After pestering him twice a week for a year, I was signed on by Jean Larrivee on Nov 4, 1996, at the age of 23, and worked there til November 22nd of this year, at which time Jean closed the Canadian shop, much to our unsatisfaction.
During my tenure there, I worked my way up from floor sweeper/wet sander to production manager, QC guy, and overall go-to fella for things guitar related. I fit thousands of dovetails, fretted ungodly number of thousands of guitars, installed tens of thousands of pickups, and did somewhere in the neighbourhood of 40,000 final setups, including the last ten official guitars to have been made in the Canadian shop. As well as having trained a whole slew of folks to do the same, and all of the typical administrative chores that come with helping to run a shop of that size.
Round about 12 years ago, I desired a Martin, but couldn't afford one (obviously), and mentioned it to my friend Jason Friesen from Rayco Resophonics. He invited me to make one in his shop and showed me the basics, and I've never looked back. I was fortunate enough to get commissions before I'd even finished my first very rustic guitar. So for the first decade of my building, I worked my 8hrs there, and whatever hours I could squeeze out of myself between gigs, rehearsals, tours, and general partying, which was a lot of hours, also throwing every available resource I could come up with into my own shop. During that decade I built 59 guitars under the brand name Tinker.
Around two years ago, I started a budget brand called Halcyon to toy with some of the ideas in the Gore/Gilet books, and to make some faster selling guitars to make up for the factory hours going from 40 to 16hrs a week, which was not enough to live on. In 2012 I made 16 guitars by my self.
About one year ago, my oldest standing friend returned to Vancouver after a 14 year hiatus to be my apprentice, and we've built and delivered about 35 guitars so far this year. And, very fortunately, we have a few months work on the board ahead of us, and are obviously hoping for more.
If all goes well, I'll just be able to keep doing what I've been doing, so fingers crossed.
I will miss the machinery and the camaraderie of the Larrivee shop, but I also really enjoy having only one extra person to look after. That was one strange torpedo, that's for sure. Thanks Jean, but especially thanks John Jr...
Anybody curious can check out http://www.tinkerguitars.com, or check out our Halcyon Guitars FB page to see what I'm more into these days. The especially brave can google The Gentle Infidels to see what I think acoustic guitars are for....
Ed
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?adma
Plus, making guitars doesn't leave holes in your arms, like some other addictions. 
