Hi Doug...
I grew up in my father's cabinet shop and have a deep love of wood and woodworking, although I lack most of the requisite skills and experience to do what you do in my small garage shop...so I have the utmost respect for what you do...but enough about me...
As you may have noticed from your time on our forum we are somewhat preoccupied with the price of guitars, particularly those built by the small shop luthiers lke yourself...so would you be kind enough to talk about whta it actually takes to build an instrument from the ground up as far as man-hours is concerned...how long does it take you to go from raw wood to finished instrument? How many people are involved, just yourself or do you have a staff? How many days does the process take, and how many hours a day do you put in? What is themost time consuming part? (I'm guessing sanding and finishing) What's the most tedious? How often do you have to scrap a piece and start over?
What I'm going for is to show non-woodworkers how much time goes into what you do, and how that time affects the price...
...or you van tell me to fuck off and mind my own business, which is fine too...I'm used to it...
This is a fairly loaded question, but I'll do my best. Lets focus on one of my median guitars such as a Starliner or Daylighter Standard. This really right about the middle of my lineup. Lets start with guitar time and cost first, then focus on what most people really ignore about business:
the real cost of owning a business:
The reality of building a guitar is yes, the "costs" are relatively low. Parts, hardware and a case with all tier one components (tonepros, sperzel, hipshot, CTS, switchcraft, boutique pickups, G&G case or mono or reunion blues ect ect) is roughly anywhere from 400-700 bucks depending on how you slice it. On a guitar to guitar basis, wood is relatively a small portion ranging from 50-500 dollars depending on how exotic you get. So right now you anywhere between 500 to a 1000 dollars before putting one tool to wood.
Now, an average carved top of mine has 2 hours in material prep, 45 minutes in CNC time for the body, roughly 120 minutes for the neck (including fretboard machining, lasering the headstock veneers ect but not including glue up times). Now this is ROUGH machining. Bodies have generally an additional 90-120 minutes of sanding, drilling and prep work, necks have 30-60 minutes of leveling and fretting and 30-60 minutes final shaping, sanding and fitting.
So we are at roughly 8-10 hours at the point the neck gets set to the body of hands on work. This is a low estimate likely.
Once the neck is set, I have roughly 60-90 minutes of sanding to prep for sealer. Then we start the finishing process. This is tough to judge because it only takes 5-10 minutes to spray a sealer coat but we can only do this once a day. So we spray a sealer wash coat, next day grain fill (15 minutes), next day sand all the filler flat (30 minutes), sealer coat (5 minutes), wait 24 hours then sand 80% flat (30 minutes), sealer coat (5 minutes), wait 24 hours then sand 100% flat (if possible, if not add an additional 2 days and 35 minutes), mask the back off (15 minutes) and burst the top (15-30 minutes), wait 24 hours, mask the top and bindings off (20 minutes) and shoot the back color (5 minutes), peel tape and clean up bindings (5-20 minutes), spray tinted toner coat then move onto clear (15 minutes), wait 24 hours and scuff then spray clear (15 minutes), wait 48 hours- level sand with 800 (30 minutes) and final round of clear (15 minutes). Then wait 7 days, level sand (60 minutes) and buff (30 minutes) entire guitar.
So that brings the entire finishing process to: ~385 minutes or nearly 7 hours over 2 weeks. Minimum. If everything goes perfect first try. About 80% of the time it does but not every time.
Now we're near 20 hours, lets round down to 18. Hour hours, at Jiffy Lube shop rate of 110 an hour and we are just about 2k already. So 2k in time, plus 1k in hardware and incidentals and we are now 3k (my Starliner STD is 3850 so we have some more to go).
OK, now the guitar is ready for fretwork, assembly ect. Fretwork generally runs about 60 minutes from untapping and clean up through level, recrown, polishing and edge work. Occasionally we get a fret that is springing (sometimes will have something trapped in the slot underneath) but generally goes pretty smoothly. Of course, we won't know this till the end.
Wiring, assembly and setup generally takes me about 4-5 hours more. Seems to be pretty consistent that I can put two guitars together a day if I'm uninterrupted and the fretwork is already done. Then I'll play the guitar for 5-30 minutes, make final adjustments and fix anything that crops up.
So our total "everything goes perfectly" time is about 26-30 hours or about 2900 at the Jiffy Lube rate plus hardware and we are at 3900. A thing goes perfectly timeline rarely happens. I know from 6 years of tracking that generally our carved top STD will be closer to 40 hours. Heck, I lose at least an hour just filling out spec sheets, COA's and shipping labels/boxes.
For reference, this is a shop with
two CNC's running about 80% efficiency in terms of top carve or neck profile carving (we could run them at a higher resolution for less sanding or hand work but it takes longer than sanding them out), a laser, top tier sander, planer and saws (SCM). I have one 2.5-3 day a week employee, he is now doing the necks damn near start to finish (I do the final carve/sanding and final fretwork, he does everything else). Otherwise, it's just me.
Now this is where most people get hung up. Two areas: "Well shit it's only a XXX amount in parts in hardware, why is the guitar so expensive?!" Time. "What 110 an hour? That's outrageous!!" . First of all, shouldn't I be figuring my time is worth at least as much as Jiffy Lube? Secondly,
I don't make a 110 / hour,
THATS what the business *should* be making to keep the doors open. That's not even profitable for me because I rarely hit those numbers for what I charge. Hell, if I was really able to stay on 100-150 / hour we'd barely even be profitable still.
The reality is, a business is a giant black hole that takes all your money and time, slaps you in the face with it then burns it. Let me share some spotlight on this:
Here's a list of equipment that I own and have acquired over the years and their costs:
Big CNC: 100k (bodies, necks, fretboards, large plastic bits)
Small CNC: 10k (neck carve only)
Laser: 12k
Sliding table saw: 12k
Widebelt: 15k
Planer: 6k (used)
Spraybooth: 3-4k
Dust collection: 5-10k (no idea really by the time you add it all up)
Buffer: 1k
Small table saw: 1k
That's just the big tools. There's nearly
30 years of tool collecting at my shop and god knows how much I've spent on guitar specific small hand tools.
That's just my costs to have bought them. Keeping them running continues to require expenses (tools, maintenance ect).
Then you have expendables: sand paper, router bits, all of the finishing materials, solder, wire, wood, tape, glue, spray booth filters ect. These are all recurring monthly expenses.
Then I have rent (a lot), city, state and federal fee's, taxes and other charges (a lot), electricity, insurance (personal and coverage for the shop itself), internet, phone, alarm and other related permits.
Advertising (print, social media AND websites), trade shows, travel and events.
Then on top of all that I have to be: CEO, secretary, bookkeeper, logistics manager, HR, shipping department, answer the phone (60-90 minutes a day), answer an average of 50 emails day, social media manager, tech support and somewhere way down the list a father and a husband.
This barely touches all of it. BARELY. There are so many expenses I honestly can't remember them all. Oh and remember this, when you are looking at one of my guitars at a dealer, that means I made significantly
less on that guitar (hopefully made up by volume but rarely is at my level).
So next time you look at the price of a guitar, before you scoff, if it wasn't built by slave labor in China then you should consider this list first.
