[charles Tauber]

Originally Posted by beninma

But the main point is if you're afraid to try you can't learn, and if you're in that boat you might want to be careful telling everyone else it's too hard to learn.

That's a good point.

Also so many of us here have had bad experiences with techs. They don't warranty their work.

Interesting. Except in extenuating circumstances, why would anyone have someone perform work that the person performing the work won't guarantee? Whether it is guitar repair, repairing the roof on your house or changing the oil in your car, why would you choose such a person to perform the work?

Part of that is on you/us for commissioning someone to do work that they won't stand behind. Part of that is on them for poor business practice. Reality is that there are people who offer good business practice and those that don't. You can chose to whom you send the work, one of the criteria of which should be the quality of their quarantee.

99% of them are not factory authorized to work on the guitar.

I've been making and repairing guitars for 40 years. I am, purposely, not "factory authorized" by any manufacturer. It is a decision I made to not seek "certification" or "authorization" by any individual manufacturer. Having that certification doesn't guarantee anything in particular in terms of the quality of the work: some certified people do great work, some don't.

2 out of the 3 setups I paid for they never even bothered to touch the nut....Mostly cause most of us can't tell them in plain language what they want and they're afraid they're going to change the setup and then we don't like it.

Well, that is a shared blame. Many guitar players know nothing about their instruments or what is involved in repairing them. They don't have to, but it is wise to be an educated consumer - and general information on guitar setup is readily available. A guitar setup involves, at minimum, inspecting/adjusting the neck relief, inspecting/adjusting the saddle and its height and inspecting and adjusting string height at the nut. It is easy to ask any perspective repair person what work they include in a "setup". If it doesn't include at least those things, go somewhere else. Now that we all know that, we should have eliminated that problem.

Any good repair person, ideally, will determine from discussion and/or watching someone play what setup parameters suit that player. It can be helpful if the player already knows what values he or she likes. This can be bringing in an instrument who's setup the player likes or can be providing specific measurements for specific parameters. Any reputable repair person will adjust the instrument after the player has tried it and found additional adjustment is needed.

Ideally, one should be an educated consumer. That doesn't necessarily mean that one learns to do the work oneself because one doesn't know how to tell who is capable of performing the work and who is not.