How Chris Polin Switched Careers to Build Guitars by Hand
We spoke to Chris Polin, a Manchester-based, self-taught luthier (that’s someone who makes guitars and other stringed instruments). He told us about swapping tech for tools, learning by doing, and how a QEST grant helped him take his craft to the next level.
Can you introduce yourself and tell us about some of the key moments in your journey?
I’m Chris Polin, I build electric and acoustic guitars and basses (as ‘Polin Guitars‘).
I started playing guitar when I was 11 or 12, and by 16 I knew that I wanted to build guitars for a living. I did my week of work experience with Alistair Hay, master luthier and owner of Emerald Guitars. It was the most inspirational experience of my formative years. But, as the familiar story goes, I came back to school, put that ‘pipe dream’ to bed, and carried on the prescribed path of academia. It wasn’t until I’d spent 8 years studying physics at university, and a further 5 years in a software engineering career did I really stop to reassess, and so I pulled out my old luthiery books (‘Make Your Own Electric Guitar’, by Melvyn Hiscock, the only one you’ll need) and ordered some woodworking tools and a lump of walnut from ebay. Over the course of a few months in the evenings and weekends, I rediscovered the drive that I had already formed so clearly at 16.
The bulk of my learning since that point has been from books, YouTube, and a lot of mistakes.
I still have my software engineering 9-5 job, which has given the guitar business room and resources to grow organically without having to compromise in order to keep the lights on. Time is now the bottleneck, and so I am planning to move towards part-time hours this year. My route into luthiery has not really followed the traditional path of apprenticeships and industry experience. However, while I suspect my career would have progressed much more quickly if it had, the guitars that I build today are a product of my experiences and things I’ve figured out along the way.
What advice would you give a young person considering a similar path?
* Make time for your craft, time is the most vital resource you can give to it. Life will always find a way to fill it otherwise.
* Don’t be intimidated by people you look up to in your chosen field – be inspired by them, and learn from them. Reach out and speak with them – they’re humans too and more often than not they’ll be delighted to be held so highly in your estimation for you to ask for advice. See also your peers – you have a lot more to gain from them as friends and community members than as competition.
* If you can, spend the money on the right tool for the job. By working around the wrong equipment, you’ll spend twice as long producing something half as good.
* Straddle the line confidently between being open to learning new approaches and techniques from other people, and believing in your own process. It’s important to take in as much information as you can (especially if you have the opportunity to learn from someone with more experience than you), but it’s equally important to filter out the noise. Arrogance is to think you always know better, but confidence is to believe that sometimes you do.
* Look for opportunities and capitalise on them – they will rarely land in your lap.
* You also have to learn to do the boring business bits. Unfortunately the world is unlikely to stumble across your work, you have to do the shows and expos, the website, marketing, social media content creation, networking, cold approaches to prospective clients, administration etc. Don’t be intimidated by it, it’s not rocket science and can be picked up as you go. Also, use a decent bookkeeping app when you get to the point where you’re buying materials and selling items, it makes the tax bit much easier and you don’t have to go searching for receipts from 8 months ago.
* Everyone’s path is different. As with the earlier point – learn how other people have done it, figure out what works for you, keep your plans and approaches flexible in light of new information, and put the time and effort into making it work for you.
