Home grown music... and musical instruments

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

BRISTOL: Are you making a living by building instruments?

OLSEN: Well, let me answer that by saying that I think I could support myself by designing and building guitars . . . but I know some 1,400 instrumentmakers — either by having actually met them or through correspondence — and only four of them make a living building guitars by hand and selling them to people through their own shops.

BRISTOL: Of course, you're not including folks who might put out one guitar after another-of identical design-like a one-person assembly line.

OLSEN: No, those people aren't luthiers by my definition of the term . . . although I often have more than one guitar-but of differing and original designs-underway at a given time myself.

BRISTOL: Well, I don't suppose it'd be practical to just work on one instrument for eight hours a day till it was done.

OLSEN: No, it wouldn't, because you have to leave any project alone every once in a while . . . in order for the glue or lacquer to dry, and so forth. And that free time can be spent working on another instrument.

BRISTOL: It seems as if your operation is pretty efficient. Tell me, what changes would be necessary if you were to earn your entire living making guitars?

OLSEN: For one thing, I'd have to work at least 50 or 60 hours a week. I'd also have to give up traveling, and I'd need other people — mainly my wife — to take over certain chores, such as the business's bookkeeping, for me. I could probably turn out a dozen instruments a year, or maybe as many as 15 if I really knocked myself out, and sell them for an average of $1,000 apiece. Of course, I'd have to pay for all my materials and overhead out of that take.

Right now I put only about half my time into guitar construction. The rest is spent on my work for the Guild of American Luthiers, my writing projects, and the things I do to promote the instrument-building art.

BRISTOL: We've pretty much restricted our discussion to guitarmakers, but doesn't the Guild include folks who make other instruments, too?

OLSEN: Right. We have banjo builders, there's a large group who craft mandolins and violins, and even the lutemakers are well represented. In fact, there seems to be a growing national interest in — and an increasing market for — lutes and hand-built instruments of all kinds. So, if any of your readers has a hankerin' to make his or her own lute, guitar, banjo, or whatever . . . I'd say, "Jump right in and do it! "

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print