Hi Everyone,

I’d like to give you a glimpse into Guitar Repair World from a personal perspective.

Today I lost one of my favourite customers. He died after a long illness.

He was pedantic to the point of obsessiveness about string-spacing at the nut, to the point that he bought a Stewmac Spacing-gauge so that we could talk on equal terms!

During the fifteen years that I knew him he must have bought at least thirty guitars, and brought them all into me to make new bone nuts according to his own specifications. Sometimes he’d come back the next day and ask me to cut a new nut with 0.020” difference between E strings.

He had a collection of various 000-size guitars (Martin, Larrivee, Mills, Fylde, Eastman etc.) that he was forever getting me to tweak and modify. Eventually I realised that he was hoping that I could somehow morph them all into one single guitar, presumably the guitar of his desires...

He was in my shop at least once a week, always with some almost, but also perhaps not quite, sensible idea about modification or about a possible new guitar that he sought my opinion on.

He was what almost every other business on Planet Earth would describe as a "pain in the proverbial", and would send the staff scattering to the tea room!

It was mainly a dialog thing - he spoke in riddles and aphorisms whilst I tried to converse in elementary physics, so there was always going to be some essential disjoint there. But we somehow, always seemed to reach some kind of understanding.

He was hard work, but good work! At some point in the weird dialog would find common ground! And, importantly, after I did what we agreed on, he would then enjoy playing his guitar.

Very eccentric, individual to the extreme, but he always laughed when I pointed out any possible folly that his ponderings had uncovered.

This is an obituary of sorts.

I miss him already.

Farewell my crazy friend.

EWAN JAMES R.I.P

 

 

 Hi Everyone,

ok, my shop is back "open" again after two weeks "closed" catching up on the backlog of repairs.

I caught up a lot in the last two weeks, but I've still got a way to go before I'm back up-to-date. I'm going to have to either slow down on new bookings, or advise a longer time-frame until completion for the next month or two.

I'm not going to compromise and try to rush through the work- this has never been my way. I will work through the jobs as methodically as I always have.

As always, if you need a repair to be completed by a particular date, for a gig or an exam or similar, then I will jump your guitar up the queue past the ones that I've been given an open time-frame for.

I'll try to call you regarding completed repairs, but I tend to do this in a batch at the end of the week. So if you haven't heard from me, and you're thinking about your guitar, please give me a call or send me an email.

It's an unprecedented time.

I think I've also figured out how to update my website's "Shop" page, thanks to instructions from my dear ex-website lady. So, with luck, in a day or two you  should be able to see my shop's inventory of very nice and interesting guitars for sale!

Keep well out there, be sensible and cautious, and keep on playing!

Andrew

Hi Everyone,

following up on my last post - I'm so busy that in fairness to those folk who already have an instrument booked in for repair, my shop will be closed this week and next so that I can catch up.

It's this COVID thing. When it kicked off in March/April a lot of people brought repairs in to me - a lot of them biggish jobs that the owners had been putting off for years (such as gigging musicians finally getting around to that refret, given that they were no longer gigging). Some folk brought in three or four guitars, saying "won't be needing these for a while".

 

The government at the time was hinting at a six-month lockdown so I took on everything I could, figuring that I'd need the work. But then they instead gave us these semi-lockdown conditions, and indoor activities (such as guitar-playing) have boomed. I'm getting people who haven't played in years getting back into it, and guitars that haven't been out of the attic for decades coming in for refurbishment. The government stimulus money seems to be part of it - I'm sure they're paying for more than a few Martin and Gibson restorations!

I'm always busy, but this thing has sent it ballistic. I know a lot of folk have been adversely affected by COVID, and it certainly makes me feel a bit weird to be busier than ever because of it, but I've seen lots of people re-inventing (or re-discovering) themselves because of the limitations imposed. Lots of people getting back into playing guitar! So in some ways it's been a good thing, albeit in a strange way.

So thanks for your patience. I'll be back to "normal" in a week or two, but will still have to book most repairs in on a longer turn-around time than usual until I get back up to date. 

Andrew