Guitar Repair "We Fret the Details"
As a Cleveland-based luthier doing guitar repair and restoration, I see quite a few instruments requiring crack repair. Instruments are allowed to dry out in the winter months or left in cars during the summer. Car interiors can get to over 115 degrees and down to 14% humidity during the summer months! This Harmony Monterey was an extreme case. Five long cracks that all needed to be knitted back together. Here’s a short video on how the repair was completed.
When I’m not repairing, restoring or setting up guitars for local and not-so-local musicians, you can find me playing one of my guitars. Today I took a musical lunch break to relax with one of my compositions, Moonrise.
This Alvarez Yairi came into the shop for an installation of my Lil’ Jimmy PA pickup system. But first the badly lifting bridge needed to be removed, re-shaped and re-attached.
A 1934 Martin OOO-18 came into my shop for repair and restoration. After several crack repairs and some serious bar fret work, it’s singing again. It doesn’t quite need a neck reset.
This 60 year old DiMauro gypsy jazz guitar came into the shop with a previous headstock repair. It had failed. This challenging repair required lot’s of planning. Here’s the long repair process condensed into a 7 minute video.
As a Cleveland area luthier, it’s a joy to return a repaired or restored instrument to its owner. Sometimes I get lucky and the shop gets filled with music for a bit. That’s exactly what happend when Toni Huff Medley picked up her 1965 Gibson J-45 12-string. This video is less about the repair and more about Toni getting re-acquainted with her old friend, new strings and all.
Brent Kirby’s beloved J-45 was due for some repair TLC… complete refret, fractured bridge repar and a loose fractured back brace in a bad location. Here’s how we got after that broken back brace.
Beard cones and spiders are considered a high end upgrade for most dobros. Here’s how we did the Beard cone and spider upgrade on Josh Stevens‘s dobro. The first part of the video talks about the difference between dobros and resonators.
As a Cleveland area luthier, it’s always a pleasure to hear some of the finest local professionals play their instruments after I’ve done a repair or setup for them. I spend time with every customer when they bring me an instrument to ensure that the repair and setup is matched as much as possible to their playing style. Here’s a short clip of Ryan Manthey playing his repaired and setup 000 “Donna”.
The seasonal changes in the Great Lakes region, including the Cleveland area and northeast Ohio, keep my life as a luthier and guitar repair person busy with frequent adjustments to optimize guitar setup. Here’s a video on how truss rod adjustment can address buzzing rattling strings and stiff action.