Contact guidelines:

Thank you for your decision to contact me!  Please understand that I am all alone here, and without any help by others, so I have to lay down some rules, in order to get my work (possibly on your instrument) done efficiently and in a timely manner:

Your email address is a required field, and I will reply to you by email only using an address ending with @rdelutherie.com.  Once I reply to you (check your junk and spam), you can and should add the address to your address book to assure smooth correspondence.

Be thorough:

Not all fields in the form are required, but the "Message" field of the contact form is your friend;  It looks small but holds more info than you see room for.  It can be expanded by dragging it's bottom right corner to the right and down.  Your message goes through email, it's not a text messaging app, or a live chat, so you can and should give as much info as you can without going off subject.  Starting with the make and model of the instrument, any suspected or known problems and damage, any custom options it has and whatever else you can think of may help me formulate my reply.

Legal considerations:

I understand that you are Leary of filling out online forms, and rightfully so.  When you fill out this form, you are not put on a mailing list, your data will not stay on this site or be stored in the cloud, your info won't even be kept unless you agree to service, where it will be stored for future reference only, and in a very secure way.

Since you are inquiring for service you should read my Service Agreement which becomes binding if you agree to service, and my Service Warranty for once service is complete.  Here is a link to the lutherie Privacy Policy, Service agreement and Service Warranty., it will open in a new tab of your browser.

I will not help with "do it yourself” and related projects!

I only give advice to those I service based on the work I perform.

I do not answer general questions.

Unless pertaining to needed service, I do not answer general questions about guitars, lutherie or anything related.  I am not a historian, do not cater to the collectors market, and can not asses instruments by make and model, as that can not be reliable.  I have to see an individual instrument to asses it, and only do so in technical terms, not value (true or perceived).

There is a lot of information on everything I am willing to share already somewhere on this site, so if you have questions, the answers are already at your fingertips.

I can not take on apprentices!

I just don't have the facilities nor the time to take on apprentices.

I'm king here:

I'm a nice guy, but I have rules, if you have questions you can ask, but don't think you can bend the rules or get special treatment.  IOW:  Leave your ego at the door.  I don't need business for mere business sake, and don't take well to being pushed around.  Those who have tried have failed.  If I don't respond or get back you, it may be the reason why.  I don't wait more than a few weeks for responses and will delete all correspondence as lost interest if you don't get back to me.  No need to contact me months a head of time.