Repair And Restoration
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How did you get into instrument work?
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How did you get into instrument work?
Hey everybody!
I was really lucky to attend one of Ians classes at Dan’s in 2019, right before COVID! The class was amazing, as I expected it to be. One of the unexpected joys of the event was hanging with everyone and hearing about their background and route into instrument work.
It was really fascinating to hear about how folks got introduced to the work, how they went about learning it etc. etc. Now that this group has grown so much I would love to hear others backgrounds.
Lay it on me!
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8 Replies
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<div>For me everything started when I paid a famous local tech at the town I was studying to do a setup to my brand new Strat. He proceeded to file the nut slots so low that the open strings buzzed and although the guitar had a 9.5″ radius, the strings had a 12″ radius (as I later discovered). When I told him about the open string buzz and the notes chocking out on bends (because of the wrong radius) he told me I’m just strumming hard (I have a jazz background).</div>
That’s when I said f** it, I’ll do it myself. Youtube, StewMac, a bunch of forums and photos I found online guided me through replacing the nut back then with a Tusq (I definitely didn’t have the skill set back then to make my own nut from blank). I also bought a string action gauge, an understring radius gauge and a few feelers and I did a pretty good setup on my Strat. After that I was hooked. I still don’t do much of finish work and woodworking stuff due to limited time and tools, but I take on setups, anything electronics related and refrets.
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That is awesome Alexis! Is guitar work a full time thing for you or blended with other work?
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Nah, I have a “regular” day job into robotics and my side business is building pedals. Setups and guitar work is a hobby for me and I only take a few jobs for close friends of mine that just trust me. There are plenty of great techs here in Greece trying to make a living out of it and I honestly don’t want to do it unless I do it legally with invoices and whatnot. I just love what the loothgroup is about and I want to get better at what I’m doing, even if I’m not doing it full time.
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The year was 1993. No real internet to speak of so no one really knew what things were things and what things were not things. One day I walked into what I thought was a guitar store and it was actually small guitar repair shop. The owner was fixing a guitar. I asked if guitar repair was a thing and he indicated that it was in fact a thing and that he would show me how to do the thing if I worked for him for free for two years. I did that.
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Was your skill level already high by the time you hit gruhns or were you still tackle boxing it?
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I started in 93 and hit Gruhn’s in 06. I was just barely ready for it.
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Like a lot of us, I started working on my own guitars, until I ran out of stuff to work on and needed money for more stuff! 🙂
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Similar to Alexis – I was playing in a couple of bands and studio projects in the mid-90s and every time some “luthier” touched my guitars they would play worse and worse. I found Dan’s book and decided I would buy a tool every time I needed some work done and figure out how to do it myself, so greatful that he broke the paradigm of “arcane knowledge” passed down in whispers in the night.
Once I was comfortable keeping my growing fleet of instruments running my friends who were sick of going to “experts” let me have a whack at theirs. Been a sometime-thing for 10 years, supporting friends and their bandmates primarily throught word of mouth.
When my wife and I bought a new house 3 years ago I was able to build a dedicated shop. Now I’m getting ready to hang a shingle on the outside for real. It will only be part time, as my day job pays too well to abandon, but doing this has made my life better in many ways.
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