Luthier Anonymus 1
I started my hobby of playing the guitar on an instrument which I bought for ten guilders (about 4 Euros) from one of the boy friends of my oldest sister. I have to admit that even ten guilders was too well payed. The guitar was a typical Modelo Banana Box which you can buy as a souvenir on every Spanish street corner. An example of Luthier Unknown, the label inside was completely missing. Considering the finish, I guess that this guy glued together at least ten guitars a day from prefab parts.
I decided to customize this axe. I bought fresh tuning machines, new strings, a new head- and saddle nut and two yards of fret wire. Without any knowledge of guitar building I removed the old parts, painted the body and fretboard, refitted the new parts and finally hammered the frets into the fretboard with some effort. After a lot of sanding and filing the guitar was more or less ready to play for the first steps towards musicianship. For quite a lot less than a guitar from the shop, ehh.. not considering the price of the new parts!
After a while some doubts started to rise... The guitar did not sound that well and if you were bad lucky, you teared your hands on the not perfectly smoothed frets. At that time it became clear to me that it required quite some skill to repair a guitar, let alone build one. So I tied a rope to the head, nailed it up to the wall and started an odyssey for a better guitar.