Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm finding myself moving to the next level of building where I'm starting to be comfortable and confident enough to market my guitars. I'm also finding myself with the occasional commission. The last one caught me a little off guard. My wife had a friend over to stay a couple of days and her husband is a daily guitar player. He owns a decent hand built thats about 20 years old. Anyway, her last night here we were talking guitars and she was complimenting my work and I gave her the shop tour and had a couple on the go to show her some of the process. While we're in the shop she says, "you know what would be cool. If you built my husband a guitar for his 60th birthday this winter. I'd be prepared to spend 3 - 5 K". Sweet music to my ears but it caught me a little off guard. I didn't really have a base price to start with. Nor did I have any pricing for basic wood and upgrades. I have too many sets(OK I know that's not possible) and my cost ranges from free to whatever the price of a nicely quartered set of Brazilian would be worth. The scenario played out pretty comically to me. Here's my wife and her girl friend and I'm pulling out sets of wood and tops out of the pile and they're like" well, that doesn't really match with that top and that doesn't really go to well with that one." I found myself stumbling a bit trying to explain that you might want to take into consideration aspects other than cosmetic beauty of the wood. I felt a little like a shoe salesman pulling sets out of the back room(my dehum room) and having them try them on.

So, this ones for those that have some pricing fairly firmly in place, where did you start? I guess the first 2 things to consider are general guitar market and your market. How did you come up with a base price and how did you decide what woods would be an upgrade? I'm not really interested in building a bunch of Rosewood or Mahogany guitars so how do you decide what's a base price wood? If you get a nice set off ebay for $100 and it's market value is more like $200 or more, what do you charge for that one?

In my usual seat of the pants approach to most things we settled on a price for some of my nicest stash. A lovely set of Mun Ebony (Oooooo, that's much nicer than Quartered BRW )and Sinker Redwood(thanks Lance, I need another), black bevel and African Blackwood binding. She made the pricing fairly easy becauce she had given me a price range.

That's it. How'd you come up with your pricing?

Hi Danny,
I don't believe in the "get as much as you can" philosophy. As builders, I think we need to consider the value of the instrument and the investment the player/customer is making. I don't mind charging $6k base price for my instruments because I believe with my current trajectory, my instruments will be worth substantially more in the future. In other words, my work represents excellent quality, tone, and value. I felt the same way when I was charging my initial base price of $3.2k.

In other words, I believe that your future goals regarding your guitar building does matter and should influence how you set your price. Will you always sell as a hobby? Will you do this part-time even into retirement? Maybe full-time? etc... In short, you want your customers to get a good value in light of what the competition is doing.


Here are some points to consider:

1) Is your quality superior to a Taylor guitar in every single way? If so, start your base price no lower than $3k.

2) As a relatively "new name" in the lutherie world -- I would not start your base price higher than $4k unless your work is beyond exquisite (think impressive on the level of Michi Matsuda).

3) In order to build your brand, I would recommend giving the upgrades at close to cost. Say $500 for Cocobolo that cost you $300 or $300 for a set of Claro Walnut that cost you $175, etc... keep the cost down and close to base price. Otherwise, your instruments will break into a price range where you will be competing with builders who have a stronger reputation and more than likely, a more refined product (my work is much better now than when I started).

4) The worst thing you can do is sell your work short but even more deadly is to set the price too high. You NEVER want to have to lower your base price. Websites are also important when you want to take your building to the next level.


If you want more specific advice, I would be very happy to help. Feel free to send some photos of your work for evaluation and give me a call and I can give you a honest appraisal and some pointers on how much to charge. (386.690-2567)

And congratulations on persevering on this difficult path -- it is not an easy thing to build a product good enough to sell!!!

Best Regards,
Simon

One last things -- I would use all of your Brazilian RW that doesn't have paperwork or for which you are unable to get paperwork. The government is giving us a heads up regarding this stuff and the law requires that we can prove this stuff is legal even though they are currently not enforcing it. And so, keep the Brazilian RW you have that is easily traceable in terms of its legality (you can get notarized statements from the folks who milled it or who bought it if it was in the US before the 92' ban).

Secondly, I would not use your best sets until your price gets a bit higher. Those sets represent a lot of investment and you want to get good money for them. Stick with a few reasonably priced tonewoods for your initial builds to customers but keep the best stuff in your "vault" for the time being.

I estimate the number of hours of work and pay myself a fair hourly wage for my area. Everything else is added in.

Hi Danny,

When I was just getting started I sold the first few for cost of materials + a few hundred for labour. If I remember right the first base rate I published was $1,500. I think after a year or two I bumped my base price up to $2000-2500. Than after that it was moving to $3000. Now after 10+ years and 100+ instruments I'm around $4000-$4500 USD for a base price depending on the model.

As has been mentioned there is a fine line between charging enough for people to take you seriously and not overpricing if you don't have the experience or the reputation to back it up. You also have to decide what features you are going to offer and figure out what your material cost will be on your base model. It is really easy to be putting $500+ in materials into a guitar. Add in shop costs, insurance, etc and if you subtract that from your selling price and you can quickly find there is not much left over (if anything).

Another factor is what are your goals as a builder. Is this your full-time job or a hobby/retirement business? Does it need to earn you money or are you financially set and fine if it only does a little better than break even? All this needs to be factored in. I'm trying to make my living doing this and I'm currently setting up a new shop to produce 30+ instruments a year, because that is what I have to do to pay my bills. Most builders I know are not in the same position.

While you may not want to build a lot of Mahogany or Rosewood instruments I've found in general they are still the best sellers (and some of the easiest to sell). I decided early on that if that is what the people want I would build it for them.

There is a lot more I could say, but don't have the time right now. Looking though other builders websites, especially those who are at the same stage as you, can be very helpful.

_________________
Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

$2500 seems to be a good base price to start at, if you can build at equal to or higher than the quality of say a Taylor.

However do not limit yourself to commissions. Take on repair work because you'll get more work that way, and you'll learn a lot doing repairs, which will help you when you do build. It also helps keep work interesting if you aren't the type to do repetitive work.

The problem with commission price is that how much you get per hour is irrelevant, but for repair work it is more relevant.

_________________
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

That's a good price, but the problem I have found is that most people will just go buy the Taylor.

Unless you have name recognition, it is hard to sell them for much. I've found the sweet spot to be between 800 and 1500, which is basically giving them away at cost, but I can move them out, put them to good use and buy more wood.

I'm sure everyone has their own experience, but I have no desire to build commissions, mine are spec guitars that I enjoy for a while, then let them go.

At that price, I might as well stick to repairs and use that to build up a name...

_________________
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

Why not, see http://www.theluthierblog.com/articles/getting-started-as-a-luthier/

_________________
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.

I know DannyV didn't mention repair in the OP and I don't know if he's only a hobbyist but since it's been brought up, when I made an honest go at this in the 90's it was the repair work that was the bread and butter. So I would agree that it's an important part of a business plan at least it was for me. And today I have a good enough local reputation to get more work then I care too since I have a day job.

Simon - I appreciate your indepth reply. I think providing people with good value is premier. I mostly want to build guitars with unique wood with exceptional tone. Tone is pretty subjective but I've been mostly very happy with outcome and have received some very favourable testimonials from customers. If nothing else it is a bit of a confidence builder to make me more comfortable easing into the 3k plus market. Regarding wood upgrades, I guess a 30 - 40% markup would be close to cost if you take into consideration the time spent sourcing it and shipping. That seems pretty fair. I do try to sniff out deals but that takes time also. Time well spent in my mind. I enjoy it. I didn't really want to use the one set of Mun I have but it was the customers favourite choice so why not. It's just a bit of wood hey. I think it will be good for me as it will force me to slow down a bit and bring out the best. Thanks for the heads up on the BRW. I only have one set and maybe it be for me. Are you still up a bit late. I think you're about 3 hrs ahead of me. I'll try to call soon. I'd really like to chat. I just finished a couple months of fishing so time for some fun.

JF - I guess it would be a fair hourly wage for the industry which in general isn't well paid. I think that's most of the woodworking industry.

Thanks Josh- Good point about charging enough for people to take you seriously. I'm a firm believer in paying ones dues in any field. I think I've payed enough to ease the price up a bit. And I'm fortunate though to be in a position to acquire a fair bit of wood at better pricing (or free) than most. I've also got pretty low overhead all things considered. I don't live in downtown Vancouver, 3rd most expensive real estate on the planet. fortunately.

Tai - I know repairs are a great way to get the chops down but I'm really not interested in going into that market. I will however spend any free time I have building spec, which I really like. Less pressure.

Glen - I've been in the $800 - $1500 range for a bit. I think it's time to move up. That would be ease up.

Thanks guys. More to come I hope.

What I mean by fair hourly wage is the cost of living in my area. Basically taking into consideration how much it costs to own a house, run a shop, etc... So not a medical doctors wage and not a janitors wage but the wage of a middle class wage earner. Fortunately I live in an area that is low cost. So I would imagine a guitar maker in New York City would have to charge prices way higher than anywhere else but due to the nature of the market really can't unless his or her reputation is sky high.

This method of pricing has worked out pretty well for me.

Thank you for that Josh a very unpretentious honest account


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My experience over the last 10 years mirrors Josh's very closely except I'm only up to #63.

If there is a well established boutique guitar store near you take the owner out for lunch in return for giving you an honest appraisal/critique and a realistic market value for your instruments.

Developing a relationship with seasoned pros in high end guitar sales was incredibly important for me in the evolution and marketing of my stuff.

Good luck! Sounds like fun times ahead.

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Hey Danny,

800-1500$ is too low if you're putting together clean guitars. As you say, tone is subjective. The Gore/Gilet books can help with that a lot.

You need to truly and bluntly evaluate your guitars. Are they at par with 3-4k$ guitars in every way? That may not matter even if they are, until you get enough out there to be seen as a 'real' brand.

I'd say if you bumped your base price to 2500$ that would be a reasonable start. There is a ton of competition at 3-5k by some real impressive builders with high numbers under their belt. Sometimes the only way to get traction is to offer a comparable product for less money. It is in my opinion better to undersell than it is to not sell. You can still upsell the arm bevel and the mun and it would be perfectly justifiable. More labor, more material costs.

2500 base
400 mun
300 bevel
= 3200

Which is about as much as I think you can expect until you gain a wider reputation, or are putting out something demonstratably superior to other things at that price point. It'll be a helluva jump up from 1500$ anyway...

.02

Sorry JF (what's your first name) to have not clarified that. I have 3 jobs. Commercial fisherman 2 months a year, build kitchens only for the cash. The fun has gone out of it. 3rd is guitars and I think it's going into the #2 position because curvy boxes are more fun to build than square ones. Right now I do 3 or 4 guitars a year and would like to get it up to 6 or 8. I still want it to remain enjoyable.

I also live in a fairly low cost area and I have the bonus of having a shop for other woodworking interests. At least that's how I justify it to my wife. That should help keep guitars a little more affordable. I'm also fairly benevolent. If a great young player came to me and had no cash and his passion for playing moved me I would build for practically free. All good players deserve a good guitar. Might get me some points somewhere down the road. Ha ha

Thanks Terry! I've always kept an eye open on what you have been doing. I think I'm on a similar road as you've been on. This is a start. http://symphontreemusic.com/home-vancou ... ree-music/

I'm in pretty good company even if I am the low man. As I said, I believe one should pay their dues.

A couple other things I thought of. You need to decide how you are going to market your guitars. Direct, dealers or a combination of both. If you are selling around $3000 and then giving a dealer a good cut you may be back to not making any money. On the other hand dealers can be a real boost in getting your product out there (it has been for me). There are also times I also appreciate having a buffer between me and the customer, and that I've found can be worth a lot especially depending on the volume of instruments you are building. I saw your stuff on the Symphonetree site. Nice looking instruments. I sent my first one over to Kevin a few weeks ago.

Looking back I believe my guitars were undervalued for a lot of years. But the way I looked at it is that it was better to be building and getting something for my work than just accumulating guitars that I could not sell at a higher price. It allowed me to rack up some good experience and get 100 guitars out into the market. It is that whole paying your dues part of a business like this. I'm still not out of the woods as far as knowing if I can make a career out of this. But I feel I've got a good foundation to build on going forward.

_________________
Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

Danny that Symphontree Music website is absolutely excellent! Nice instruments! I think for your situation as described your approach is great and your prices are reasonable.

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Thanks Ed. Getting them out there is the thing for me. Not a lot of drive by guitar shoppers with a few grand to spend in my little part of the world. FYI - 2 ferries and about 2 hours driving from Vancouver for those of you that have never heard of Powell River. That pricing is right in line although I have decided that a bevel will be a $500 upgrade. I do top and side purfling on them. Seems fair. How do you charge for wood upgrades. Your cost +? I think whether poking through wood piles at the lumber yard or sniffing around the WWW looking for cool sets at reasonable prices all takes time and we should charge for that.

By the way if all you can do is 800-1000 dollar base price then don't sell it. That is the price of medium range Takemine, Epipiphone, Chinese non-plywood guitars (Eastman, Cort, etc.) none of which comes close to Taylor in quality or workmanship. Your workmanship should be as good as, or better than Taylor and the starting price of 2500 is good. DO NOT charge high risk woods (such as african blackwood, curly koa, Honduran rosewood, or other expensive woods) "at cost" because if you mess up on them, you are in a heap of trouble. Wood upgrade that you can do "at cost" would be straight grained rosewood type (not necessarily Dalbergia genus) where the chance of breaking them or having complication is next to zero. If the market doesn't allow you to use african blackwood and charge a minimum of 2000 dollar upcharge, don't offer it.

Also I think the upcharge for cocobolo should be high simply for the fact that there are health risks from working with it.

_________________
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

Ha!

You're poking around on the net anyway, don't kid yourself:)

I don't consider the time in sourcing materials. To be safe, theoretically you should charge minimum 2x material cost for back and sides to cover fails. No fail is victory, extra piece in stash. The 'living wage' luthiers tend toward 3x as a formula. But business is not my strong point. Other than to say, it is better to sell 3 3500$ guitars than 0 4500$ guitars. My math is that good...

I saw your pics on the symphontree site, and if the tone matches the build quality, you should feel comfortable above 3k$.

Though I sure hope you're not giving up 50% like he wanted from me. Please don't respond to that;)

Very interesting article as I'm trying to start marketing my own guitars soon. I was wondering why you all are using Taylor guitars as a comparison to quality and tone instead of Martin? I'm still working with cosmetics but my tonal sound quality meets or beats a Taylor by far and in my opinion meets the quality of a good Martin. Are you low balling the quality needed to sell a decent guitar? Don't mean to offend or sound dumb and nothing against Taylor in general hell the T5 was my inspiration to build my Archangel guitars but I am curious as to why you would pic them as a comparison.

_________________
In order to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.
- Carl Sagan

Check out F.O.F. Custom guitars on Facebook.

Www.fofcustomguitar.weebly.com

By the way my first commission came to around 3000 dollars. A Gibson J200 costs probably 4000 dollars, so it's pretty close but I'm offering more customization, so it's better value.

Believe it or not cosmetics are pretty important because tone is subjective but gaps in the binding and other cosmetic details gets picked up by customers who just spent 4000 dollars on his custom guitar. A new Martin, Taylor, Gibson has absolutely no cosmetic flaw and they expect the same. You'll notice that cheaper guitar shaped objects, while they have poor workmanship still have flawless cosmetics.

_________________
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