jack1999

13? But my birthday isn't until July... ) Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'll address your points in some sort of order. The "professional" thing is a moot point. As far as I know there are no "professional qualifications" in the world of guitar building / luthering such as there are in say medicine, accountancy, insurance or law etc. The things that give you letters after your name. Therefore "professional" is always going to mean different things to different people. What criteria would you apply before someone can claim to be a professional in the art of guitar set-up? He's not charging anyone, he is offering goods for sale at a price. If he was deliberately trying to make a buck at any cost I would be the first to disapprove. He does provide accurate descriptions in his listings (although with some of his flowery spiel) and as I said the feedback is generally very good from the buyers. He has incidentally been shafted a few times when buying guitars on ebay from people who were less honest! Although his methods may be slightly odd it doesn't actually matter. The guitars are well playable (seriously, I get to play many of them them before and after) and they perform and look as described / photoed. In terms of the setup.. as I say he's set-up my guitars and improved them. He's selling reasonably cheap guitars but with his setup they are miles better than as sold by the manufacturers / official dealers.. I feel a lot more anger towards these organisations who frankly are selling guitars that are not really in a "fit for purpose" state. And curiously almost as if they have no pride in their product. They are committing much more of a fraud on the customer! And actually in the longer term they don't really do their brand any favour. IMHO anyway.. There is no warning on the box "warning: has not been set-up properly - you may not find it easy to play". Quite bizarre! The 7 string to 6 string conversion is interesting. It came about because he has relatively sausage fingers and when he changed to finger-picking style found that he had trouble with regular neck widths. So he turned a 7 string into a 6 string for himself. And as 7 string guitars were a bit of a fad (that seems to have now gone out of favour, if it ever was in) they seem to come up quite cheap second-hand. Now having converted one he thought "perhaps other people might want one too". And there were a few. Now doing the conversion is not an easy job to do and end up with a crafted result if you're on a budget. The budget is "what I can sell it for - (what I paid for it + fees + conversion costs + some element of profit as reward for time spent)". There are no parts you can buy for such an adaption (assuming they fell into the budget). And to design / machine your own would take too much time (especially if you're converting whatever 7 string guitar you find to buy - so no set pattern to use) and require expensive equipment etc. If there's £60 to be made out of a guitar as a reward for the converting and all the associated effort associated with buying / selling then there's not much money that can be justified on doing it perfectly. So you have to work with what you have available and make-do. Just realised this all sounds quite defensive but I wanted to give some insight. Perhaps if you're local to East Sussex you'd like him more in the flesh )

Just found this topic. The guy is a friend of mine. I don't really play bass but I do play guitar. And actually he doesn't make much money out of it. He has setup all of my guitars and to be honest he will make a Squire or Encore strat much more playable than they are out of the box. I went to Guitarland in Boston last week... played with a "real" strat. Abysmal and the strings a mile high. I wonder why they don't set them up properly - most guitars are pretty unplayable out of the box, except as my friend says, the Schecters - and sure enough the Schecter in the shop was a lot better. He's an average bloke making a paltry amount out of something he enjoys. I can vouch for the outcome although I would have to agree that it can sometimes be achieved by unconventional means... he's a pretty good guitarist though (and bassist). And if the crappy companies didn't send the things out unplayable then there wouldn't be a need to file the nut. And at the end of the day it is a free-market. If people want to buy something that has been setup and pay more money for it - that's their choice. I dread to think how many kids give up guitar because the things are so bad. Thus ensuring a good supply of cheap stuff. Whoever said that ebay & paypal fees etc bite into any "profit". Yes they do. I have incidentally seen the mails from lots of people who express their gratitude for well set up and playable instruments. I've not seen any complaints and this guy isn't someone who would be dishonest to me about the reality.