Re: Fascinating luthier doc on Canadian cable prov
david weaver
I've built guitars of this type, and am building two right now. In my opinion, the term luthiery is used a bit loosely, because they can be built by anyone, and the $3k price tag for a guitar that involves very little hand work, using materials that are actually cheaper than what you'd typically track down for a higher priced guitar...
..it's definitely a good business.
Telecaster and stratocaster copies are kind of the guitars that you start with to see if you want to get serious building, and any woodworker who plays guitar (so you know what to look for in making a decent guitar and can test profiles) can pretty easily scratch build them. All of the components they're dropping into the guitars are the same as I'd buy looking around (much of them more or less pre-arranged, so you buy them an drop them into the guitars).
I considered the "reclaimed" pine stuff, but don't really like the look. Vendors of 8/4 wood pop up on ebay, and a current listing of wood from an elevator in minnesota (very old wood, probably very good aside from the aesthetics) is about $50 - for enough to actually build two guitar bodies.
Aside from the guitar building, they must be masters of curating a customer list and generating publicity, though (I don't sell guitars and never have plans to, but am put off a little bit the same way some might be on here if they saw a shop open in the center of town that sold bowls and cutting boards at a really high rate and used the term "master craftsman").
There *are* some makers who do build extremely fine solid body guitars in small numbers (collings comes to mind), but what they do is precise, complex and perhaps not that interesting to a TV show.