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My first took me about 6 or 7 months, if i reduce my number of posts by half each day, i should be able to complete no 2 by december! Serge Poirier38840.9566203704

Man you guys are quick Excluding finishing on the archtops I build -- ugghh -- I'd guess 250 hours on a plain one It takes me about 1 year per Archtop. But I am getting quicker!

Arnt -- don't you feel better now

I'm strictly an amateur, and I have no real clue how many hours are in a guitar at this point, but I'd guess around 120-200, depending on the level of finish, inlay, detail, etc. for both acoustics and electrics. My first acoustic took me 4 months from making molds to stringing up, working quite regularly.

Mostly, turnaround time per instrument is between 12 and 18 months, because I work very intermittently, in part because of shop limitations. Soon as I get the 'proper' shop together, I should be able to get more stuff done, faster, despite probably having a lot less time to do things.

A workmate on a terrace doesn't make building terribly easy...

I think I misunderstood the question? I thought it was about how many hours it takes to build one....
Realistically, it takes me 6-9 months because I'm working a day job and building when I have spare time. That's if I have someone waiting for it. If I'm building on spec, then I can take my time and drag it out over several years....of course I'm retired at the moment so.........

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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."

   Standard models take about 30 to 50 hours while custom work and most options can add to that time pretty quickly. Now, that's working a single guitar from start to finish. Whenever it's possible to stack a group together for the operations that are typical of all guitars, quite a bit of time can be cut off of the actual build time so gang building before they go their separate ways for custom attention is a valuable system.

I've built as many as 54 guitars in a year working alone and with no work being CNC cut or outsourced...including finish and inlay. Since my shoulder injury, that number of guitars per year has been cut drastically since my days are cut much shorter than I was able to handle before.

   I built only 10 the year that I suffered that injury and haven't been able to pass the 24 mark yet since the injury. It is getting better, though, and I'm hoping to complete my whole backlog list and just build to spec and sell guitars as immediately available.

   I've had lots of cruel and nasty things said about me since my backlog time was lengthened by my disability...and by guys who don't even know me...figure that out. The only others who have complained are a few customers who have received discounts of as much as 75% off of the list price of the guitars they'd ordered because of their personal or financial situations. That'll teach me to give it away, I guess.

I've actually enjoyed the build process more since slowing down. When you are staying up all hours and pushing yourself to complete things, the craft becomes less of an escape and can even seem like a trap at times. I can think of many jobs I could do to make much more money without the stress, but it's been more relaxed and I've been able to give smaller details bigger attention. That makes everybody happier.

Regards,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega GuitarsKevin Gallagher38841.5444097222

As an amateur I can only manage about 3 or 4 in a year, depending on whether I'm away from home on field work. Guitars now take me about 100 hours or so and lutes about 150-200 hours.

My current waiting time is about 5 years in as much as I have about 20 planned. But, as I only build for myself, my one customer is happy to wait as he will undoubtedly change his mind. I've have to build a viol for my wife so that will be a long job with steep learning curve, and will probably have to take precedent.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

I've kept track of the hours on all my guitars and it has been about 120 hours per guitar. Of course I'm still learning and I could speed that up but I enjoy learning and experimenting with new processes. All the handmade rosette tiles for this latest batch probably added 15 hours to the process. It also seems that I don't know when to quit--I'm always wondering if I should go back and add one more light coat of FP, maybe I should spirit it a little more, etc. If I were selling these guitars instead of giving them away, I might shave some time off by cutting down on the experimentation.

Cheers!

John

[QUOTE=Kevin Gallagher]I've actually enjoyed the build process more since slowing down. When you are staying up all hours and pushing yourself to complete things, the craft becomes less of an escape and can even seem like a trap at times. I can think of many jobs I could do to make much more money without the stress, but it's been more relaxed and I've been able to give smaller details bigger attention. That makes everybody happier.[/QUOTE]

My friend, I hear that loud and clear! That sounds exactly what I went through the last couple of years. I'm working a day job, but was spending most of my spare time in the shop, and it got to be a burden. That's why I slowed down this past year to a virtual standstill. I initially got started with this as a hobby, an escape from the stresses of a job that consumed most of my time. I needed to take back my life and do something for myself. It worked for a good long while, until I pushed to build the business end of it. It wasn't a mistake to do that, just a learning experience to find a balance with it all.

30-50 hours does seem about right, although I personally couldn't do one in 30 hours. Perhaps with a cnc'd neck...

Don Williams38841.5786342593

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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."

[QUOTE=Don Williams]
Yes, if I were not working a day job, and concentrated solely on building the guitar, it's about a 40-50 hour operation, as I said "excluding the finish".

The time consuming part of all this is waiting for the glue to dry...
[/QUOTE]

That's if you weren't retired from building guitars of course. Right Don

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you 30-50 hr guys are killing me Maybe if I had a full 8 hrs a day to work then maybe 70-80 hrs

Michael,
   I agree that it's tough to get the same flow when you're going ut to work and then fitting guitar building in between the important stuff like family and friends. I usually get into my shop at about 5:30 or 6:00am and go from there. Recently it's been tough to make it past a few hours before having to rest the shoulder and ice on some days before i can continue, but a 16 hour day was not a strange thing to me before the injury. Six days a week, I would be in the shop well before sunrise, take a break to spend some time with my wife and kids and then back in there until Id hit everything I intended for that day. Whew! Now I don't even know how I pulled it off half of the time.

   It takes some time to shift gears from your other work to lutherie and then get rolling again. I did it for a time before making my full tme commitment to my building and fully understand.

Regards,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars   

Hats off to you gents who carry the load of a full time job, family obligations and build on a commissioned basis. I am finding that its really hard to get a productive building rythym going when doing it the odd hour here or there as time and energy permits. The odd week where I can into my garage on a consistent basis are the ones where my benchtime productivity really picks up. Don I can appreciate how you got frustrated and are now taking a break.

One thing I really enjoy about building are those evenings where you are dog tired -- hit the shop till 1 am and actually feel really refreshed the next morning. The downside being those weeks where you really want to get into the shop and can't for whatever reason and start experiencing the withdrawal joggers feel when they aren't getting their routine runs in.

I'm in the 80ish hour range. I find that no matter what I do, I don't speed things up much. I spend less time on the rudamentary stuff but much more time on the details. So I'm content with that time as long as the guitar meets my demands when it's finished.

I like your approach towards build time Paul, after all if all conditions allow it, why not take a bit more time and have less stress to enjoy it more. Having to deal with public is a stress by itself sometimes and a balanced schedule should help in staying focussed towards the goal, eliminating self-inflicted stress.

Serge

My real Job is the reason I only take 4 to 5 commissions a year max. That and the fact I don't like to work on more than one at a time. combine that with drafting projects, home up-keep and the rest of life I gess I doing ok.