Be Always Careful with Guiter Repairs!

I know a lot of you out there fancy yourself as “tinkerers”, and many of you may actually be quite good at handling repair work to your own instruments, but I’ve always been more of the kind who loves to find a good repair person. Number one, if the repairer doesn’t do the right job, or there are problems with the work they did, they have to own up to it, and make sure it’s done right until you are fully satisfied. Then of course, if they are actually a selected and accredited repair person for a given guitar company, it’s even better to bring them the guitar, rather than trying to take matters into your own hands.

I have had some truly “nightmare” scenarios with repair people in my time, and you must beware of these folks who love to take your money, but who can totally botch a repair job on a nice guitar! It’s happened often enough to me to make me be very careful whenever I am “trying out” a new repair shop for guitar-related problems. Due to this, I often like to start with bringing them some relatively un-complicated guitar repair problems such as fret jobs and wiring problems, but even these have sometimes turned into nightmares. Today for example, I brought of all things, 3 Lap Steels and one semi-hollow guitar for repairs, but unfortunately the store’s repair guy was not there. We had a good communication though, and they made sure I wrote down the repairs I felt were needed, with a separate sheet for each instrument, and said that he’d be calling me with any questions regarding the guitars and their repairs before tearing into them!

And “tear” into them so like to do! My most recent “nightmare” was with such a simple thing as a fret “grind and polish” totally gone haywire! This particular repairman was nice enough, but broke so many things on my guitar just as a result of doing a fret job; he had it for another month after, and still could correct his mistakes! I final had to have the guitar literally “rescued” by the actual craftsman who made the guitar so it could finally be set straight again! It turned out that much as I had suspected, the repair guy wanted to see what made my guitar “tick”, so he unnecessarily tore it apart, but couldn’t properly put it back together again! He even broke 2 pickups by turning them too tightly as he lowered them!! Very costly errors, to be sure!

So, I certainly would advise you to go to a reputable repairman for your guitar work, but be sure to check them out first, and most of all, start slowly if you can with simpler repairs, until you actually build up the proper trust in them. Have fun, but beware of the guitar repairman!