Official Luthiers Forum!

I have purchased on Ebay a few things from China that were good enough quality and really cheap compared to Stewmac or others. For instance I have purchased finger board radius gauges from Stew mac, and paid out the ying yang for the tool and especially the shipping. I am in Ontario Canada. I bought slotted radius gauges from China and paid half the price and it was shipped to me for free, FROM CHINA! They are just as good as SM. Heating pads from China also were fine. I bought a leveller beam from SM and what started as a $65C price tag ended up $121C by the time it was shipped and duty. Honestly!?

So I am looking at an 18" long x 2/34"w 16" radius sanding beam at SM for $174C. It would be almost double that after shipping and duty.

South Korean Co. offering a very similar item for $155C shipping included. You get my point. Has anyone ever bought this kind of leveller from Korea and have anything to report on your experience?? No where to ask these type of questions on Ebay.

I would appreciate your insight

thanks

fred

Hit or miss with the eBay knock offs of Stew Mac. I have a leveling beam that is just what I would expect. Flat to my table saw table and less expensive. I bought a "diamond grit" fret crowning tool and the "diamond grit" wore of after about two guitars. Again, I bought a fret tang nipper that had so much slop it would only bend the tang rather than cut it off. Then I bought a second one that work just as well as the Stew Mac one. I paid less for both than the Stew Mac one, but what is my time and aggravation worth?

Stew Mac stuff seems unreasonably pricy, but it does what you expect it to. I think it all depends on what is more important to you personally, paying a premium (sometimes a ridiculous premium) but knowing the tool will be right, or throwing the dice on an Ebay tool knowing there is a chance it won't work.

I suspect that one of the reasons why Stewart MacDonald runs a little (or a lot) more for some tools is that they build in the service cost that we all take for granted...we just assume that if something from Stewmac is either not right or simply not our cup of tea, we can return it for full credit. Likewise, when a five-year-old set of Gotoh tuners fails in use, we simply return them to Stewmac and have a new set in a day or two, rather than have to ship them back to Japan postpaid and wait for weeks for replacement.

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A constellation only takes shape when one maps the whole.
- Beth Brower

If it's 'too good to be true' pricing then I would not go near it. My other life long hobby is bicycle racing and I have been doing it long enough to have seen the once old glorious steel frame marquis get shipped off to China for the cheap labor and come back as various pieces of junk. But certainly not all of them. They can make top quality products but when the price is too good to be true then it probably is counterfeit and in the case of bike racing equipment is pretty darn scary. They can make it look just like the real deal but when cut it open it up it's just junk. I think the same can be said for tools and tolerances.

Thanks for the responses guys. I guess because the American dollar is so much higher right now than ours, and shipping here is way higher than shipping to the States, overseas stuff is seductively calling. I recently needed a finger board side dot marking dowel, 3/32'D X 6" LG. black. the size of a pen cartridge.
It cost $1.49C each at SM, I needed 2 so $3C but $12C to ship it. A stamp on an envelope would get it here. But the shipping rates are astronomical.
I have a friend in Lisbon NY who lets me ship to their address, so I will probably be using that route more.

The trouble sometimes is that when you read the reviews at SM, for instance the "Fretting arbor press", It comes from China and many who have bought it complain about the poor machining and finish and smooth operation of the tool. So SM manufactures overseas and it seems isn't that careful with quality control sometimes. Still if anyone out there has actually bought this 16" radius aluminum leveller from Korea, I would be glad to hear your thoughts on it.

thanks again

fred

Hi Fred - I've got a 16" radius maple leveller that I bought some years ago from the Classifieds, made by forum member Rod True. I haven't used it as I had intend, doing compound radius FB's instead. It's yours for the price of a drive to Whitby, or Canada Post Shipping.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Stew Mac may well manufacture some things offshore, but in my experience their QC is decent and any issues with their products are solved promptly and without argument. They also seem to actually act on customer feedback at times and improve their products. As pointed out above, this is part of what you are paying for in their pricing.

You can go direct to various suppliers in Asia yourself for some items, but in this case it is you who is taking on the risk/drama of solving any problems that may arise with the items you purchase.

I'm fairly certain looking at the rates SM charges for shipping that they aren't inflating the shipping cost unduly. Indeed I find they are usually cheaper (and faster) on shipping than their other
big domestic competitor.

You gotta compare apples to apples as well - I don't live in North America and SM gets products to my door within 3 days, hand delivered by a reputable big name courier. Meanwhile some Asian suppliers use generic international postal services which can take much longer, no tracking etc. So, yes, shipping is cheaper but it's also a worse service, so that isn't really surprising.

With regards to this particular leveller I can't really help as I've never seen this particular version of the product in real life, sorry.


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I do not have too much of a problem with SM prices, a number of things I would not mind ordering today. But it is not only the shipping rate but the brokerage fee that hits us hard in Canada (along with the exchange rate, wish the price of oil would go up).

Their prices may seem high but what you get is very good. Far better than the discount Asian stuff that looks the same.

I got several very cheap sets of bridge pins. Frustrating because each one had to be fitted to its hole. None could be interchanged if you wanted a good fit in the hole. Not so with SM pins. Once you ream each hole for the pin - they interchange just fine. Way less hassle.

Cheap nut files are one use trash and hardly gage correctly. Cheap bridge pin reamers chatter and cut rough oval holes... But are hard to home in on the right diameter for the pin. Cheap router bits wander and shake and cut rough cuts and grab and shift. Cheap straight edges aren't.

I have more or less given up on cheap guitar tools and I buy good ones from reputable suppliers like SM.

I may think that some of their tools aren't useful or aren't worthwhile.... But they do what they advertise and are never poorly made like the knockoffs.

Thanks.

I look through the StewMac catalog and circle items I would like. That usually covers a lot of territory and would cost way more than I can afford. When I narrow it down to the 2 or 3 items I can use now, like the Dremmel plunge router base and the circle cutter, the cost of quality isn't all that high. I usually add a couple smaller items at the same time. When bought bundled, the shipping is very reasonable. An American based business also matters to me. A few extra bucks to buy stateside is fine with me. It's a one time purchase with an excellent product support and service built in. I feel the same way about LMI.

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Brad Hall
Mystic Dawg Guitars

I've been doing business with SM for years have only been unhappy one time. The black ebony epoxy just didn't perform the way I expected.


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