I am not seeking an apprentice and don't ever expect to, but I probably will be seeking students 10-15 years from now to work with me in my workshop when I am in my senior years. That's when I hope I really will have learned something about this demanding craft. My mentor, a local self-taught guitar maker whose name was Macario Brese�o, did this for me, refusing to accept compensation of any kind, and I hope to be able to use his example as a basis for using my God-given talents some day. I worked with Macario for about a year, spending less and less time with him as I learned more, although we remained dear friends until his death in 1979. This may not seem very helpful to you for right now, but please read on.

Actually, an "apprentice", particularly one who is not a family member, is nowadays little but a burden for a practicing luthier, and for this reason it is difficult for an aspirant to find an apprenticeship. In times past, the guild systems that prevailed in European countries enforced work discipline and long-term commitment on aspirants so that a master could expect to eventually get some real work out of an apprentice in return for his investment of time and energy (while the apprentice could expect little but abject penury and near-slavery under the master). Today every practicing luthier knows that an "apprentice" will pick the luthier's brains until he has learned all the "secrets" he thinks he can and then fly the coop. When a luthier takes on an "apprentice" nowadays, he's probably just lonesome and wants some company.

Here’s some advice I have given to a number of aspiring luthiers:

1.) Start with this Undeniable Truth #1 of luthiery life: There are far too many luthiers in the world.  Because the guitars they make don't wear out for decades, there is an overwhelming glut of luthier-made guitars available on the market today, and things are only going to get worse.  Does that mean there's no room for a newcomer in the field? No, but it does mean that you have to resolve to be the best, whatever that requires, if you're going to make a living at it. (This is true for guitar players, too.)

2.) Don't waste years of your valuable time doing a lot of "apprenticing." Any luthier who thinks he has real "secrets" is going to do everything possible--lie, mislead, cover up--to make sure you don't discover them, so you may end up with little but somebody else's bad habits.

3.) I don't doubt that there are some estimable schools of luthiery in the world, though I have never attended one and really don't know much about them...except that the tuition and collateral costs (materials for your first guitar, which will probably be unsalable, travel, meals and lodging away from home, etc.) are very substantial. Will your future luthiery income ever allow you to amortize these costs? Hmm.

4.) Don't give up your day job until you have accumulated most of the capital you will need. Plan to work on your guitars and your workshop before or after you've put in a paycheck day. The economic return on luthiery activity never gets very large, and this makes it difficult to capitalize your business while trying to make a living from it. I worked afternoons as a railroad switchman for almost twelve years. The work was a bore, but it paid well and was not particularly stressful. It gave me my mornings for guitar making, the time of day when I function best. Live in penury, so you can save as much as possible to plow back into your business. This is hard, and you will have to endure it for many years

5.) Act like a businessman; think of yourself only secondarily as a craftsman. This means getting your life organized so that your use of time is rigorously disciplined and you know when you are engaged in economically productive activity and when you're just futzing. As you approach the point where you're "making a living," whatever level of income this is for you given your lifestyle, guitar making will become less gratifying just because you're better at it. There are days when I really don't want to go into that workshop and do luthiery; I'd rather go down to the lake and sail my sailboat. Learn some basic accounting. Get a computer, if you don't already have one; this will be your most valuable tool.

6.) Inspect every excellent guitar you can lay your hands on, inside and out, with lights, mirrors and calipers. (I still do that, although not as intensively as I did earlier in my career.) As you build more guitars, your inspections will get more intelligent; you will know what to look for. Inspecting the work of others on your own will do you more good than listening to a lot of Luthierbabble.

7.) Stay where you are. Where you live ultimately doesn’t matter much. A luthier who hopes to make it economically needs to think in terms of an international market. I live in a semi-rural location near Kansas City, MO. The local, even the regional, guitar market that I have direct access to is nowhere near large enough to support me. My occupational world is defined by my computer, my telephone and Kansas City International Airport. A very important issue with regard to where you live: will the government take away in taxes a huge chunk of what you manage to save for investing in your business?

8.) Travel to where the guitarists are and present your work. This is much more important than going where other guitar makers are. Go to guitar festivals and competitions; these events almost always make provisions for luthiers to show their work.

9.) Be brutally honest with yourself about how good your guitars are and how well they are being received by talented and discriminating guitarists. This may seem obvious, but it's the hardest part of all. Any guitar you create, even if it's an ugly duckling, is a swan to you...it's your BABY! When others don't love it like you do, it hurts, it hurts deeply. You must learn to repress that when you're showing it to potential buyers. It will be difficult enough to get reliable information about the objective merits of your instrument; most normal people just naturally hate to inflict pain. If you let your pain show, you'll never learn the truth. The final arbiter of value is money: if your guitar sells, it's worth what you asked for it or more; if it doesn't sell, it's worth less than you asked for it.

Here are some addresses where you can get all kind of luthiery things and LOTS of information on guitar making:

Luthier's Mercantile International, Inc.
412 Moore Lane
PO Box 774
Healdsburg, CA 95448
800-477-4437
lmi@lmii.com

Stewart-MacDonald's Guitar Shop Supply
21 N. Shafer St.
Athens, OH 45701
800-848-2273
info@stewmac.com

Guild of American Luthiers
8222 South Park Ave.
Tacoma, WA 98408
206-472-7853

I hope any aspirant reading this will feel free in the future to make use of the the section of this webSite called For Luthiers Only.   That's what it's for.

Wishing you success,