Finally took my acoustic guitar to a luthier

Smallstep

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Mar 5, 2016
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Well, been a long time since I posted something... this might be boring, or funny, the wine is good atm. :)

I don't know if I'm the only one who never dealed with a luthier before, but after 17 years of playing and setting up my gear myself (thanks to mister Erlewine's books), I took my guitar to a young luthier to get the tusk bridge lowered, and the nut's slot filled accordingly.

This made me realize that, I don't mind anything when it comes to electric guitars, I have 3-4 scallop jobs behind the tie, fine tune my reliefs, intonation and pick-ups. So after shopping for some strings a few times, I started talking with the luthier a few times so far, and he knows what's up. He's not yet in his 30s, but he knows other playing styles other than blues and Eric Clapton; he knows metal, he knows what I meant by "I play lead and do a lot of taping". He basically brought my guitar to life.

My guitar is, to my eyes and experience as a seller (I used to work in a guitar shop), a great guitar with a "everyday country uncle" setup. lol I mean, I don't have logs or big weiners for fingers, and I'm used to electric. So in other words, while the guitar was great, good wood, good gear, great QC, it was just way too high for me. My dad's guitar, which is a cheap 100$ Epiphone guitar, played so much better. But ironically, my dad's the lumberjack with out-of-this-world finger size and strenght... Hey, they didn't have the option of burning testosterone through porn back then ! hahaha

Now, I did not have much time to do the work myself, and did not trust myself enough to nail it perfectly the first time, so I decided that I'd trust that dude instead of risking the possibility of having to buy a second tusk bridge thing.

Moral of the story; I paid 40 dollars to have the guy apply his expertise on my instrument while I drank a slush in a hardware store while mindlessly shopping for LED lights. Hey, 40 dollars !!! And he did not fuck around, he knew what was up. He corrected exactly what I wanted corrected, in about an hour or so.

Guys, I hope you find such a luthier who treats an instrument with respect.
I mean, ok ok... it's just a piece of wood with a little bit of math and physics,
but I worked as a seller, and I made setups for customers, like intonation and reliefs;
but my colleages had no fucking idea what I was doing... wtf is wrong with this world ?

Second moral of the story, or main moral; allow yourself to trust in others sometimes, don't wait 17 years even tho you can do everything, it'll save you time. I'll finally play my acoustic, and we were talking a 850$ one btw.

3rd moral : I jumped in the wine during my supper hahahha, sorry if this post feels like a blog,
but boys am I glad to finally have my guitar play great.

I leave you with two questions;
- how's your acoustic guiar ?
- what's your stance with luthiers ?

*Sorry for my piss poor english. My english pees like a dying beggar lol*
 
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1) I wish I had acoustic guitar. I don't want to bother with cheap one and for a while I have different priorities.
2) I'm in mixed feelings about luthiers. One that I know does violas and ordinary setups for guitars, but when it comes to something new, like installing tremsetter, ends up fixing it myself.
 
1) I have a few but one main 6-string that I (and everyone who's ever played or heard it) love to death. So balanced I can't believe.
2) in my area it's total chaos. The ones that have better service are TERRIBLE at deadlines. I'm talking months for a fix that was promised to be done in 1-2 days.