Barf.
When I got into making guitars a few years ago, I landed like many of us do in a crowd of people who were making basic guitars or getting into it, as well as a few older folks who learned a long time ago.
What came up as “oh you have to” was patronize LMII and Stew Mac. I did a little, but quickly realized that through the lens of someone with woodworking experience, what people described to me in the past about “Stewart MacDonald” and calling over the phone and talking to someone with questions, etc, was long gone.
I also began to notice two things:
- Stew Mac seemed to be phasing in more and more Chinese and lower market cost tools, but not at a low cost, and the versions of some tools like fret nippers, etc, that were Japanese were being replaced. With that, anything that was Japanese and listed could be found elsewhere for much less. Sometimes that’s just the way it goes with suppliers, though.
- The site seem to have a fix that made no economic sense in my view, especially for someone building one or two or ten guitars, but in a lot of cases, not for a repair person with a little creativity.
I joined their “buyer’s club” to get free shipping for the year anyway and in a fairly short period of time, there wasn’t much more than fretwire that I could justify getting. The little tools and jigs aren’t needed for anyone with some hand work ability let alone someone who does hand work and makes tools. And when I would get things like jack plates, they would have free shipping and still be more expensive than similar quality elsewhere.
I then located some of their humbucker type pickups on reverb for about 2/3rds of stew mac price and sent them a message and asked if the gray market pickups were the same as theirs. They said yes. I asked where they were made, and they said USA (still have the email).
Turns out, they’re not. The price of them showing up gray market didn’t make sense for USA made pickups in terms of someone making humbuckers wound in the US.
LMII also quickly ran out of things that I could buy, but it seemed like an alternative.
Stew Mac at some point went from being family owned to being owned by someone else. I am going to guess there was a sale of a business involved, of course. It’s my opinion that when something like this happens, everyone loses except the prior owner and the buyer. The customer loses and the suppliers to the retailer probably don’t do that well.
Seeing LMII shut down and turn into an advertising jump off point for Stew Mac – not really a great sign – at least that’s my opinion. But when it had already kind of become a place that was hard for an able bodied consumer to patronize, especially if the hobby of making things isn’t just about acquiring a lot of stuff to make a little, I guess it doesn’t make much of a difference.
There are other options now (Philadelphia luthier supply, etc), more fractious carrying a short line of things, and I use them. So all is not lost, but it’s still a reminder of where the hobbies of making things go and part of the wider picture of who -knows-what ownership that’s taken over. So much of what was out there when I first started each hobby is toast. McFeely’s was kind of one of those small line one-off places to get decent screws, only made in the US at the time. That changed and then so did the ownership and who knows what else. I don’t remember having some kind of fit and refusing to patronize them, but the loss of the original mission just sort of made it happen over time, anyway.
Of Making by Hand with Wood and Steel 
sadly too true and common.
I often fantasize about having a workshop in London between the wars for access to tools and timber while surrounded by high quality examples of workmanship and skilled talent…and no time lost to Instagram
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that would certainly be enabling – to watch a guy sitting outside with a punch because the room was a little hot, working through hammer setting saws like a human sewing machine. which is about as the former toolmaker described it to me when they went to Sheffield decades ago before the trades died there. Now, if you ask how to set a saw, you’ll get 10 responses about what to buy and nothing describing the amount of set you want and what the tooth should look like. We’ll, you’ll probably get 20 responses to watch paul sellers or rex or james wright or a bunch of other guys who have no evidence of doing fine work for a living, and the info you’ll get is how a beginner could do the saw setting.
The world of guitars is kind of like that. How can you press frets in a guitar? There’s an array of overpriced imported options. Or you can bend the fret wire, and you can make the bender, and hammer it in if the fretboard is accurate, or buy an array of imported fret press inserts from china for almost nothing, and install them in a wooden block that you put in a bessey clamp. If you suggest the latter two, 20 people will tell you that you can’t get good results, and some guy will tell you he’s still loyal to stewmac, which is one of the things I read when seeing what peoples opinion of philadelphia luthier supply was – because it was a default for me. How a long-time customer to stew mac would still be loyal is beyond me – some people are just loyal to the point of it making no sense, and I guess others are fine with things as long as they happen a little at a time. At least the case was most of the responses I saw online in the last year were “default to philadelphia luthier supply, it’s better”, at least those given by long term repair guys and long-term makers. That was nice to see – it’s kind of a little seen case these days where another business popped up, operated reasonably and has grown without just selling to someone else and focusing on SEO and social media payoffs.
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