This is the second of two parts of an editorial on the price perception gap in the boutique and custom guitar market.

In some of the guitar forums i frequent, i encounter players (or hear stories passed on from other builders) who are looking for the custom-built guitar of their dreams for $800 to $1000, with a laundry list of exotic woods and high-end hardware… and they want it in 8 to 10 weeks.

There’s an old axiom that goes like this…

GOOD — FAST — CHEAP

Pick any two.

Click past the break to read on… Read more

A while back, i posted a couple of brief pieces on sevenstring.org that looked at the high-level economics of running a small guitar business. I still get occasional requests for a link back to the original posts, so i thought i’d extract it, update it and post it here, so there’s a more permanent (and easily-found) record of it. This is the first of two parts.

Why guitars cost what they do.

I’ve noticed in the last few years that there has been increasing demand for “custom shop” instruments. It’s one of those things that ebbs and flows over time, and the current economic situation notwithstanding, we seem to be on one of those upward swings where guitarists reach a certain level in their playing, and they’re no longer satisfied with “off-the-shelf” instruments, and start looking for something unique, something different, or something that just suits them better.

Along with this trend, i’ve also noticed (in general terms) that the average age and pocketbook depth of people seeking boutique or custom-shop instruments seems to be inversely proportional to the demand. I can’t count the number of threads on guitar discussion forums i’ve seen where a young player thinks he or she can get a guitar built to their spec for $1000 or less. A worrying trend is that there have actually been a few luthiers who will take them up on it.

Yet when you stop and look at what the true costs of building guitars as a small independent builder, you get a very different picture. No matter how you frame it, penny-pinching, perpetually broke musicians often don’t seem to understand why their dream custom guitar from a small builder should actually cost much, much more than the $1000 they’re willing to shell out. They can’t comprehend why the price list at a big-name custom shop like Jackson starts at around $3500. Click past the break to read more… Read more

Well, it’s been a busy month trying to get the first two prototypes (or at least one of them) done in time for the Post-NAMM JAMM at my friend Kevan’s house. Unfortunately, time constraints meant they weren’t complete in time, but they’re almost there.

Even in their unfinished state, people were able to pick up and hold both models, to get a sense for the ergonomics, the neck carves and the on-strap balance. Both the Javelin and the Aviator were very warmly received. Thanks, guys!

Proto 1 has been fretted, and all the extra little bits of drilling and routing have been done. I still have to thin down the headstock a little to accommodate the tuners, install side dots and do a little bit of filling and sanding. Then it’s just a matter of applying the tung oil and beeswax finish, installing hardware and electronics, then doing the final setup.

Proto 2 is almost at the same stage, it’s just awaiting fret installation, then it’ll be the same steps, with the exception of the finish, which i’m still thinking about sending out for a solid white paint job. (With a secret twist…)

So i’m likely going to start doing a big push on getting bodies and necks glued up and cut out. Proto 3 is on deck and just about ready to go. And i have some wood for the next couple of instruments after that… a mahogany Javelin and a swamp ash Stealth. These will very likely be officially designated dB1 and dB2… the first serial-numbered Decibels!

But don’t hold your breath… I also want to update you on what’s happening with Decibel’s shop space. Thus far, i’ve been borrowing shop space from our good friend Brian Bowes. For the last couple of months, life events have resulted in Brian needing to close down his workshop, so Decibel will no longer have a dedicated space in which to work as of the end of April.

But fear not… in the few weeks we have left, i’m hoping to get at least a couple more bodies and necks cut and prepped, so i can keep working on my own in a limited capacity until my own shop space is up and running. (If anyone out there has a shop i can borrow time in, that would be awesome!) Hopefully things will be back on track by the end of the summer, but i’ll continue to post updates and get whatever done that i can.

Take a look at the Prototype 1 page for the full progress of this build.

The neck has been carved and fretboard bound and radiused on Prototype 2!

I’m very pleased with the results. I smoothed out the contours on the heel to flow more seamlessly into the neck. It’s now a little more “SR-71″ and less “F-117″… you aviation geeks will know what i mean.

I actually did some of the final shaping of the neck joint with the neck bolted up to the body. There’s a seamless flow from the neck into the body like i’ve never seen before on a bolt-on instrument.

Take a look at the Prototype 2 build page to see the whole evolution.

The weather was beautiful this weekend, so i carved the neck on Prototype 1.

On the second day of carving, i slimmed it down quite a bit and made it a lot less blocky. The contour i ended up with actually surprised me a little, because it’s almost exactly the opposite of what i had in mind when i started.

My original plan was to have a soft “V” at the nut end of the neck, and have it gradually flatten out into a thin even “C” toward the body. But theory and practice often yield different results, and as i sat and carved the neck, using nothing but my left hand as a guide for its shape, the neck profile took an unexpected turn.

At the nut, it’s a nice slim even “C” shape, nicely rounded across the whole profile. I’m not a big fan of the “flat in the middle” feel of most thinner “D” type shredder necks. I’ll have to throw the calipers on it to see exactly what the depth of the neck is after i sanded the radius into the fretboard, but my guess is it’s around 21 or 22 mm.

As you move up the neck, it gets slightly thicker, but the shoulders of the neck start to taper down a little bit. Around the 7th fret, things really start to change. The neck starts to get a little more asymmetrical, and a soft “ridge” starts to reveal itself. By about the 12th fret, it’s an asymmetrical soft “V” shape. And it feels wonderful. It’s almost as if the neck is molded from an extruded cylinder of clay, and then shaped to fit a shifting hand shape as you move up the neck. The mass of wood beneath the hand feels the same, but it’s just distributed differently depending on where you are on the neck.

In my experience, i tend to play with my thumb over the neck when playing open-position chords and more complex voicings slightly higher up on the neck. As i move up the neck, my wrist naturally rotates downward toward the floor. The transition from the even “C” to the soft asymmetrical “V” essentially tracks along with my thumb on the bass side of the neck. I’ve never felt a neck quite like this, and i can’t wait to play it. After sitting with the neck bolted to the body, i really think it may be the best neck profile for me. Being primarily a rhythm player, i need good leverage all across the neck to hold down tricky chords and have them ring true without buzzing. I think this neck profile with accomplish that.

Look at more build pics on the Proto 1 page.

More progress…

For full detail on the build, see the Proto 1 page.