I have been told I should sell some cbg's.......I just feel like I have not perfected my craft enough. I am workong on one right now that I just want to be a kick butt guitar. It will either be a license plate res....or some sort of tin resinator. Anyhow.....is ebay the way to go? Or maybe just selling local. There are not very many people around here that are looking for a cbg, so it is a kind of a certian following.
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I would buy one-if the price was right (I can't seeing paying more for a CBG than I paid for my reso). I want to buy one, just because I don't have one now and I want to skip to the fun playing part, but there is that little voice that says it would be more fun if I built one myself. I'm in the planning and gathering stage...soon I hope to be slidin on 3 strings!
make em and give em away. it builds the nation and the smile is priceless. ive also found out that it pays you back tenfold. never know what karma will bring.
I remember reading an ad on my local craigslist.org, someone selling a CBG asking USA $ 75. I don't remember seeing the ad again so I assume the instrument was sold.
I`ve sold 30 or so. I put up 4x6 buisiness cads at local gas station and hard ware stores. I also play `em in town on benches close to music stores, and the owners don`t even mind they think its cool. People don`t know they want one untill they see `em and hear `em. 80 to 100 bucks. Also have sold some at used bookstore.
My two cents: I've sold about 50 cigar box instruments over the past few years. Like most of us, I didn't start out intending to sell any, just wanted to make ONE for myself :-) but after they began to accumulate in my house, I figured I'd better try to get rid of some, so I put a couple of banjos on consignment in a local guitar store. The proprietor was a little reluctant to take them, but, lo and behold, they sold within a week; so he says, "Got any more of those?"
Today, he BUYS them from me, and gives me a call when he runs out. It's a great relationship. Now, we're only talking maybe 6-10 banjos over the course of a year, which is perfect for me 'cause I don't want to mass produce these things. I still make 'em because I enjoy it! But it is a very small business, so I do pay Unle Sam his share (sigh). I sell them for $150-$170 (retail to individuals), but after the cost of materials, taxes, and the 25% off the top to the guitar store, it's really pocket change almost. Sometimes, after I've spent 3-4 days working on one, I wonder if it's worth the effort! I could raise my prices, but I think I'd probably price myself right out of the market. Bottom line is: So long as I'm still passionate about the building process, I'll keep doing it. I could NOT earn a living doing this!
FWIW, my cigar box instruments (acoustic 5-string banjos and solid-body, 6-string electric guitars) are essentially real, standard-playing instruments, i.e., I make fully shaped, fretted and finished necks. And, I DON'T make custom ones (any more). I make 'em the way I like 'em, and if somebody wants one they can have it!
My electric guitars go for twice the amount of the banjos, namely, $300, since they cost twice as much to make and take twice as long. I've sold most of these (about a dozen maybe) to individuals who've seen me play them at blues jams & open mics. It's not uncommon for someone to buy one on the spot!
One other comment about the guitar store: It's a high-end place that sells primarily expensive acoustics. I think that is one reason my little banjos sell well there: To customers who'd spend thousands on an acoustic guitar, $170 is an impulse purchase, and they're are drawn to these things! I've tried consignment at more budget-type guitar stores with much less success.
Having divulged all my secrets, I will now shut up...
For some insight on what your trying to accomplish when you make a sale as far as customer satisfaction goes,,This is a blog one of my customers wrote after a vacation trip his wife and he made to Gatlinburg this past month.They bought one of my instruments ,and apparently had a very good time.He gets some of the info wrong, as far as my other jobs and such goes but the jest is there.
Anniversary Adventures (Part 4)
Beyond all the changes to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, we already knew this trip was going to be different for us in another major respect: cash.
During our actual honeymoon, in February of 2000, I was only doing weekend work in radio in Charlotte (not precisely lucrative) while my wife was in transition as a retail clothing store assistant manager and was only then about to start in a new position in Charlotte, though not at the good store she'd been promised when she agreed to stay on as manager for a store that had closed in Shelby, but instead the assy store, where the customers regularly let their kids s*&t in the dressing rooms. We didn't have a lot of dough going into our marriage. (In fact, we didn't have a lot of food for that trip, either, because while our family had quite thoughtfully assembled for us an enormous sampler pack of the grub from our wedding reception--none of which we'd been able to get more than a bite of during the actual reception because we kept getting shuffled around to cut cakes and open presents and pose for pictures--they'd also quite thoughtfully put it in the wrong car. I still have a craving for Lil' Smokies to this day.) So while we had splurged a bit on our honeymoon cabin (or so it seemed at the time), we were still trying to keep to a budget for the rest of the trip were very careful when it came to actually buying anything while we were there. Within a year and a half after our marriage, the wife was accepted into med school here in WV and we were soon living even poorer than before, in a depressed job market in an already financially depressed state and my job at the "liberry" was, again, not exactly lucrative. However, for the past year and a half, the wife has been a practicing physician. And while that's certainly not as lucrative a job as most people think it is, (one word of advice to future docs whose goal it is to make a buttload of money: specialize) vacation impulse purchases are not so much of a problem.
Probably the best example of this, for me, was when we came to a shop in the mall selling cigar box guitars. I'd seen the tiny shop earlier during my solo run and thought it was interesting, but it was closed. And it had remained closed even when the wife and I passed by again. Then, while browsing a different store two shop spaces down, I heard the most wonderful music and followed it back to the shop where the proprietor was playing away on one of the cigar box guitars. The method he was using was to rest the guitar on the table in front of him, its neck nestled in a cloth-lined notch cut into a block of wood, then strum the strings with his right hand while his left hand held a three-inch section of copper pipe, which he used as a slide, moving up and down the strings to change the notes in the chord. For a three stringed instrument, there was a lot of complex sound pouring out of this one, cigar-box or not. He also clearly had a lot of skill at it.
I stood and listened for a bit, then went and fetched the wife. After he'd finished playing, we struck up a conversation with the man and soon learned that the shop was kind of a side project to another job he and his wife had running a candy store in the mall itself. He made all the guitars himself, buying his cigar boxes from a lady in another state whose house was apparently filled floor to ceiling with boxes. I suggested that this seemed to be a case of a positive hoarder, though this is just my theory.
Now, I'd seen cigar box guitars before, but had never given them much thought. But the shop owner explained their significance in early blues in the Mississippi delta, as well as in Appalachia. Suddenly, owning such a historic and beautiful instrument (despite the fact that I can't yet play it) seemed a no-brainer.
"Which one do you want?" the wife asked. I picked out a guitar with a glossy red neck, made from a gorgeous wooden Manolete cigar box. He pulled it from the wall and played it for me to show me how great it sounded. It certainly did.
"Happy anniversary," the wife said.
I still haven't learned to play it, of course, but thing it's all around awesome all the same.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Posted by Juice S. Aaron at 11:16 PM 0 comments
This is Sunday and I made a sale I never dreamed I would make.
A couple came in ,both were deaf so we had to make do with simple 1 finger type sign and writing notes to each other to find out what they had in mind.
A very nice couple that simply cant hear.But we managed to get through the sale anyway.We even managed to have some fun along the way.
They bought my high end 3 string,a Honeytone amp ( the only kind I'll sell) and the little clip on pickup we offer to folks that wanna make more noise then the standard acoustic I offer will make.
So they ended up with a CBG for $77.95,an Amp for $45 and the clip on that we offer for $15.
I made a little money and they got a lotta bang for their buck.
All in all I had a good day for a Sunday,roughly $350 for about 1 1/2 hours time with the shop open.
Note- Because I cant get sales on higher end CBG's ( fretted ,electric etc) in a timely manner I dont offer those type pieces.So (most) of my 3 strings ( unfretted average less then $100.
I dont do custom work anymore either because I cant get my time back (money wise) to make it worth it.
So I only offer 3 string unfretted sliders and Db's almost ALL acoustic only.These I can move with no problem at all most of the time.
I always give this site link to any that want a higher end piece and tell them that the crafts people here can do most anything they want built.
For some insight on what your trying to accomplish when you make a sale as far as customer satisfaction goes,,This is a blog one of my customers wrote after a vacation trip his wife and he made to Gatlinburg this past month.They bought one of my instruments ,and apparently had a very good time.He gets some of the info wrong, as far as my other jobs and such goes but the jest is there.
Anniversary Adventures (Part 4)
Beyond all the changes to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, we already knew this trip was going to be different for us in another major respect: cash.
During our actual honeymoon, in February of 2000, I was only doing weekend work in radio in Charlotte (not precisely lucrative) while my wife was in transition as a retail clothing store assistant manager and was only then about to start in a new position in Charlotte, though not at the good store she'd been promised when she agreed to stay on as manager for a store that had closed in Shelby, but instead the assy store, where the customers regularly let their kids s*&t in the dressing rooms. We didn't have a lot of dough going into our marriage. (In fact, we didn't have a lot of food for that trip, either, because while our family had quite thoughtfully assembled for us an enormous sampler pack of the grub from our wedding reception--none of which we'd been able to get more than a bite of during the actual reception because we kept getting shuffled around to cut cakes and open presents and pose for pictures--they'd also quite thoughtfully put it in the wrong car. I still have a craving for Lil' Smokies to this day.) So while we had splurged a bit on our honeymoon cabin (or so it seemed at the time), we were still trying to keep to a budget for the rest of the trip were very careful when it came to actually buying anything while we were there. Within a year and a half after our marriage, the wife was accepted into med school here in WV and we were soon living even poorer than before, in a depressed job market in an already financially depressed state and my job at the "liberry" was, again, not exactly lucrative. However, for the past year and a half, the wife has been a practicing physician. And while that's certainly not as lucrative a job as most people think it is, (one word of advice to future docs whose goal it is to make a buttload of money: specialize) vacation impulse purchases are not so much of a problem.
Probably the best example of this, for me, was when we came to a shop in the mall selling cigar box guitars. I'd seen the tiny shop earlier during my solo run and thought it was interesting, but it was closed. And it had remained closed even when the wife and I passed by again. Then, while browsing a different store two shop spaces down, I heard the most wonderful music and followed it back to the shop where the proprietor was playing away on one of the cigar box guitars. The method he was using was to rest the guitar on the table in front of him, its neck nestled in a cloth-lined notch cut into a block of wood, then strum the strings with his right hand while his left hand held a three-inch section of copper pipe, which he used as a slide, moving up and down the strings to change the notes in the chord. For a three stringed instrument, there was a lot of complex sound pouring out of this one, cigar-box or not. He also clearly had a lot of skill at it.
I stood and listened for a bit, then went and fetched the wife. After he'd finished playing, we struck up a conversation with the man and soon learned that the shop was kind of a side project to another job he and his wife had running a candy store in the mall itself. He made all the guitars himself, buying his cigar boxes from a lady in another state whose house was apparently filled floor to ceiling with boxes. I suggested that this seemed to be a case of a positive hoarder, though this is just my theory.
Now, I'd seen cigar box guitars before, but had never given them much thought. But the shop owner explained their significance in early blues in the Mississippi delta, as well as in Appalachia. Suddenly, owning such a historic and beautiful instrument (despite the fact that I can't yet play it) seemed a no-brainer.
"Which one do you want?" the wife asked. I picked out a guitar with a glossy red neck, made from a gorgeous wooden Manolete cigar box. He pulled it from the wall and played it for me to show me how great it sounded. It certainly did.
"Happy anniversary," the wife said.
I still haven't learned to play it, of course, but thing it's all around awesome all the same.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Posted by Juice S. Aaron at 11:16 PM 0 comments
Leanna is right on Jerry,,
If you worry much about your product being good enough , you'll never get that 1st one out.If your selling in public , folks are going to ask you "what is that thing?" So 1st you have to explain WHAT IT IS,and give some light history on a CBG.
They love hearing the history part. If their still standing there, then your ahead of the game.They GOTTA HEAR IT.
Bang on it, play loose ,relaxed ,the easier it seems to play the easier the sale. (Most of MY sales are to non musicians)
One thing I tell them is that Fender, Gibson and Martin probably wouldnt want me to say that all you need are 3 or 4 strings,,,,,,,, I put on a sort of show, telling jokes ,making fun of me, making fun of them, almost anything is liable to come out of my mouth.
That makes it easier to sell the instrument , because if they dont know what their going to hear next its easier to keep their attention.
Husbands and wives together,, I tell the guy not to worry about the money then point at momma and explain that momma's got money he dont know about hidden in her pocketbook,,,,,,,,Always keeping their attention.
I ask where their from , how many kids ,then marvel over mom being much too young to have #$% kids,,,,
Its a form of old fashioned dog and pony show ,,,
After a sale its not unusual for them to thank me for ENTERTAINING them while they spent their money.Sometimes I think I enjoy that more then the building itself. But I've always been a show off and selling these gizmo's gives me an excuse to show off big time.
Go out there show off and MAKE SURE THEY KNOW how much fun YOUR having.Your own passion for the instrument goes a VERY long way to making that sale!!!!!!!!!!!
During our busy season I play and try to draw a crowd,it's easier for me to work a group of people rather then 1 or 2.The idea is to work THAT group and maybe get 1 or 2 sales out of that session.
My partner sometimes goes nutz trying to keep the money straight ( I've since bought a cash register to replace his cigarbox he was using),to help cure that problem.
After working a group sometimes they'll be in a line waiting to pay for their purchase.
Its FUN make sure THEY KNOW it is, and knock em dead, but get their money 1st,,,,,,,,
Replies
Today, he BUYS them from me, and gives me a call when he runs out. It's a great relationship. Now, we're only talking maybe 6-10 banjos over the course of a year, which is perfect for me 'cause I don't want to mass produce these things. I still make 'em because I enjoy it! But it is a very small business, so I do pay Unle Sam his share (sigh). I sell them for $150-$170 (retail to individuals), but after the cost of materials, taxes, and the 25% off the top to the guitar store, it's really pocket change almost. Sometimes, after I've spent 3-4 days working on one, I wonder if it's worth the effort! I could raise my prices, but I think I'd probably price myself right out of the market. Bottom line is: So long as I'm still passionate about the building process, I'll keep doing it. I could NOT earn a living doing this!
FWIW, my cigar box instruments (acoustic 5-string banjos and solid-body, 6-string electric guitars) are essentially real, standard-playing instruments, i.e., I make fully shaped, fretted and finished necks. And, I DON'T make custom ones (any more). I make 'em the way I like 'em, and if somebody wants one they can have it!
My electric guitars go for twice the amount of the banjos, namely, $300, since they cost twice as much to make and take twice as long. I've sold most of these (about a dozen maybe) to individuals who've seen me play them at blues jams & open mics. It's not uncommon for someone to buy one on the spot!
One other comment about the guitar store: It's a high-end place that sells primarily expensive acoustics. I think that is one reason my little banjos sell well there: To customers who'd spend thousands on an acoustic guitar, $170 is an impulse purchase, and they're are drawn to these things! I've tried consignment at more budget-type guitar stores with much less success.
Having divulged all my secrets, I will now shut up...
Roger Martin said:
I suck at building, but i love playing em.
A couple came in ,both were deaf so we had to make do with simple 1 finger type sign and writing notes to each other to find out what they had in mind.
A very nice couple that simply cant hear.But we managed to get through the sale anyway.We even managed to have some fun along the way.
They bought my high end 3 string,a Honeytone amp ( the only kind I'll sell) and the little clip on pickup we offer to folks that wanna make more noise then the standard acoustic I offer will make.
So they ended up with a CBG for $77.95,an Amp for $45 and the clip on that we offer for $15.
I made a little money and they got a lotta bang for their buck.
All in all I had a good day for a Sunday,roughly $350 for about 1 1/2 hours time with the shop open.
Note- Because I cant get sales on higher end CBG's ( fretted ,electric etc) in a timely manner I dont offer those type pieces.So (most) of my 3 strings ( unfretted average less then $100.
I dont do custom work anymore either because I cant get my time back (money wise) to make it worth it.
So I only offer 3 string unfretted sliders and Db's almost ALL acoustic only.These I can move with no problem at all most of the time.
I always give this site link to any that want a higher end piece and tell them that the crafts people here can do most anything they want built.
Anniversary Adventures (Part 4)
Beyond all the changes to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, we already knew this trip was going to be different for us in another major respect: cash.
During our actual honeymoon, in February of 2000, I was only doing weekend work in radio in Charlotte (not precisely lucrative) while my wife was in transition as a retail clothing store assistant manager and was only then about to start in a new position in Charlotte, though not at the good store she'd been promised when she agreed to stay on as manager for a store that had closed in Shelby, but instead the assy store, where the customers regularly let their kids s*&t in the dressing rooms. We didn't have a lot of dough going into our marriage. (In fact, we didn't have a lot of food for that trip, either, because while our family had quite thoughtfully assembled for us an enormous sampler pack of the grub from our wedding reception--none of which we'd been able to get more than a bite of during the actual reception because we kept getting shuffled around to cut cakes and open presents and pose for pictures--they'd also quite thoughtfully put it in the wrong car. I still have a craving for Lil' Smokies to this day.) So while we had splurged a bit on our honeymoon cabin (or so it seemed at the time), we were still trying to keep to a budget for the rest of the trip were very careful when it came to actually buying anything while we were there. Within a year and a half after our marriage, the wife was accepted into med school here in WV and we were soon living even poorer than before, in a depressed job market in an already financially depressed state and my job at the "liberry" was, again, not exactly lucrative. However, for the past year and a half, the wife has been a practicing physician. And while that's certainly not as lucrative a job as most people think it is, (one word of advice to future docs whose goal it is to make a buttload of money: specialize) vacation impulse purchases are not so much of a problem.
Probably the best example of this, for me, was when we came to a shop in the mall selling cigar box guitars. I'd seen the tiny shop earlier during my solo run and thought it was interesting, but it was closed. And it had remained closed even when the wife and I passed by again. Then, while browsing a different store two shop spaces down, I heard the most wonderful music and followed it back to the shop where the proprietor was playing away on one of the cigar box guitars. The method he was using was to rest the guitar on the table in front of him, its neck nestled in a cloth-lined notch cut into a block of wood, then strum the strings with his right hand while his left hand held a three-inch section of copper pipe, which he used as a slide, moving up and down the strings to change the notes in the chord. For a three stringed instrument, there was a lot of complex sound pouring out of this one, cigar-box or not. He also clearly had a lot of skill at it.
I stood and listened for a bit, then went and fetched the wife. After he'd finished playing, we struck up a conversation with the man and soon learned that the shop was kind of a side project to another job he and his wife had running a candy store in the mall itself. He made all the guitars himself, buying his cigar boxes from a lady in another state whose house was apparently filled floor to ceiling with boxes. I suggested that this seemed to be a case of a positive hoarder, though this is just my theory.
Now, I'd seen cigar box guitars before, but had never given them much thought. But the shop owner explained their significance in early blues in the Mississippi delta, as well as in Appalachia. Suddenly, owning such a historic and beautiful instrument (despite the fact that I can't yet play it) seemed a no-brainer.
"Which one do you want?" the wife asked. I picked out a guitar with a glossy red neck, made from a gorgeous wooden Manolete cigar box. He pulled it from the wall and played it for me to show me how great it sounded. It certainly did.
"Happy anniversary," the wife said.
I still haven't learned to play it, of course, but thing it's all around awesome all the same.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Posted by Juice S. Aaron at 11:16 PM 0 comments
If you worry much about your product being good enough , you'll never get that 1st one out.If your selling in public , folks are going to ask you "what is that thing?" So 1st you have to explain WHAT IT IS,and give some light history on a CBG.
They love hearing the history part. If their still standing there, then your ahead of the game.They GOTTA HEAR IT.
Bang on it, play loose ,relaxed ,the easier it seems to play the easier the sale. (Most of MY sales are to non musicians)
One thing I tell them is that Fender, Gibson and Martin probably wouldnt want me to say that all you need are 3 or 4 strings,,,,,,,, I put on a sort of show, telling jokes ,making fun of me, making fun of them, almost anything is liable to come out of my mouth.
That makes it easier to sell the instrument , because if they dont know what their going to hear next its easier to keep their attention.
Husbands and wives together,, I tell the guy not to worry about the money then point at momma and explain that momma's got money he dont know about hidden in her pocketbook,,,,,,,,Always keeping their attention.
I ask where their from , how many kids ,then marvel over mom being much too young to have #$% kids,,,,
Its a form of old fashioned dog and pony show ,,,
After a sale its not unusual for them to thank me for ENTERTAINING them while they spent their money.Sometimes I think I enjoy that more then the building itself. But I've always been a show off and selling these gizmo's gives me an excuse to show off big time.
Go out there show off and MAKE SURE THEY KNOW how much fun YOUR having.Your own passion for the instrument goes a VERY long way to making that sale!!!!!!!!!!!
During our busy season I play and try to draw a crowd,it's easier for me to work a group of people rather then 1 or 2.The idea is to work THAT group and maybe get 1 or 2 sales out of that session.
My partner sometimes goes nutz trying to keep the money straight ( I've since bought a cash register to replace his cigarbox he was using),to help cure that problem.
After working a group sometimes they'll be in a line waiting to pay for their purchase.
Its FUN make sure THEY KNOW it is, and knock em dead, but get their money 1st,,,,,,,,
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