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Posts: 1108
Joined: Sep. 29 2009
From: Back in Boston
luthier of the month
just received an e-mail from guitar salon international (essentially an advertisement) and the featured luther is ethan deutsch. congrats on being the luthier of the month at g.s.i.
Seattle-based luthier Ethan Deutsch has been building guitars on and off since the early 1970's, and full-time since 1997. He was first attracted to flamenco music in his teens and in 1970 as a young flamenco guitarist, he moved to Morón de la Frontera, Sevilla in Spain for a year. It was there that Ethan had the good fortune of learning flamenco and befriending the legendary Gypsy guitarist Diego del Gastor. After returning to the US in 1971, he started to build guitars, at first learning from Irving Sloane’s book "Classic Guitar Construction", but for the most part he was self-taught. In the ensuing years, as Ethan made his way through life, including the completion of a PhD in chemistry from Princeton University, he continued to build guitars, build furniture (he even at one point owned a furniture store in Chicago, building the furniture himself) all the meanwhile performing flamenco under the stage name "Mario Amaya".
Seattle-based luthier Ethan Deutsch has been building guitars on and off since the early 1970's, and full-time since 1997. He was first attracted to flamenco music in his teens and in 1970 as a young flamenco guitarist, he moved to Morón de la Frontera, Sevilla in Spain for a year. It was there that Ethan had the good fortune of learning flamenco and befriending the legendary Gypsy guitarist Diego del Gastor. After returning to the US in 1971, he started to build guitars, at first learning from Irving Sloane’s book "Classic Guitar Construction", but for the most part he was self-taught. In the ensuing years, as Ethan made his way through life, including the completion of a PhD in chemistry from Princeton University, he continued to build guitars, build furniture (he even at one point owned a furniture store in Chicago, building the furniture himself) all the meanwhile performing flamenco under the stage name "Mario Amaya".
Ethan, I see the GSI ads for your guitars all the time, and judging from your videos I would think that your guitars are worth somewhere in the average price range of 6 to 7000 dollars retail.
I think your guitars are way under priced but wherever works for you.
Thanks very much for that information or opinion, Tom. It seems to be a delicate balance: not to price too many people out, to get enough to make ends meet, and some people won't realize that it's a good guitar unless it has a high price. I often wonder how it would affect my order list to have a higher or even a lower price. So I have been taking advice from GSI on pricing. And I always hope that eventually I will have a comfortable niche, but I'm not so sure anyone ever gets comfortable in this field.
So I have been taking advice from GSI on pricing. And I always hope that eventually I will have a comfortable niche, but I'm not so sure anyone ever gets comfortable in this field.
My past understanding of this is that GSI will first give you advice on what's good for them. If they feel you have a good product then, as a rule, they will want an exclusive with you.
This has some merit for advertising purposes but it also effects your ability to sell to other stores. I tried it their way for some years and finally had to conclude that it was not in my best interest to tie my production to one company alone.
I would tell you other negatives with this but the bottom line; is it helping you with your output? I took note of my sales to them over the years and my guitars sold, on the average, every two weeks from actual landing in their stock.
My output was low and it insured that they bought everything that I made, with-in that period of time, but the downside was that it made other potential companies that wanted to buy my instruments, made at me for being tied into an exclusive.
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