Official Luthiers Forum!

FWIW, from purely a business perspective I would not carry Gotoh 510's. As a general rule, unless you think you are going to have massive volume I would not suggest you carry anything that is available from many different sources all competing in price. People say they love the convenience of ordering wood from you plus all the hardware, but when they find the tuners on eBay for $15 a set less than you can offer them you'll be left wondering where all that good will went. I would suggest carrying only things that are near impossible to find elsewhere. Specialized tools and hardware like the 3deg pins and reamers, high end specialty tuners, 24" sanding disks, etc.

In short, people come to you for specialty luthier wood unavailable elsewhere. I would take that same approach to selling tools, jigs and hardware.

Perhaps you could stock the most popular styles and then provide a link to the Gotoh catalog and the opportunity to special order tuners.. I used to do that with Shane since, like you've noted, their selection is vast and you can't stock everything.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Yeah, we could definitely use a new place to special order hard to find Gotoh tuners.

I'd like to see someone besides StewMac carry Waverly tuners.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Bob: In my mind one of the most important things with pins is accurate sizing. I have stopped buying pins from one vendor because of inaccurate sizing which forces one to fit and mark each pin for each hole. A real pain in the you know what.......... Switched to another vendor and problem went away. You may already be aware but just making sure.
Tom

P.S. As to dots, to sell to Canucks, it can't be shell material.

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Tom I have a source for precision bone pins made in the US. They will sell for $40 a set.

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Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

You can get them from Elderly if you want to pay the bucks.