Official Luthiers Forum!

No, not to big time "endorsers". I'm thinking guitars from early in my "career", experiments that might have showed me a lot, but not ended up being great guitars, I'm sure we've all got them.

Any places that might appreciate gifts of that sort?

Even at their worst, they're better than most low end big time manufacturers.

At any rate, that's my story and I'm sticking to it

School music programs. As long as they play well...

Churches going on mission trips - send guitars along to give away....
Big youth groups always need instruments for kids who have no money...
Ed mentioned schools..

Some times - local pro's who do a lot of lessons may have some high potential kids who simply don't have the money for a decent guitar... Typically - all you have to do is put the word out to local pros who do lessons... Even to turn them over to the pro to use as a loaner to those kids...

Church music groups/worship teams too... Frequently - they are all volunteers working day jobs and raising kids with very little money left for instruments.... This is where my 1st guitar "build" went - a retopped Esteban steel string...

Thanks

I'm running a program in my area where I have people donate unwanted guitars that need a little TLC to me so that I can refurbish them. I then find families who have children that have shown an interest in learning guitar, and donate the instrument to them. That way a child that would not be given a guitar due to financial restrictions, can have a Christmas of there dreams! And who knows, maybe start a kid down the path of a lifetime of music.

Maybe you could find some families in your area and do the same! Tis the season!

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Chris Alvarado
www.ChrisAlvaradoLive.com
www.Driftwood-Guitars.com

I made my 3rd guitar for one of my favorite singer/songwriters for free, but he insisted he at least pay for materials, so that was nice. It was quite custom and took a long time, but it expanded my thinking.

Malaysian Blackwood/bearclaw Sitka, original body styled after a Gibson archtop a little bigger than an OM, KTM-9 top/satin true-oil b/s, yellow ca aura around perimeter, 25.7, Baggs dual source and Gibson PAF suspended from the sides. He has magnetic strings on and I think the video is just recorded with a mic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YnOS0v ... tu.be&t=90

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Pat

Really nice song Pat, and a great Guitar. Thanks for sharing

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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.

Karen and I donate one of our guitars to PSGW.org every year. They raffle it off to support their scholarship program, and brings in about $2500-3000. I get a kick out of drawing the winning ticket at the end of the week. This year it was a black limba 00 which incidentally was won by a close friend. That means I get to play it now and then.

Not exactly the same thing as giving away an early build, but I build and donate at least 1 guitar a year. I've donated to my church to raffle off to raise money for on-the-ground needs on the mission field, I've donated one to the local school system to raffle off to raise money for new band uniforms, etc. These always raise around $1500 which is nice.

My best one was raffled off at a charity event hosted by Matt Holliday (starting outfielder for the St. Louis Cardinals). I built a guitar using 12 of his sig baseball bats, and the guitar sold for $45k. Every bit of the money was split between 3 different charities.

That's awesome! as a Cardinal fan, I would love to make a guitar from Matt's bats! I'm impressed that it brought $45K! How did you find yourself in a position to do this? Did he contact you? Got any pics?

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Sure thing, Bryan. Rather than take this thread off topic, I started a new thread in the electric section: viewtopic.php?f=10123&t=46762

My business model for at least ten years, such as it is, includes giving away every third guitar. Usually I give them to a friend or an offspring thereof. It's usually a surprise. I also intend to start giving give them away as auction items for fundraisers for causes I support. No shortage of those...

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

One of my favorite albums! 16 years and going strong.

Don't forget the various worthy organizations and programs that benefit the community doing music therapy, like this one for veterans:

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Cheers,

Frank Ford

FRETS.COM
HomeShopTech
FRETS.NET

We been repairing and repurposing guitars for Ann Arbor's homeless for a few years now and it's a very rewarding thing to do. One of our favorites who is a very talented young man has received three guitars from us since two of the prior ones were destroyed when he was assaulted in the streets.... I just heard yesterday that his life is coming together, he has a place to live, a girlfriend, and as such things are looking up.

We don't do this to receive anything in return but also yesterday one of our clients, two actually mentioned to us that they read that we do this and they wanted to thank us too. So it doesn't hurt to be kind to folks.

Since we put out the word that if folks want to donate an unused guitar we will fix it up and give it to a deserving homeless person it's not unusual for us to find at our door in the mornings when we open up a donated guitar. Some are usable for what we do with them, some not so much....

I have to tell you that I'm not sure who the benefactor is here because giving a guitar to someone, especially someone who has absolutely nothing can be one of the very most rewarding experiences that I have ever experienced.

Also there is an organization in the states, Guitars for Vets, that does just what their name implies. I've been considering doing something with them but so far we don't receive enough donated guitars for all of the homeless that we are trying to help. I'm known to be fond of saying "do one thing well instead of a bunch of things s*****...." so we may just keep on doing what we are doing.

But from what I have been able to find out Guitars for Vets would be an excellent organization for OLFers to perhaps donate something to.

As some of you know I also gave away some of mine in the past when I was a newer builder. One went to a prodigy music student and two others went to friends including the one and only early OLFer Serge who makes me smile just thinking about my bro Serge! Serge is a man of great faith. Serge uses his Heshtone to spread his faith and make others happy and that's just dandy with me!

If you want to talk about giving away guitars for endorsement deals that's an entirely different subject and one that I personally am pretty turned off by unless expectations are clearly defined, agreed to in advance, contractural, and everyone is pretty OK with the absolute minimum of important expectations being met because that may be the best that it will ever get, if that.....

Anyway since I became a Luthier some of the most rewarding experiences that I have ever had have been someone playing a guitar that I built and gave to them and/or a repurposed guitar for a homeless person as they belt out their original tune "Human Ant Farm" and sound just like Kurt Cobain in the process. Pretty cool I'll add!

#1 went to a nephew who just had twin boys. #2 went to a local singer songwriter trying to make it as a musician. I've known her forever and knew she was broke. #3 went to another nephew who just had a kid. #4 went to another local singer songwriter who put all his belongings in storage and was living on the road supporting himself by playing house concerts (and sleeping on couches). #5 went to an old band mate and it made his day.

All of those instruments were valuable learning experiences for me. Each one was better than the one before.

Finally, #6 is just completed and bartered for stain glass panels for my home with a great stain glass artist.
#7 (underway) is my first commission (a cousin)
#8 & #9 (also underway) Will hopefully sell on commission through a stringed instrument shop (where I used to work).