Backstage Guitars

New brass nut for a Geddy Lee Fender a couple weeks ago after discovering the super weird stock nut floating on the binding. Been staying busy at the shop! Hope everyone is feeling good/excited for the holidays. Probably taking some time off after the current workload gets wrapped up, so send me an email at [email protected] if you want to get on the schedule.

This old Yamaha had a saddle slot that was freehanded at some point, which left the saddle fit pretty sloppy. There were some pretty bad intonation issues as a result of that poor fit, a high nut, and moderately worn frets. I threw together a sled for the Dremel w/router base and cut a wider, straight slot in the rosewood and made a new custom bone saddle to fit. I was able to compensate to the Nashville tuning this guitar lives in and do some fret crowning and nut adjusting/reshaping to bring it all together. New life! Go book Michael Hickman for a recording session. Thanks again, Mike!

Sometimes you IG followers will ask me if a guitar I posted is for sale, and they never are, because all I do is repair work now. But THIS one...THIS one is for sale. This is the last new guitar that we have left from the shop era. It just never sold. And we liked looking at it. But it's time for it to find a new home. These are originally $1,499 new, but this has been hanging around the shop for years. $899 or a good offer takes it. Get it out of my sight, please! Comes with case. Fresh setup and D'Addario Coated Nickel 11s, duh. Listed on Reverb.

A quick 1-10 refret for a longtime customer’s workhorse Martin the other day.

This one was a long time comin’. I’ve had this guitar hanging on my shop wall for years. It came to me in really bad shape, and most people would have tossed it right into the trash. But I keep s**t. A Hoarder in training. There’s hidden potential in trash. And every once in a while, it pays off.

It had massive cracks in the front and back of the body. The neck was barely hanging on, despite having 4 giant construction screws forced into it, splitting and stripping the wood. The tuners were missing the ferrules and rusty. It was filthy, but filthy from being played. Someone did once love it and play the s**t out of it.

I hung it up hoping to one day fix it up and keep or sell it. I just felt this one deserved to be a guitar.

Flash forward years later. I no longer own a guitar store, but a guitar repair shop. Most of my hopeful projects were given away or trashed when we closed the shop.

When my friend said “Hey buddy, I need a new guitar. I’m writing a record,” I told him I didn’t have anything but a few potential fixer uppers. The rest is history.

Sometimes s**t just works out. That guitar hung in the front window of the shop for years. People asked me about it at least once a week (seems like everyone loves a Jazzmaster.) “I’m gonna fix it up and sell it...when I get the time,” I’d say. Glad I waited for the right buyer.

Wild EVH tribute customer build. Did some fine-tuning for him. RIP EVH.

This Squier bridge was tired of being propped up by a chopstick. New saddles and a thorough setup.

Another re-fret in the books. The original frets on this Seagull Artist weren’t terribly worn, but they were very low and thin. The customer wanted to ditch the thin frets that were on the guitar and go with a ‘jumbo’ feel. I used #0149 Wide/Medium. I’ve been using Stewmac wire for all of my re-frets lately and I’m super pleased with the quality (It should come as no surprise. Everything they make is high-quality.) I made a new bone nut for it as well. I’ll post more pics of the job from start to finish in my story.

Finished up a project for today. Full build with customer-supplied parts. The wiring kit is from . Lots of tweaking and fitting for this one, but it turned out super nice! Rumor is he’s gonna give this one away, so give him a follow and keep an eye out for that. If you have an idea for a project like this, let me know!

Found a brand new Sterling Axis hiding on a shelf. It was left over from the store and hadn’t sold before we had to close. I set it up for a friend from who was looking for an electric. I do miss selling people guitars!