Introduction
The image is not a new musical instrument but a faucet. If you continue you will understand
I make my living making very good custom musical instruments, including:
- Violoncellos da Spalla
- Octave Violins
- Travel Violins
- Octave Mandolins
- Citterns
- Mandocellos
I would very much like to sell you one. If you are reading this, you can easily figure out how to contact me (706-896-0909; [email protected]).
Now, I’ll cut to the chase – Very few people are buying custom musical instruments these days. It is even worse than the worldwide financial crisis of 2007-2008. Well, maybe not worse, but just as bad.
Very few makers of custom hand-built musical instruments will admit publicly that the current state of affairs is really dire, which is a polite way of saying that it sucks! Why? — because it is generally not a good marketing strategy to say out loud that business is challenging and things like you might lose your home to foreclosure and the like. The “Market” could not care less. Well, the truth is the truth!
For me, the time of daunting backlog queues is a thing of the past. Since Q3 2021 it has been quite the opposite. You do not see economists on National News programs talking about any of this, as small businesses that make bespoke goods are, quite simply, a tiny segment of the overall economy. Since you will not be hearing from economists on the current dire situation for custom luthiers, I will tell you what I think.
The COVID-19 Pandemic and the "Lockdown"
The COVID pandemic, especially what we called the “lockdown” was bad in all sorts of ways. First, there was so much suffering and widespread death, as well as the long-term health issues for many survivors. And then were the businesses that were affected. Service industries like restaurants, and the entertainment industry, suffered terribly. Some businesses, like makers of strings for orchestral instruments (e.g., SuperSensitive), went out of business during the lockdown. The reason is that SuperSensitive absolutely depended on sales of inexpensive strings to tens of thousands of students in middle school and high school orchestra programs. The ripple effects were severe. For example, octave viola (aka “chin cello”) players are now without a source for strings, as SuperSensitive was the ONLY maker of such strings.
Given the aforementioned tragedies, I feel almost guilty about what I am about to say, but the COVID lockdown was really good for makers of high-end (i.e., expensive) musical instruments, large as well as small. For instance, 2020 was a very good year for manufactures like Gibson, Taylor, Martin and Fender. In fact, 2020 was the best year for sales in the history of Fender. This trend continued into part of 2021. Those trying to make sense of this attribute the spike in high-end musical instrument sales to the confluence of several things:
- Thousands of adults were bored out of their minds.
- Many of these bored people decided to take up a musical instrument.
- The various stimulus checks, both under both the Trump and the Biden administrations, helped people to pay for their newfound hobbies.
During the 2020-2021 period, I had more orders for my violoncellos da spalla, octave violins and travel violins than I ever could have imagined. It was almost impossible to keep up with orders. Then, it was as if a faucet was turned off. I mean OFF! To this day I still mutter WTF to myself when I think about it.
So, here we are waiting for the phone to ring. Well, not exactly, as the downturn seems to have empowered the crackpots. Every custom luthier knows what I am talking about… people who find it interesting, comforting or whatever to engage a luthier in hours of prelude to what appears to be a likely commission. In reality, all these folks want to do is go through the motions of specifying the instrument they would like, as if they were ever going to actually buy one. That’s enough to get those pleasurable neurotransmitters going. It is very much like people who pretend that they are rich and take Ferraris on test drives. Yes, that really is a thing, believe it or not. I imagine that some of these people will read this and I have one thing to say—shame on you!
While I feel that I understand why sales spiked during the lockdown, as described above. I have no idea why everything grinded to a halt when the lockdown ended. I am really interested in your ideas should you want to share them.