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What is "normal" turnaround time for pickup installation?

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dennis1077:
Recently had my acoustic in a local shop for repair. Nothing serious. It was fretting out. Filed the nut, a few turns of the truss road and the guitar plays great now. The problem? For these minor adjustments, the shop had my guitar for 6 weeks! It seemed quite excessive to me (and set me back $90!).

When it came time to install new Dimarzios in my Strat, I brought the guitar to another local shop. This place does all work on the premises unlike the other place. The manager warned me that it might take a while because their guitar tech was backed up with work. A "long time" was defined as "two weeks" which sounded great compared to my experience with the other shop. It's now been 2 and a half weeks. With the weekend here, I'm sure it will be 3 weeks at least.

What have your experiences with guitar repair been like? Are these long wait times the industry norm or do I live in a town with slow service?

slugworth:
That's ridiculous. If they are backed up they should at least let you "get in line" then bring your guitar in a day before they are ready to work on it. Maybe you could suggest that to them... or learn to do your own work.

dennis1077:
It did seem ridiculous to me. Since it happened at two distinct shops, I started to think it was normal. The work isn't cheap either. Installing three pickups and a setup is setting me back almost $200. It definitely has inspired me to learn how to do my own work. I may pick up a cheap Squire and make it my project guitar.   

greenlion:
Couple of thoughts:

Filing on the nut is not what fixes "fretting out", so the tech isn't telling you something.

Adjusting truss rods and replacing pickups are not difficult tasks. With as many instructional books and Youtube videos as are available today, there is no point in paying someone a lot of money to do something you can learn to do in one evening.

You can replace pickups in about half an hour. You need a 25 or 30 watt soldering iron, solder, a piece of sponge and a screwdriver or 2. The most useful specific tool I've ever owned is a small guitar set-up ruler from Stewmac. I use it to make every measurement for a complete set-up. They also sell them on Ebay for just a few dollars.

RayBarbeeMusic:
Turning the truss rod does cure fretting out assuming the neck was back-bowed and the fretting out was on the lower frets. 

All that said, $90 for what amounts to not even a setup seems high, I wouldn't charge anything close to that for filing slots and adjusting the rod.  Also, 6 weeks is more like refret turnaround. 

Sounds like whoever that was has more business than they need.  If you can go elsewhere and get competent work done, do it.

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