Nice little article about guitar building in Australia in the theage.com.au today. It would seem, not surprisingly, that building guitars for a living is as hard in Australia as it is in the States:

 

Carson Crickmore has been a luthier for 29 years. Give him another 10 to reach a level of mastering the craft, he reckons. There are no tertiary qualifications, but there are a few essentials. “There’s the mechanics,” says Carson Crickmore.

“Basically, that’s the building techniques, then there’s the playability. If you build an instrument it’s got to be able to be played really well. And then it’s all related to what’s going on in your head, and it’s all about tone.

“To become a successful instrument maker you’ve got to be able to play so you can critique the instrument, and that’s no small feat. Once you move into that area of knowledge and understand what you’re listening to, you can assess the instrument.

“You’ve got to listen to a lot of music — drown in music — and you get to a stage in your career and you can say, ‘That’s a perfect tone.’ ”

It is not a career for the easily pleased. Building a guitar is, at core, a labour of love. A very long labour of love. Luthiers may make only between 15 and 25 instruments a year. Jack Spira describes it as a “medieval nature of business”, and “in a modern society that’s not what people are used to”.