Re: I'm Sorry Guys
Hey, there's levels of "guitar techs" and "luthiers." Sorry to burst anyone's bubble on that. There's no certification requirement to call yourself either.
There's plenty of guitar techs out there that I wouldn't trust to do a fret level & crown or a refret, but are perfectly competant to do a setup (truss rod, intonation, action, etc). And there's guitar tech's that do $150 refret jobs and techs that do $350 refret jobs - both of them may get my business, but I might lean towards the more skilled tech to do my better guitars.
And luthiers? Sorry, but assembling Warmoth parts and beating on them with a sock full of quarters does not make you a luthier. Neither does working a pin router at the Fender Custom Shop. But again, there's no certification process for luthiers.
Actually, outside of the us, particularly in Europe, there is a very involved certification process for luthiers and master luthiers. Most "techs" over here are either in reality just apprentices earning a buck on the side or are only servicing their friends and maybe a few others.
But essentially you have a point. THen again, considering a Luthier is "someone who builds guitars and other stringed instruments" it´s kind of self explanatory that peiople shouldn´t be touting themselves as such unless then´ve produced at least a handful of instruments from scratch. And in the US there are also professional schools such as Bryan Galloup in Michigan or Roberto-Venn that offer extensive courses with certification. As a tech there are also courses that you can take.
In a way it´s a shame that none of these credentials are mandatory unlike over here, but that does also have advantages. PRS and Hamer for example would never have come into existence in most European countries because the founders would have never gotten the chance to learn by repairing first
For me as a professionally trained luthier working on getting his long overdue master luthier certification, a tech is someone who can be trusted to handle any day to day work and most minor repairs, including but not limited to: relatively clean headstock breaks, loose binding, Pickup swaps w/o, routing general setup including cutting nuts and saddles, finish touch ups, possibly fret dressing, refrets and other more delicate tasks like routing for a pickup or Floyd Rose. He may or may not have viable expertise with amplifiers and other backline gear. Will most likely be found either touring with a band or in the back of a guitar shop that offeres most services, but not everything. Could very possibly own said shop.
A luthier is somebody who can take a tree and turn it into a guiitar, restore a completely destroyed guitar to like new status, and can very literally offer any service "from the cradle to the grave" that any stringed instrument could ever need in the course of it´s lifetime. Probably won´t be much of an amp tech, but I´d like to see the amp tech reset the neck on a 15th century violin without anybody seeing the work despite the inevitable touch ups on 400 year old shellac.
BTW, I do NOT consider people that exclusively build and repair guitars to be luthiers in the truest sense of the world, but rather "Guitar builders". I don´t mean this as a derogatory term in any sense, but the current generation of up and coming electric and acoustic builders are mostly specialists who wouldn´t know the first thing to do with a Sitar or Cello :eek13:
So essentially I see 4 "levels" of guitar specialist: Hack, Tech, guitar Builder and Luthier... I think each of tehse has a bittle leeway despite my relatively precise opinions of what is what, and TBH i don´t think more liniency is a good thing, the lines are too blurred already.
What
would make sense would be mandatory membership in, for ex., the Guild of American Luthiers. Ideally combined with some sort of publicly visible feedback system... that way you can see from home whether the guy around the corner is a diamond hidden in a compost heap, or whether the high profile guy in the center of town really IS as good as he claims.
