Reviewer: Robert H.

Mayes is a wonderful teacher. He is knowledgeable, he is humble, he takes the time to review difficult portions in detail and has the common sense and courtesy to speed through repetitive or simple tasks to get to the meat of the knowledge and techniques. I have bought or rented every DVD he's put out with the exception of the new inlay course and I liked them all very much. If you rent them, pull out a pen & paper because you will want to make notes on his techniques, tips, vendors & jigs. He uses modest equipment, good technique & horse-sense … and he makes the lessons fun. One couldn't ask for more in a luthiery instruction video. If he made a book to accompany these DVD's I'd order it the day it became published.

Reviewer: George D.

This is a very informative video for the novice builder and has neat tricks for the intermediate builder. A private instructor video loaded with information. This entire series is worth viewing.

Reviewer: George B.

Production wise its a dissapointment. It seems anyone can mount a camera and make a luthier video. Content wise it is a good example on how to use an LMI made side bending jig employing two silicon blankets. He misses alot of detail such as the side bending mold, no mention that it has to be designed to compensate for the blanket thickness. His video is ok but take it as it is a guy shown doing guitar building not a complete how to lesson.

Reviewer: bruce m.

Great stuff. Have been wanting a side bending machine, and this video shows how to use it in great detail.

Reviewer: Ron D.

Very informative. However, to follow this guy's lead, one would have to go out and spend over $300 on heating blankets.

Reviewer: Charles C H.

Excellent! You will enjoy John Mayes as he takes you step by step in bending the sides with a Fox style bending machine. He has built many acoustic and electric guitars and shows every part of this technique in detail. You can also talk with him on The Official Luthier's Forum for detailed answers to your questions.

Chuck Hutchison Herrin, IL

Reviewer: Robert J.

Information was good but production quality was marginal. There was some kind of physical problem with the playback during the last ten minutes. You can replay it a couple of times and get the information, but it is aggravating.

Reviewer: Larry H.

I have the whole dvd set .....all I can say it is incredible! The best and most complete luthiery turtorial available. I should know I have bought many!!!! Thank you John for taking my skills to the next level....especially in voicing the tops and backs.

Reviewer: Stuart G.

The video on RIMS is great on information BUT as a video professional, I know that there is NO excuse for poor sound quality and especially NO excuse for one of the scenes showing the use of a jig to cut the neck block tendon, where the camera lens is so open that the image is TOTALLY overexposed to a point of not being able to see anything. It takes seconds to check this. And even if it were done poorly originally, he should have over the years re-done that scene and re-authored the disc. Not Professional but all in all the disc is still informative enough to recommend.

One last thing. On the side bending disc, he talks about a file enclosed on the disc. The disc that I received from Smartflix did NOT have this file in it. Perhaps he either didn't include it after all or the copy that Smartflix created, didn't include this material. Too bad