I've only just finished my first bass, so take this for what you will... but I have made a few violins and a 'cello besides and have been doing repair work full time since 1993, so do know how to get these things done fairly well. My labour rate for the past few years has been $50/hour, which is quite low in my area. Some charge as much as $135/hour. I spent approximately 650 hours building this first bass, not including the travel trunk I made last week. It's an instrument with several innovative elements, took a fair bit of thought and there were some tricky stages in the development. I wouldn't expect my next bass to take more than about 500 hours. Materials for this bass cost approximately $5,000 - the wood is really premium old stuff from Reid Hudson, then there are tuners from KC Strings, a very nice fingerboard from Lemur, strings, $200 for loads of spirit of gum turpentine which had to be 'aged' down to a honey like consistency for the varnish cook and all sorts of bits and pieces. My next bass will use poplar for the back and sides most likely, dramatically reducing that cost and also saving a bit on labour as it's easier to carve and smooth.
If I sell my bass for $25,000, the math is simple enough to show my labour per hour:
$25,000 - $5,000 (labour) = $20,000 divided by 650 hours = $30.77/hour. So a $19/hour discount below my usual labour rate. Some might say that $31/hour is a lot. They might also be people doing unskilled labour for minimum wage, here I've been studying luthiery since the beginning of 1986, and practicing full time since 1993. That counts for something, right? Compare to say, a dentist, who goes through some years of university (8? 10?) and then immediately on setting up a practice charges over $200/hour, usually closer to $500/hour. Sure a dentist has overhead. And I don't?
I'm not sure what price I'll get for my bass. The $25,000 figure is just an example. Initially mine was to be priced at $20,000, but that was 11 years ago. I've stopped working on it a lot of times, sometimes for several years running, as the work load in restorations and setups has often been heavy, and then there's raising a couple of kids, my wife working part-time, and there was a 3 year delay for my machinist to get busy making my neck adjustment mechanism. That thing was a late development, something not in the original plans, and it certainly adds value as the smaller airline-worthy trunk will mean thousands of dollars per year in savings for a travelling bassist, considering some flights within Canada can cost an additional $1,500 one way for a traditional bass trunk. And depending on how the ISB competition turns out for my bass, I wouldn't be shy about charging a little more for a successful result.
So over-priced modern basses? I'm not really seeing that. Jim Ham's are up in the $40's somewhere I think. He's booked for years, bassists more than happy to pay his asking price as his are proven products with a number of very useful innovations incorporated. A lot of modern makers are coming up with very decent sound, and that's worth something, especially when they are consistent in such results as the maker's name will in time become recognised as having value for the ages, resale prices guaranteed.
My personal hope is that one day money will fail utterly and that I can finally do what most appeals to me; making instruments and giving them away to those who are most deserving, based on my own judgment. That would be very satisfying. Unfortunately I am stuck, as we all are for now, in economic circumstances which demand we make a living. I have rent and food to pay for, kid's schooling and health care, insurance, whatever. I don't drive and don't operate a shop, working out of my home, so I am able to charge less than some other luthiers as I save on those expenses. I charge what I need to survive, help my family thrive, and make more instruments. My goal, as ought to be the goal of every luthier, is to help make better music. Why else would we be doing this work? If I were interested in buying a summer cottage or even owning my own home any time soon, I'd be in another line of work, hating the work, but loving the money. Somehow greed and luthiery don't really go together. I leave the greed to the dealers with their 30% and higher mark-ups.
