I don't work in my basement, but I do work from a single car garage in my backyard.I don't make guitars for a living, in fact I can only work on building a couple of nights and the weekendswhen I don't have chores to do. Only in recent years have I have been interested in building for as long as I can remember. I built my first instrument in 1977. I built dreadnaught sized guitars for years, until about three years ago. I had the opportunity to do some repair work on an old beautifully inlaid turn of the century parlor sized slott peghead 12 fret neck brazilian rosewood back and side Washburn guitar, but unfortunately, its top was ladder braced and was failing(caving in front of the bridge/pulling up behind, a fairly typical problem on old guitars, and it needed a neck reset. I rebraced the top on that guitar in the traditional martin X brace style, reset the neck, rebound the back, finished the entire guitar in McFadden nitrocellulose laquer( it is the best I have ever used). I did a second parlor sized guitar for the same man and then one of my friends found another Washburn and I did the same for him.

Those guitars turned my opinion around and from then on I have concentrated my efforts toward smaller bodied 12 fret slot peg headed parlor guitars, because they are in my opinion, the most beautifully preportioned guitars ever to have been built,and most importantly,they sound good all thru their scale. In case some of you don't know what an old washburn looks like, they were similar in size to an "0" sized Martin . At the risk of taking advantage of this forums hospitality, I won't go into any specific price, but I can build a high quality, mahog/red spruce w/hardshell case for under $1000.00 not much, but under. Some out there would call me an amateur, and I guess I am. I understand correctly, the word "AMATEUR" has its origin in the word "amour" which means "to love". I'm sure if I am wrong about the origins of "amateur" some onewill point it out.