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Hello, I was wondering if any of the luthiers here ever take apprentices, on a semi-long term basis, maybe 6 months or a year.
I have a son who should be out apprenticing, and I'm checking different places that might be able to take a young man in and teach him the basics of a marketable skill -- and he likes guitars.
If none of you take young apprentices, do you know of someone who does? Or where I could find one? I am in the United States, but travel overseas is not out of the question as I have family in France.
RE: Apprentices for Luthiers? (in reply to Michael1917)
Haha I wish it was that easy! unfortunatly many luthier cannot afford to pay someone and train them up. I got into Guitar making by doing an apprenticeship where I worked for free. Also before that I paid for lessons to build a guitar. Which was kind of an initiation so he could see if i had the skills required.
RE: Apprentices for Luthiers? (in reply to Michael1917)
You might want to look into the violin and guitar making schools. There's a violin making school in Salt Lake Utah, the famous school in Cremona and many others. Winterthur in England has an early instrument building program.
There's the Roberto Venn Guitar Making school in Arizona. Up in New York City there are many repair shops and dealers who might take an apprentice, but usually they take people out of one of the schools and continue to train them. Violin repair work is more steady and lucrative, in general, than guitar making or repair.
There are furniture making program in a school in London that has an instrument making curriculum, the name escapes me at the moment. A few fine lute makers came from that course.
Things are different these days, those who want to get into instrument making usually get lucky and find a teacher, or they go to a school. You can land a job in a factory an learn to build, but often a person ends up learning to make the constituent parts of he instrument an it takes a long time to learn to the whole process. And learning in a factory is not the best education.
If I were a parent steering the kids towards a musical instrument making career I would do a lot of research on the schools and the programs they offer. And Possibly visit one or two schools if they are local.
There are private teachers who teach out of their own shops and these people can be top notch. A good example is Aaron Green who from what I hear learned from Alan Carruth and Sr. Green's guitars are excellent. You can get a fix on the how good the teacher is by checking out his or her best students work.
Some of us put our guitar making chops together piecemeal over many years by working with different teachers in different shops. It's not easy to do so if you can help the kid out by researching and finding a strong school program or initial teacher you'll help them out and ensure their success. This is a super difficult way of making a living so having a good foundation is paramount to being able to get work. It can be very rewarding and the sacrifices are often worth it, but it takes great tenacity. A young person needs a generous teacher to get what they need.
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