Repair Bluebook?

[jason Burns]

I would love to see a current list of average repair prices. I never know if I am not charging enough or charging too much. I have seen older bluebook price lists in stew mac publications but nothing current. Anyone know of anything out there.

[Russell Vance]

Hi Jim and Rob,
Nope, the $40k start pay for a public servant clerk is no typo - and as I said, a Macca's burger flipper makes 20K - gas is 125 cents a litre (about 4 bucks a gallon) and a beer is $3.50 for domestic draft and a bog standard family sedan goes for about $30k - my tax rate is maxed at 47 cents in the dollar (averaging about 35 cents overall) and we have a 10% consumption tax on top. etc - so ends the geo-economic parity lecture.

Interesting call on the economy - it's good for repair guys as people shy away from buying new stuff and repair/upgrade what they already have - our prices as luthiers/repairmen are low enough as it is - if it costs $62 for a mechanic to undo a sump plug and screw on a new filter in about 10 minutes how come luthiers/repairmen charge $30-40 for an hours work stringing up and setting-up a precision instrument. I suggest if we charged the same as mechanic we would all be much better off.

As I said at the start, starving to death to do something you love is a difficult relationship and I've seen far too many bitter and twisted ex-luthiers/repairment who refused to charge their customers a fair price and suffered the consequence. I just don't know of any other trade that does this to itself. The sooner we have a dose of reality regarding our pricing structure the better.

As I said - go to the big city -check out the average prices and discount according to your economic parity in the region you work in - if that's too hard, just discount by 20% for professional level work. Nobody will hate you for making a living and doing a good job.

Rusty.

[Jim Bancroft]

Rusty,
I'm fortunate I live in N. Michigan, the cost of living is nowhere near what you describe.
But, I think what I and other small shop Luthier's charge has little bearing on the Luthiery profession.
The big shop charge what they have to, to make a decent living. They still get plenty of work and don't seem to complain that they aren't making enough, don't have enough work, or some small shop a couple hundred miles away charges, 1/3 or more, less than they do.
I really think what someone charges for repair work is a personal decision. What I charge is reasonably for me and the area I live in.
The auto repair business isn't much different. You can take your car to the dealer and pay top dollar, or take it to the neighborhood small shop mechanic, and pay 1/2 the price. The bottom line is to get quality work at a decent price.

Jim

[Rob Mercure]

Jim.

I'm still a "Forest Warden" with the state of Virginia - an "on call when available" crew leader for fire fighting and tractor/fire plow operator. But while the appointment is for life I haven't been on a fire line for almost 20 years. But in my late 20s, early 30s, I spent many a long spring and autumn night with a rake or a leaf blower or weaving around trees and trying to miss old strip mine highwalls on a JD 1010 gasoline tractor (one time I had to dive off the tractor into a blackberry ticket as the fire - 15' flames - burned the hoses off the tractor as it sped across ceresa lespedeza) - ah, those were the days . Also served as a Patrolman for a couple of fire seasons.

Rob

[Bob Webster]

A couple of points I'd like to make on this thread. The first is that large/busy repair shops exist because there is a large customer base in the area. These shops are usually in or associated with a top level retail front and the customer base is quite diverse with a mix of learners with entry-level instruments, well heeled folks with investment level instruments, and working musical professionals. The acivities in those shops run from routine setup and fret jobs through careful restoration and emergency surgery to get someone back on the road. Because of the volume of work that they do and the facilities that are required to support the traffic, they MUST operate like a business, with all the considerations that Russell Vance set forth. That includes a realistic price schedule that supports the business and is the same for every customer.

The very important sidebar of this discussion is that the large shops see more projects come in in a month and of greater diversity than most one man shops in the boonies will see in their lifetimes. The payoff comes in the rapid accumulation of experience and, hopefully, expertise. In the end, it's these folks that the working professional musician rely on to keep things looking good and working right; they'll pay the price because they know that it's going to get done right (and when they were told it would get done).

On the other hand, there is also a market niche for the one-man shop, particularly in more remote locations. Alot of the more rudimentary repairs are possible, but the relatively low traffic through the shop precludes the kind of experience building that occurs in a large shop. After all, almost all of the posts on this forum seeking input for specific problems come from either amateurs or one-man shops with relatively marginal business viability. Absent a spouse's paycheck or a retirement check, the latter might not happen at all. In contrast, the vast majority of definitive input comes from folks in large/busy shops like Frank Ford's at Gryphon Music or Russell Vance's. When was the last time you saw a question from either of them?

I know first hand the challenges of starting up a business in this industry from scratch on a single income (or lack thereof) and they are daunting. I've rationalized the lower prices I've charged for past instruments and services in every way that's been articulated in this thread, incuding the notion that I needed to do it to get work out in the public eye that has my name on it as quickly as possible. However, if I'm dead honest with myself, my prices really had gravitated toward their true value and reflected the probability of success for a service. Because I was a developing professional, the value and reliability of my products and services were perforce lower. On the flip side of the coin, as I've progressed, so have my prices.

I've gone on enough and been inflammatory enough.

Cheers,
Bob

[Russell Vance]

Thanks guys, please keep this one rolling if you can - the issues that have been put are painful to discuss and I knew that when I engaged this thread - but the importance of the issue is not going to go away for all of us. We are as tradesmen, craftsmen and hobbyists all proud of our work and pretty passionate about what we do - that's the nature of actually doing something with ones hands, heart and mind but we need to get paid a fair wage and prices do need to be discussed.

Note, this is not a divisive thread meant to belittle amateurs or big note the bigger businesses - it's a plea for all to support standardisation/best practice, basic norms and a price structure that will allow the trade and craft to grow and continue. The quiet achievers such as Frank Ford and his Colleagues are very rare and valuable to us in that they give their services, time and knowledge relatively freely at great expense to themselves. In doing this they have single-handedly achieved a high degree of standardisation among those who support their site and been of great assistance to the industry. Dan Erlwine and Co has also achieved similar results and managed to combine it with commercial success via Stewmac. These treasures are old school and when they're gone who will replace them if the job they are doing does not attract new blood.

If we want the kids to have a shot at doing what we do we had better be prepared to make the job attractive to them. Telling them they will be happy at the expense of making a living wage is not going to do this and we will all be replaced by a suit with a PLEC machine and throw away guitars.

Please support this issue or at least think about what has been offered here. Rusty.

[David Houchens]

I will indeed think over everything thats been discussed. I guess the old wallet could hold a little more .
Also, I think I called Rusty Randy. Sorry didn't go to do that. David

[Jim Bancroft]

Just to add something.
The only big repair shop that I am familiar with is Elderly Instruments in Lansing, MI. They have 8 or so full time repair people, from what I recall.
They have there own price chart for repairs, and that is what they charge for repairs, and from what I understand they have plenty of repair work, and possibly more than they can handle at times. But, I hear no complaints from them that they are getting undercut by those that do repairs for less.
Those of us that do repairs for less are normally a one person operation, that serves a pretty small local area. We do repairs because we enjoy it, but also get a reasonably return for our labor and have low overhead. I'm also located a long way from another person or shop that does repairs. I'm located 250 miles from any large city.
Even though I'm small I have done probably every repair any large shop or vintage restoration shop has done. From simple repairs to total rebuilding of vintage Martins.
I don't do repairs cheap but charge probably 25% less than Elderly's.

I don't want to get into full time repair work at my age, and other interests that I have, but I don't think I'm hurting anyone with what few repairs I do, on a part time basis. I also resent the idea that people like myself do amatuer and below par work.
The facts as I see them.

Jim

[Russell Vance]

Jim, thanks, this is exactly the point of view that gets things moving - I wanted to suggest some rule of thumb figures to help situate the thoughts of those spread far and wide - Obviously the big city folk have a whole raft of things to pay for that we don't - I went to Sydney the other day for a birthday party on the harbor - the all-day parking fee at the wharf was $57 - took a bus for that one!) and the city rent and insurance is ridiculous.

No reason we can't pass on part of our advantage of not having these huge imposts and I was thinking a figure of 25-30% to be a maximum difference between big and micro - same as you have arrived at.

Establishing an arbitrary/set discount figure also helps be consistent with quotes and billing (you may not remember how much you charged your customer the last time but your customer sure does) and customers can compare published and displayed 'big shop' pricelists and be assured they are getting a good deal.

I find that having a published price list also to be of advantage by allowing the customers to take away a price list for their 'wish list' or reference as to what they can expect it further allows you to index your prices to inflation every twelve months so you don't lose 5% of your value per year.

Also, please don't resent the idea that amateurs do below par work - An amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without formal training or pay and this is the exact definition to make my point about standards. An amateur is distinct from an expert who does things in an 'expert' manner. It's not semantics, its just English and I use it the term because it is a generalised 'fit' for our discussion. That way we can say experts do better work and should get paid accordingly. Once again it's hard to say this stuff without offending just about everybody but I believe, strongly that it has to be said.

Hopefully there is more to come on this issue, Rusty.

[Bob Webster]

It occurs to me that, in addition to indexing an hourly rate to what an auto mechanic gets, one might also copy how auto service departments arrive at prices for their services. In a nutshell, they're the amount of time a journeyman mechanic is expected to take to completely finish the job multiplied times the shop hourly rate. It might take their expert a shorter amount of time and, of course, a trainee could take all day, but you get the point. Does this make sense?

Bob

[Jim Bancroft]

Russell,
Your description of an amatuer partially fits me, I have no formal training (but I do get paid a fair amount for my repair work).
No formal training, no one on one contact with other Luthiers. My training came years ago by reading and doing, that's it. There actually was no formal training back then, just a couple books on the subject.
You can learn many things without formal training.

If you have the drive, desire, and mechanical/woodworking ability you can learn luthery work without formal training, and do it as well or better than a formal trained person.

Just another added thought
Jim

[Bob Webster]

Hi, Jim. I'd say that your background and how you've developed your skills is probably very typical of folks of our generation. When I made my first classical guitar back in 1973, the only guidance was Irving Sloane's book. It was followed by his book on repair and then in the 80's by David Russell Young's book on building steel string guitars, Stanley Doubtfire's and Art Overholtzer's books on classicals. That was it for guidance. Everything else, including tone production was up to the imagination and enginuity of the budding builder.

Times have changed and with the WWW there has been an explosion of information to help new builders and repair people. The initiation of this forum is a giant step forward in helping folks get up the learning curve alot faster. I do think that formal training is a much more efficient way to get to a higher skill level but it has to be remembered that the trainers are, by and large, people who had already bootstrapped themselves up on their own grind-it-out experience.

My only training in repair was ad hoc in Frank's shop in 1985 when he let me watch him pull off the neck of a D-28 using the pressure cooker method. Scared me off of repair forever and that's probably better for everybody.

Cheers,
Bob

[FRANK]

i BUILD bone NUTS FOR $70 bench time is$ 60 hr or some times I eat time for my mistakes or distractions fretting up to $400 for a maple fingerboard and as far down as $155. electronics are like this $40 for the first item and $10 for everything else so two pickups $50 for installation two pots $50 out put jacks I put on for $15 or simply re solider a wire for free at times all in all repairs keep me a float Praise God