Do you have a unique talent, skill, or passion you want to share with others? Offer to teach your friends, family, classmates, or neighbors. How does teaching others make you feel? 

Teach someone a new skill.

Try one of these easy DIY tutorials to make your own instrument using materials all around you. What music were you able to make? Did taking your creativity to the next level inspire you?

Career

Make your own musical instrument. 

Take advantage of music resources at school by joining band or taking a music class, or start learning on your own with online tutorials.

Take a music class.

Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners

Repair percussion, stringed, reed, or wind instruments. May specialize in one area, such as piano tuning.

Realistic occupations frequently involve work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions. They often deal with plants, animals, and real-world materials like wood, tools, and machinery. Many of the occupations require working outside, and do not involve a lot of paperwork or working closely with others.

Realistic

Artistic occupations frequently involve working with forms, designs and patterns. They often require self-expression and the work can be done without following a clear set of rules.

Artistic

Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.

Investigative

Conventional occupations frequently involve following set procedures and routines. These occupations can include working with data and details more than with ideas. Usually there is a clear line of authority to follow.

Conventional

Second Interest High-Point

Third Interest High-Point

Enterprising occupations frequently involve starting up and carrying out projects. These occupations can involve leading people and making many decisions. Sometimes they require risk taking and often deal with business.

Enterprising

Social occupations frequently involve working with, communicating with, and teaching people. These occupations often involve helping or providing service to others.

Social

First Interest High-Point

Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed

Precision Instrument and Equipment Repairers

Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations

Other Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations

Play instruments to evaluate their sound quality and to locate any defects.

Adjust string tensions to tune instruments, using hand tools and electronic tuning devices.

Disassemble instruments and parts for repair and adjustment.

Inspect instruments to locate defects, and to determine their value or the level of restoration required.

Repair cracks in wood or metal instruments, using pinning wire, lathes, fillers, clamps, or soldering irons.

Reassemble instruments following repair, using hand tools and power tools and glue, hair, yarn, resin, or clamps, and lubricate instruments as necessary.

Compare instrument pitches with tuning tool pitches to tune instruments.

String instruments, and adjust trusses and bridges of instruments to obtain specified string tensions and heights.

Repair or replace musical instrument parts and components, such as strings, bridges, felts, and keys, using hand and power tools.

Polish instruments, using rags and polishing compounds, buffing wheels, or burnishing tools.

Shape old parts and replacement parts to improve tone or intonation, using hand tools, lathes, or soldering irons.

Make wood replacement parts, using woodworking machines and hand tools.

Mix and measure glue that will be used for instrument repair.

Align pads and keys on reed or wind instruments.

Adjust felt hammers on pianos to increase tonal mellowness or brilliance, using sanding paddles, lacquer, or needles.

Solder posts and parts to hold them in their proper places.

Remove dents and burrs from metal instruments, using mallets and burnishing tools.

Wash metal instruments in lacquer-stripping and cyanide solutions to remove lacquer and tarnish.

Test tubes and pickups in electronic amplifier units, and solder parts and connections as necessary.

Refinish instruments to protect and decorate them, using hand tools, buffing tools, and varnish.

Deliver pianos to purchasers or to locations of their use.

Cut out sections around cracks on percussion instruments to prevent cracks from advancing, using shears or grinding wheels.

Refinish and polish piano cabinets or cases to prepare them for sale.

Solder or weld frames of mallet instruments and metal drum parts.

Remove drumheads by removing tension rods with drum keys and cutting tools.

Assemble bars onto percussion instruments.

Remove irregularities from tuning pins, strings, and hammers of pianos, using wood blocks or filing tools.

Repair breaks in percussion instruments, such as drums and cymbals, using drill presses, power saws, glue, clamps, grinding wheels, or other hand tools.

Clean, sand, and paint parts of percussion instruments to maintain their condition.

Strike wood, fiberglass, or metal bars of instruments, and use tuned blocks, stroboscopes, or electronic tuners to evaluate tones made by instruments.

Place rim hoops back onto drum shells to allow new drumheads to dry and become taut.

Assemble and install new pipe organs and pianos in buildings.

Cut new drumheads from animal skins, using scissors, and soak drumheads in water to make them pliable.

Stretch drumheads over rim hoops and tuck them around and under the hoops, using hand tucking tools.

Remove material from bars of percussion instruments to obtain specified tones, using bandsaws, sanding machines, machine grinders, or hand files and scrapers.

File metal reeds until their pitches correspond with standard tuning bar pitches.

Action regulators

Adjustable C clamps

Adjustable fret slotting saws

Agraffe removers

Air dusting guns

Air hoses

Alcohol lamps

Alignment jigs

Allen wrenches

Alligator forceps

Arbors

Arch punches

Automated sprayers

Ball-end hex keys

Band clamps

Barrel reamers

Belt sanders

Bench anvils

Bench blocks

Bench brushes

Bench grinders

Bench lathes

Bench motors

Bench oilers

Bending irons

Blow torches

Blowpipes

Bore cleaning brushes

Bore tools

Bracket hex wrenches

Brass mouthpiece brushes

Bridge pin hole slotting saws

Broaches

Buffing machines

Bunsen burners

Burnishing rings

Bushing inserters

Butane heaters

Butt plate inserters

Calipers

Cam clamps

Capstan regulators

Capstan screw wrenches

Center pin punches

Chain nose pliers

Chamfer tools

Chemical dip tanks

Clarinet pad leveling tools

Coil makers

Cold chisels

Countersinks

Cross lock tweezers

Cross-cut saws

Curved nose forceps

Curved nose pliers

Curved nose scissors

Damper regulators

Damper rod hooks

Damper spoon benders

Deep throat C clamps

Dent hammers

Dent machines

Diagonal cutters

Dial calipers

Die stocks

Digital humidity gauges

Digital tuners

Disc sanders

Dollies

Drill gauges

Drill presses

Duck bill pliers

Edging clamps

Electronic tuners

End cut nippers

Endpin jack wrenches

Feeler gauge holders

Feeler gauges

Felt cutters

Felt cutting knives

File cleaners

Fingerboard band clamps

Fingerboard levelers

Flange bushing reamers

Flange screwdrivers

Flat nose pliers

Fluorescent lamps

Flute body mandrels

Flute gauges

Flute head mandrels

Flute key leveling tools

Flute pad irons

Fret dressing sticks

Fret end dressing files

Fret files

Fret rockers

Fret slot depth gauges

Gauged saws

Glue brushes

Glue guns

More specialized training is available today to learn how to make guitars. Apprentice with a maker to learn the basic skills and hone your style. 

I coach our guitar makers, tell our story, look for responsibly harvested wood while relentlessly seeking peace of mind and quality of life for everyone involved.

Founder

What are my friends and family going to think about my decision to build guitars?

In Oakland, Snap Judgment host Glynn Washington tells a story of fleeing his comfort zone and moving to Japan, where he found an unexpected teacher and an unexpected calling when he accidentally bought dog food for dinner one night. Santa Cruz Guitar founder Richard Hoover shares his philosophy of teaching and service and leads the road-trippers into Santa Cruz's misty, magical redwood forest.
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Richard Hoover

Founder

Videos

Richard Hoover

Milestones

Education

Career

Career Roadmap

My work combines:

My work combines:

Design

Music

Working with Others

Day to Day

Advice for Getting Started

Hurdles

The Noise I Shed

From Myself:

Interviewed By

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