I'm playing guitar again, but have a few busted guitars. This is my story of getting them repaired.

This will kind of loop back to how I work. It'll get there.

I play guitar. I have for like 30 years, off and on. I used to be able to rip. I could play Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan. I'd make up stuff on the fly that sounded a lot like those two. I can figure songs out by ear. I have 4 guitars currently, 3 of them are broken in some way. I've started to look into getting them fixed.

Luckily it's like riding a bike, I can still do all of those things, but it will take some practice. I have blisters on my fingers :)

I'll comment on figuring out songs by ear. I don't have perfect pitch. But like 80% of songs don't stray from the key too much, so if you can figure out the root, you can listen for changes, and try to keep up. Just like in Back to the Future. But seriously, people are like “wow you just learned that” (never happens), and it's just not that difficult. Anyway.

There are two shops nearby. One is close, but is a huge pain with parking etc, and is a mom & pop shop. We'll call it M&P Music (not far from the actual name). One is a bit further, not a mega corp, but they have like 6 stores, 4 in the area and two in Florida. George's Music.

So I go into the M&P Music store with my busted Gretsch Corvette. A gorgeous red guitar, with the Bigsby tremolo, otherwise in perfect shape but it's missing a piece. And this is where my complete lack of technical guitar knowledge will show. It's the piece where the guitar plugs into the amp.

So I take that guitar in and the man at the desk looks at it, points out that it's missing that piece, and I say that's exactly why I'm here. He goes on to say it's a beautiful classic guitar, and that he'd buy it from me if I were selling (I'm not). But he said they don't do much work on Gretsch's and that if I got the piece from Gretsch, they would do the work to put it back on. This interaction didn't give me confidence or willingness to come back to the store. Immediately. But then…

So this weekend I looked to get one of my other guitars fixed. A Fender Stratocaster, SRV Signature version. Gold hardware, gorgeous, Stratocaster! I am between strings and decided to just take it in with no strings on! My daughter was with me and I bribed her into going with a promise of a Shamrock Shake (fulfilled). I talk to the guy at the desk, and described how I'm just not getting any sound out of it. And they joked “I think because you have no strings!” Haha I saw that coming from a mile away :P But it was appreciated. They had a hunch, I brought it to the now two guys who were gushing over this beautiful instrument. I said I was looking to purchase an amp and I can check them out while they checked out my guitar. They immediately unscrewed it and found that the wires had just disconnected, and they can get their solder guy to fix it on Tuesday and it'll be $30. I brought strings with me and they offer stringing, so I paid another $20 for them to restring it (they're going to have to anyway). $50 and I'll have a Strat again! I bought the amp and my daughter wanted drumsticks so we got those as well.

The guitar that I used to test the amp that I ended up buying was a $900 Telecaster. I don't have a Telecaster but I immediately freakin loved it. I did NOT purchase it. I promised myself that I'd just fix the guitars that I have. Ooooh but so tempting. I'm drooling just thinking about it.

My three broken beauties

Epiphone Casino, Gretsch Corvette, and the SRV Signature Fender Stratocaster.

So how does this relate to my work? I like to think that I'm the George's Music in the analogy. You come to me with a problem, and I'm going to immediately dig in, and figure out a solution. I might not be able to immediately fix it, and may need a solder guy on Tuesday, but I'll try to make you feel like you're leaving this thing you highly value, and for which you paid a lot of money, in the hands of a professional.

Thanks George's Music. I will bring them the Corvette next, it should be a simple repair, even though I might not have the piece anymore :)  The Corvette is also a unique sound. The Casino I can still play since it's a hollow body. But the wiring is also a bit messed up. I can get sound, but it's bad. That'll be fixed soon too! Then I'll have all the guitars again :)

A quick story on the Casino. So it's been largely ignored since my main guitar for the past 17 years or so has been my Gretsch G5120. It's black, another gorgeous instrument. I may just be biased, may just buy gorgeous guitars, or I may think all guitars are gorgeous, not entirely sure. But I took it out of the basement after like … I honestly don't remember the last time I played it. I'd be embarrassed to say the actual number of years I think it's been… But it was still in tune!! I joked that the guitar that I played yesterday was not in tune today. :)  I bought it when I was 16 or 17, $400 with the hard shell case included. I could probably get like $1700 at least for it, but that baby will be with me forever.

So that's all I wanted to say for now. I have a lot of stuff to write now that I'm getting back into guitar after a bit of a hiatus. Learning songs that I haven't yet learned to play. By ear of course. And then confirming via the internet in some cases, or I can't figure out one chord… It's fun, I love it :)