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It's a little strange for me to see this here, in that I live in a world of instrument makers and luthiers, being a folk musician in the UK, and therefore inter
by robotmay 8y ago
It's a little strange for me to see this here, in that I live in a world of instrument makers and luthiers, being a folk musician in the UK, and therefore interesting luthiers are pretty much my normal exposure to instrument makers. I even go to what is technically a festival of luthiers in France, which is fun!
Instrument making is very interesting, in that automation and export of production to China isn't really hurting the artisan makers. Obviously no-one can hand-make a guitar in the west for £150 and turn a profit, but the fact those instruments exist allows more people to enter the market, and eventually some of them will yearn for something unique, tailored to them, and probably expensive :D
The guitar is easy to take up, and very affordable, which means there's so many musicians there to appeal to as a luthier. The instruments I play (diatonic accordion/melodeon and concertina) are unfortunately immensely expensive by comparison, but even still the market is very viable for small makers to get going and selling their own inventions. I recently bought one made by a guy I know who's here in Wales, which is very cool :)
Being able to build individual one-off instruments is something the big factories cannot do, and I know a lot of makers who are all doing decent business in that niche. They might never be rich, but the ones I know love what they do and take great satisfaction from it.
- sourceless 8y agoEnglish melodeonist here, I've honestly considered learning how to build them just because of how prohibitively expensive they are -- especially if you want anything sufficiently light or in any non-standard tuning!
- robotmay 8y agoThere's dozens of us! My plan is somewhat similar; once I no longer live in a tiny flat I'll start experimenting with some designs. I've restored and tuned a couple of old Hohners, which is good practice. Another 10-20 of those and I think I'll roughly understand how to tune the bloody things properly :| I can highly recommend Emmanuel Pariselle's melodeon building course. I did it a few years ago in France when the pound was particularly strong, and had a lovely French holiday which just so happened to result in a new instrument at the end. It's more of an assembly course than an end-to-end build, but it is really useful for finding out some of the processes, assembly jigs, and just what you can do to the instruments.
- afandian 8y agoAnother annual visitor to of Le Son Continu and its predecessor (I'm guessing that's what you were alluding to) checking in. There are, indeed, dozens of us.
- WorkLobster 8y agoDozens maybe, but apparently all on Hacker News! Clearly I've been looking in the wrong places to organise lift shares, when it could have been "Ask HN: Who's going to LSC?" ;-)
- robotmay 8y agoHaha, I thought it might be obscure around here, but I suppose it's not too surprising to find out that computer nerds are also instrument nerds ;) It's such a fun festival, though rather dangerous for your wallet.
- gpvos 8y agoI'll see you all there then (although I'm more of a dancer than a musician).
- cushychicken 8y agoThere are more than a few houses in the US leveraging the Eastern, mass-produced model for acoustic instrument components, and using assembly/setup in the US by qualified techs as the value add. Eastman is a big brand doing that with violins, guitars, and other acoustic instruments. See a lot of those as intro models in the folk/bluegrass scene.