Official Luthiers Forum!

"I’ve been building guitars for three and a half decades, and even though my factory has grown large, I’ve personally made thousands of guitars. One at a time."

If I do the math on this and use 2000 as the minimum number that can be "thousands", this fellow has personally built around 60 guitars a year one at a time while growing a very large company. Truly impressive.

Pat

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There are three kinds of people:

Those that make things happen,
those that watch things happen,
and those that wondered what happened.

Wow! Who's the builder?

Pat: Congrats................you've been busy!!
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

I didn't even know Wilt Chamberlin had a brother that built guitars.

I'm guessing it's Jean Larrivee, and it's totally believable. I had the pleasure of meeting him once at his shop in Oxnard, he was covered in saw dust but made time available for me for a personal tour. A very generous man.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Ah...Bob Taylor.

http://www.rtaylorguitars.com/Story.aspx

That's a lot of experience and accumulated knowledge.

I believe it. I'm sure it's totally possible for him to actually personally load the machines and push the buttons, and therefore personally make thousands of guitars himself while growing the company. I'm also assuming he designed the guitars and equipment to implement his plans. His years of experience as a single man luthier with no fancy machines helped him develop his process. Quite impressive!
If he was a one man shop and used the same equipment, he would be able to say he made the guitars himself, why shouldn't he be able to say the same things because he has employees now that help him?

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I looked through the web page and it's possible to by a base model guitar with no extra appointments for under $5000.
They look nice!
It seems that Bob Taylor still doesn't build them, he has a team build them.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

This page says he has five experienced luthiers that build 300 guitars a year http://www.rtaylorguitars.com/Default.aspx

That is about 60 guitars per luthier per year. Which is a breakneck pace for an individual luthier, but not if you have a factory with the machines Bob Taylor has.

With that said, has Bob himself been building 60 per year for the last 35 years, and also doing all the other things it takes to run his company? Not likely.

Actually, the claim bugged me a little. I would have been more impressed had he said hundreds instead of thousands....I also don't like the idea that people are going to read this and assume that an individual builder should be able to produce 60 guitars a year (so why would he/she need to charge over $5K for a guitar to make a living?).

Pat

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There are three kinds of people:

Those that make things happen,
those that watch things happen,
and those that wondered what happened.

Ah common guys, that only a little over a guitar per week.

60 a year is 5 per month. I can see that.
I really wonder though how many years it's been since Bob Taylor has actually touched a guitar. It's a pretty big business.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Somebody's got to pay the cost of loans, all that machinery, equipment, buildings, mainainance + research off, plus advertising, wages, tax, insurance etc....

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Bob is a very hands on guy. I remember those old articles he would write in Guitarmaker or was it American luthier about making various equipment like electric side benders and such. He's a very capable guy.

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Another day, another dollar.

They get you on the options.
$200 for jescar (evo?) fretwire?

Wonder if folks have checked how many guitars John Greven has made over his life time? I have the greatest respect for people like Jean Larrivee and Bob Taylor. They both started with nothing and look what they have accomplished. I also think they are both passionate about guitars and very,very knowledgable in their field.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

I suspect "they" want people to think "we" should be able to build 60+ guitars a year. "They" also want people to think what "we" build is no different than cookie cutter guitars assembled from pre made parts spit out of a computer controlled machine.

Bob Taylor has my utmost respect as a business man......but some of his claims and marketing are...................

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I didn't mean to say it, but I meant what I said.
http://www.brackettinstruments.com/

I can't speak to the veracity of the claim, but I can say it's not unbelievable. I know of at least two VERY well respected pros who build in the low 30s for hours, which would make 5 a month completely doable with 40 hour weeks. That would leave very little time for R&D and relaxing on the porch, though, so both of them take advantage of that acquired skill and talent and put out far fewer than 60 a year

The factories, depending on which you're talking about, have 8-12 hours of labour into a guitar. I don't see any reason why a talented individual builder with a good process shouldn't be able to do it at 1/3 to 1/4 the speed. At 1/2 the factory builders' speed that still leaves a minimum of 12 hours of tweaking time.

I'm not saying every builder should be held to that standard, it requires being able to do a lot of very different tasks both quickly and precisely, just that I think it's quite possible. Knowing the two guys who can do it does help my confidence on that, though

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

First, let me say that I too have the utmost respect for Mr. Taylor and what he has accomplished. He also seems like an all round nice guy in his factory tours videos. However, in this case I believe he's trying to have it both ways. Here's a little longer version of the quote:

"I’ve been building guitars for three and a half decades, and even though my factory has
grown large, I’ve personally made thousands of guitars. One at a time. There is
something so gripping about painstakingly making a guitar—a single guitar—and putting
attention into every detail, sandpaper and chisel in hand."

So he's clearly trying to create the image of himself "painstakingly" making single guitars with hand tools on the one hand and saying he's made thousands on the other. Just doesn't fly for me.

Pat

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There are three kinds of people:

Those that make things happen,
those that watch things happen,
and those that wondered what happened.

Keep in mind that from the start, Bob had Kurt as a partner, who took care of all the business side. I do it all myself, and I swear that the business side takes up half my time. So if I could just devote myself the shop, with specs sheets for each one and no back and forth with the clients at all, I could easily do 40/year at my current pace, so 60/year for a very driven individual not building custom one-offs is quite do-able.

The guitar I had with me at the Ann Arbor gathering a few years ago, that some of you saw/played, was built on Labour Day weekend. 3 days total, not counting the finish cure-time.

I would imagine most of those guitars were made when the company was smaller and Bob was a production luthier. He might have had others making some of the parts for him, as in master/apprentice shops. Along the lines of Bob G's comment, from early on, Taylor's focus has been on making processes more efficient. On the Taylor campus, he has an entire separate and enormous building / shop that is just for his own work. He likes to build, even while the factory is churning them out. And as Mario said, Kurt has always run the business. Pat, I do see the interpretation you're seeing in the quote, but I don't think he meant he made every detail of every guitar.

On the R.Taylor line, that is a pretty recent offshoot, meant to be a step-up from regular Taylors. I think they folded it back into the company to do other specialty work from within.

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David Malicky

I have really lots of respect for Mr. Taylor. In every aspect, as a woodbuyer, a businessman, a jig-designer, a boss. Everthing is more than I will ever reach. But when I compared my last Steelstring, built with the ideas Ervin Somogyi teached me, and comparing them to about 25 Taylors I played at this years fair in Frankfurt, sorry, but I like mine more. And probably lots of your guitars have more live in them and are more responsive than Taylors. If I want to know how to survive with guitarmaking, I should look to Taylor, if I want to learn something about Tap-Tuning I listen to Ervin. So a combination of both sides is, as always working good for me....

Best regrads!

I can see 60 per year.
I figure there's about 60hr of work in building a guitar....but I don't have any standard bodies or necks to start with. If I made all my necks the same and only a couple body styles I could do fixtures and templates that would save a lot of time. CNC the necks and cut all the woods the same and I could get down below 40hr per guitar easily.....especially if I had a finishing department to deal with that headache.

That assumes there's not much tap tuning magic or crazy inlays. It would also assume no time for wood shopping, talking to customers, business issues, trade shows, youtube videos, etc. I kinda doubt the claim of "thousands" too