Jon Bentley knows he’s a dying breed — or at least one that won’t get rich anytime soon.
His Everett business, Bentley’s String Instruments, specializes in repairing instruments. Increasingly, he’s finding it a hard way to make a living.
Few schools in the area offer string music programs any longer, he said. However, the biggest blow in the last few years is competition from online retailers and big-box stores offering lesser quality instruments at cut rate prices. Bentley called in an epidemic.
“It’s usually dad,” he sighed. “Dad is going to get on the Internet and save this family some money.”
For a few hundred dollars or less, big-box stores offer instruments made in places where labor is cheap, usually China. Wal-Mart sells a First Act Concert Series violin for $149 on its Web site. Kmart sells a Heimer violin for $79.99 and Costco offers a Suzuki Master Class violin for $159.99. Bentley said a decent starter violin for a middle school student costs around $500.
Not all instruments from China are bad; indeed, some are, in his words, smoking. Those are high-end instruments with the price tag to match.
Many people can’t tell the difference. That is, until they try to play them. Poorly made instruments not only sound bad, they’re difficult to play, Bentley said.
He ticked off some of the deficiencies he has seen in these “orange, horribly sounding instruments made from green wood”: The strings are too light a gauge, the wood isn’t seasoned, the tops are steamed pressed laminates instead of carved, solid wood. These instruments may have decals instead of inlay, and the sound posts, what he called “the soul of the violin,” are generically placed rather than hand adjusted.
“They sound like a Cheerios box with rubber bands,” Bentley said. “It’s awful.”
Some of these instruments go straight to the trash when they break. Some end up at his repair shop. Then he has to share the bad news: The modifications needed to make those instruments play can cost hundreds and the sound quality still doesn’t equal a better-made instrument, he said.
Bentley’s business isn’t the only music shop in the area experiencing the pinch. Business is down considerably at Cascade Music in Marysville, said president Larry Hansen. He said schools have tightened budgets but the main problem is “cheap imports” that aren’t instrument quality.
“They’re not even instruments; they’re instrument-shaped objects,” he said. “They don’t play.”
Even better-quality instruments need to be adjusted when they come into his store, he said. Instruments don’t come ready to play straight from the manufacturer. He said many of these instruments don’t have repair parts available and “there’s nothing left to do but throw them away” when they break.
Bentley fears instruments are becoming disposable and, like a blacksmith of old, his skills as a luthier are becoming a throwback to another time. Some people will always want and appreciate finely made instruments, he said. Middle-age music lovers with some income to spare are the bulk of his clients. High school students make up a quarter of his business, often because they or their parents wish to purchase higher quality instruments.
At Sultan High School the marching band is well-supported, said music teacher Jill Sumpter, but instrument repair is expensive. She saves by fixing as much as she can herself.
“I don’t blame the music stores,” she said. “The people who repair instruments have to make a living, but it’s such a specialized thing.”
Bentley is working every angle he can to bring in revenue since opening in 1999. He has a contract to service C.F. Martin instruments. He rents studio space and recently started an instrument rental program. He sells instruments and accessories and teaches a class in mandolin building. It’s not enough.
In the last year he has laid off two employees, and he is now the lone repairman and salesman.
What he doesn’t want to become is a music store, he said. He wants people to think of him as a journeyman repairman, someone who creates with his hands. But since there isn’t enough business fixing instruments, he needs sales and rentals.
He sells virtually every instrument in the string family, with the exception of the piano. Selection is limited. His guitar room, for instance, would “fill 20 feet” at a music store, he said. He carries 20 select guitars, including a $15,000 1943 Martin. When he pulls it off the wall and begins to play “Classical Gas,” the bass sound is mature and rich, the middle range sweet, the treble clear. He also offers beginners instruments, such as a guitar in the $300 range with good sound quality and construction.
His business is in a 1920s house on Broadway. The kitchen is now his repair shop. Tools hang from pegs on the walls, violins wait on shelves for repair. For three years he has painstakingly rebuilt a 1775 Italian made violin he hopes to sell one day. Glues and screws and cans of varnish wait on the work desk. The bedrooms house instruments for sale and a practice studio.
A man wanders in off the street. He’s not ready to buy today but he’d like to sit and play that guitar in the front room. Cheerfully, Bentley tells him to go ahead. The man takes the Martin off the wall, sits in a waiting chair and strums a few chords. This isn’t unusual.
Bentley said more people want to sell their instruments to him or trade than buy new ones, and that bothers him.
Repairing and maintaining a fine instrument is complex work, a skill Bentley has developed after working in this business more than 20 years. He can adjust the action on a guitar so it’s comfortable to play. He can do intricate neck work or install and shape the frets on a guitar so they won’t rattle, buzz, vibrate or cut out notes. He can fix instruments that crack and break with time and accident. Through the years he has repaired guitars chucked across the room in drunken rage and dropped into the Bering Sea.
He stays because he loves it, because music and the instruments that make it have been part of him since the beginning. His mother was an accomplished pianist and his father was accomplished at fine violin repair. Bentley, 51, played in the U.S. Army marching band and sang in the soldier’s chorus. He plays the French horn, the violin, the mandolin, the piano, the recorder, the guitar. He builds instruments. This is his life.
And he’ll hang on to the business as long as he can.
“I’ll adapt and survive.”
Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com.
Bentley’s String Instruments
3701 Broadway,
Everett
425-303-9248
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