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Even graduates from luthier schools struggle to get full-time jobs.
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
Football is rubbish.
If you like to eat well seven days a week, full-time guitar and amplifier repair is not the vocation for you. Most people I know in this line supplement the income that it generates with some other form of gainful employment.
But I do turn it down most of the time due to current lifestyle(work, kids etc). I just let them know I am always up for the occasional weird and challenging repair
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Although you say your heart is not in IT it can be a decently paid job.
If you had to deal with other people's guitars and amps all day the shine could quickly go off of that too and you'd be earning minimal money to boot.
Whatever seems interesting as a hobby can be downright boring when made a full time job.
http://www.baileyguitars.co.uk/courses/
Then you have a skill to put on the CV.
But make sure you have insurance before you start working on customers guitars. At some point everybody will cause unintended damage to a customer guitar.
I’m so bored I might as well be listening to Pink Floyd
Many guitars have a re-sale value. Some you'll never want to sell.
Stockist of: Earvana & Graphtech nuts, Faber Tonepros & Gotoh hardware, Fatcat bridges. Highwood Saddles.
Pickups from BKP, Oil City & Monty's pickups.
Expert guitar repairs and upgrades - fretwork our speciality! www.felineguitars.com. Facebook too!
I'm not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.
Think about offering to help out on a voluntary basis. Keep your job obviously in the meantime. Then when you have built up enough experience, start looking for paid work or branch out on your own.
Online the videos of Rosastringworks, Stewmac, Dan Erlewine (and his great books) are legendary. Lesser people are the likes of 'Daves world of fun stuff' where he curses and blusters his way through things in a semi entertaining mode and tries to ignor what he calls 'the book'. Crimson Guitars does nice vids on contemporary luthiery.
If you ever have a specific repair to tackle it's worth a search because chances are someone has attempted it in front of a camera before and you can get tips (even if it's how not to go about it).
Finally don't get in the way of or put down the professionals in your area, they need the work as much as you and they may one day save yo ass!
I do appreciate some of the comments/advices that some of you have made. They've been great to ponder and put things into perspective.
More importantly, perhaps, if you do not consider your time to be worth charging for, why should anybody else? The average customer does not entirely understand what a repairer does. Consequently, they do not comprehend why repairs costs as much as they sometimes do. In short, customers do not want to pay the true cost of what they have done to their gear. Plus, they do not think that the repairer should ever make any mistakes