The World’s Worst Guitar Repairman

I hadn’t been playing all that long, but figured I could cure the issue. I got some replacement tuning pegs. I noticed they were a little snug going in, but I screwed them in place, and they seemed to work. At least for a few days, at which time little hairline cracks began radiating from them, and growing into larger and larger crevasses, until the headstock had multiple large canyons and the guitar became unplayable. The instrument sat around for a couple months, and I decided it was likely financially burdensome to replace or repair the headstock, so I tossed the guitar in a dumpster.

In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t thrown it out. I think it was a Teisco, for one thing, but this was years before I knew who Hound Dog Taylor was. Today, I want a Teisco! At the least, I wish I’d soaked the guitar in lighter fluid, gone to a pond, lit the beast, and set it to sail. It deserved a Viking funeral. After all, it had already traveled around a good portion of the world and likely had adventures before it ended up in a Rhode Island yard sale and in my poor custodianship.

“I wish I’d soaked the guitar in lighter fluid, gone to a pond, lit the beast, and set it to sail. It deserved a Viking funeral.”

I told you this story as evidence that I am the world’s worst guitar repair person. More evidence: Years later, when I was ripping around the country in a minivan with my raucous Mississippi hill country blues inspired outfit Scissormen, I used to carry everything I thought was necessary to make emergency repairs—an array of tools and supplies including wrenches, screwdrivers, wire, a replacement humbucker, duct tape (the miracle worker!), and a soldering iron. Trouble is, every time I had to make a solder because of a bad connection to a pot or some pesky wiring issue in an amp, it would come undone in about a week … tops. Even replacing the selector-switch cap on my Esquire reissue was a disaster. It popped off during a particularly heated set, and I ended up carving a three-inch ditch on the lower part of my right hand with the exposed toggle. With blood smeared across the face of the guitar, at least I felt as cool as Pete Townshend for a few minutes.

I’m penning this confessional because this is our annual DIY cover, spotlighting the story “You Broke It; You Fix It.” After many years and with the insight from DIY articles in guitar magazines (including PG and especially Jeff Bober’s now retired “Ask Amp Man” column), from the luthiers who’ve befriended me, and practice, I can now make some basic fixes to my amps, guitars, and pedals. But in past issues, we’ve run some DIY stories I’d never attempt, like building a Leslie-style cabinet with plywood and Styrofoam, among other materials, and re-creating the Thurston Moore drone guitar. These are great projects, but they are beyond the needs and perhaps the grasp of a lot of us. I think focusing on basic repairs and mods is generally more helpful for most players, and the heavy lifting can be done by skilled repair techs or the more ambitious and mechanically coordinated. (By the way, I’m sure everybody ever featured in “Reader Guitar of the Month” is hands-down better at guitar building/fixing/etc. than me.)

So, when I asked Nashville-based luthier Marshall Dunn to write this issue’s cover story, I requested that he focus on correcting simple guitar injuries that could happen to any instrument on any given night: a bent or loosened tuner, a divot in the body or a fret, a jack slipping into the body. And to showcase the assortment of tools we’d need to make these easy but potentially intimidating fixes ourselves. These small injuries can be caused by something as simple as a guitar falling, or a burst of especially exuberant onstage expression—like the night I ended a set with wailing feedback and slid my Les Paul across the stage toward my Marshall 4x12, where it stuck between the cabinet and the floor, making even more feedback and divoting a fret. (The next day, the late, great luthier Jim Mouradian gave me the scolding I deserved when I sheepishly took the guitar to his shop.) Be sure to check out Marshall’s video online, too, where you can see him in action as he talks you through the fixes.

So, consider this a “gateway” repair story, for those intimidated by the work or, in my case, past failures. Start here and maybe the next step will be that Thurston Moore drone guitar.