deal with are customers, and can work to your highest standard.

_________________
Old growth, shmold growth!

10 minutes of my time, so roughly $100.00! Good thing I don't charge myself!

_________________
http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

By the way, that is what I feel I am worth on a bad day, not at all what my company pays me!

_________________
http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Feel free to adjust your numbers accordingly.

I just went out on my own (six weeks now) after eight years of doing repairs at one of the top acoustic shops in the country. Now they're my client and I get to spend a little more time working in the belly of the local music scene, which I truly love. Things couldn't be better at the moment - I've got a little too much work which is where I operate best. I expect to hire someone by the fall.

Now if I could just start building instruments and repairing the 175 busted guitars I've collected in order to repair and sell...

That's one hell of a backlog!

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince