Behind every great guitarist is probably a great tech.
The life of a tech is where art, craft, science, and sorcery collide. My story isn’t so different from thousands of others in the performing arts world. It began at an extremely young age, in what they now call middle school. As much as I wanted to play music, draw, paint, and photograph, I was also drawn to the technical side of the creative pursuits.
Luckily, schools at the time offered classes in photography and art right along with printing, drafting, woodworking, stage crew, and auto repair. I never thought of them as disparate—even then I knew they were all interconnected. There wasn’t a master plan—there was only a path.
Along the way, I met others who shared a passion for music and mechanics. One of the first was a ham-radio fanatic who also loved music. He was referred by a classmate for electronic repair on my guitar amp, and we soon found we had a lot of common interests. Vince was a high school student by day and a radio-phone operator by night. These were the days before cell phones, a time when car phones were huge radio transceivers stowed in the trunks of wealthy people’s cars. To place a call, the driver had to radio in to an operator who would connect them to a landline. Vince would make the connection and then go back to waiting for the next call. We got to talking about repairing guitar amps, or even the possibility of building one from scratch, and started work on an amplifier within days. While Vince worked on the amp chassis, I constructed a plywood speaker cabinet and stuffed it with 15" Utah speakers. After a few weeks and a dozen trips to the electronics store, we had a functioning, terrible-sounding amplifier. Vince was convinced it had something to do with the plate voltages. “Needs more pressure,” was his cryptic explanation. After that, we lost interest, moved on, and lost touch. But I’d learned enough to be dangerous to myself.
That was the beginning of my long-standing respect for technicians of all sorts. There was Gary, who owned a fledgling amplifier company and rental shop on the West Side of Chicago. His amps were robust and had plenty of clean headroom, which really wasn’t what guitarists were looking for by the end of the 1960s. Still, my long drives to his shop were rewarded with free-flowing lectures about amp design. It was a prototype for a DIY music gear business, which was inspiring.
“Because pros rotate through different tours, their experience and expertise come from an infinitely deeper and wider range of real-world experience than working in a music store or watching YouTube videos.”
Similarly, Bruce Gordon had a repair shop shoehorned into a tiny space off Dempster Street in Evanston, just north of Chicago. Gordon started his repair business while playing in local bands, including one that had a string of regional and national hits. I used to walk past his open door on my way to work in the morning and would often stop to talk to him. He might have been the first pro musician that I had ever met who was also a technician. Once again, I found a person who was willing to share information and tips readily. I worked at a later incarnation of his expanded business where I learned from more seasoned techs who were always comparing notes and helping each other.
Over the decades, I learned to lean on the expertise of pro guitar technicians. As the touring business grew, being a tech became a serious profession, and knowing the techs on the road was a constant source of great information and camaraderie. Because pros rotate through different tours, their experience and expertise come from an infinitely deeper and wider range of real-world experience than working in a music store or watching YouTube videos. When I deal with pro musicians as a guitar builder, it’s often through an introduction made by a tech as much as the other way around. If I find a guitarist to be lacking in the ability to verbalize their ideas, often a great tech is there to sort things out.
So here’s to all those who make the big wheels roll. They learn from each other and pass their lessons along to others freely with no strings attached. Like Jackson Browne sang: “They’re the first to arrive, and the last to leave.” They don’t get the spotlight, but the artists know that without them, there is no show. Without them, I wouldn’t be here today. Thank you to every one of you.
Here’s a DIY project for tone chasers: how to turn a $199 single-coil Squier Bullet Strat into a beefy humbucker-voiced 6-string, with coil-splitting in the neck pickup.
If you try this project yourself, you’ll need three Seymour Duncan JB Jr. pickups, a Pure Tone Multi-Contact Output Jack, one .022MFD orange drop capacitor, two 500k CTS potentiometers, a push/pull pot DPDT on/on switch assembly, 60/40 rosin core solder, 22 AWG non-shielded PVC-insulated circuit wire, heat shrink tubing, small zip ties, and a set of your favorite guitar strings. For tools, Dave uses a Hakko Soldering Station, small clippers, small round-nosed pliers, a Phillips screwdriver, a 1/2" nut driver, a strip of painters or masking tape, and a small jar with a lid. A Stratocaster circuit schematic will also come in handy for reference. You’ll also need to brush up on your soldering skills. (Consult “Soldering 101: A Step-by-Step Guide” at premierguitar.com to get on the good foot.)
Step one will be removing and stripping the pickguard, and then cutting wires within the circuitry so the new components can be put into place. Since this is an S-style guitar, much of the work will be done on that pickguard, which helps simplify the process. Installing the pickups—in this case, Seymour Duncan JB Jr.’s—is simple. You might need to do some routing on the pickguard to accommodate the new pots. Duncan’s JB Jr.’s come with about 10 inches of four-conductor circuit wire already attached. Strip off about 3" of that wire’s outer casing. Then you’ll see red, white, black, green, and ground wires. Peel about 1/2" of casing from the tips of each of those smaller, color-coded wires. For the neck pickup, the green and bare wire are tied together and attached to ground—soldered to the top of the middle (tone) pot. Dave carefully explains each step. For a written version with photos, see “DIY: Hot-Rodding a Squier Bullet HT” in the May 2023 issue or at premierguitar.com. There's also a companion video, specifically focused on replacing the output jack. Got a question for Dave? Go to scalemodelguitars.com.
Covid caused a huge uptick in guitar sales and repair requests. If you're considering trying to fix it yourself rather than wait in line, here's a simple rule of thumb to keep in mind.
The COVID pandemic clobbered many of our favorite pastimes but proved to be a boon for the sales of some things, especially musical instruments. But while guitars, unlike bicycles (another pandemic fave), can be shipped without any significant disassembly, that doesn't necessarily mean it's smooth sailing once the box arrives and you pull a new, or at least new-to-you, instrument out of its case.
You did your homework, you found the right guitar at the right price, and it arrived with no visible damage. Whew! And yet after a quick tuning, something obviously isn't right.... Now what? If you're lucky, a local guitar repair technician can look at the instrument and help you determine if there's something faulty or if the problem is simply a matter of adjusting it to suit your playing style. But while finding the right guitar was a lot harder than it would've been in 2019, finding a repair tech with enough time to help you may be even more difficult. What happened?
Welcome to another unexpected wrinkle of now: A lot of us have more money to buy stuff, but if you buy something that needs fixing and you can't fix it yourself, those newly memorized mantras about patience may be put to the test. The ratio of stuff needing fixing to people who can fix things is seriously out-of-whack.
One of the reasons is that the recent dramatic uptick in people playing guitars has far outstripped any increase in the number of people being trained to work on them. This mismatch is made worse by the fact that even learning how to diagnose guitar repair issues takes considerably longer than the time it took all those COVID-trapped souls to find their dream rig online and have it delivered. Others didn't have to buy anything but a set of strings because they pulled a long-neglected guitar out of the closet, or, worse yet, the attic or garage, only to discover that their 6-string vehicle for trips down memory lane was no longer drivable.
Guitar repair techs are often one part mechanic and two parts psychologist: They're good at what they do because they understand both you and your instruments.
And while I hate to make dire predictions, a quick survey of lutherie and guitar repair schools doesn't indicate that "Guitar Repair Tech" is high on anybody's YOLO list of alternative occupations. That means the long delays of getting your guitar repaired is probably not going to improve anytime soon, and the same holds true for amplifiers. (I'm using the term "repair tech" instead of "luthier" because many people assume luthiers only build guitars.)
Those readers familiar with the online world of guitar repair videos are probably asking, "What about YouTube?" While it's true that some excellent diagnosis and instruction is available online, the DIY movement isn't for everyone and not all the guitars needing help fit that category. Bringing your brother's Seagull acoustic back from purgatory is one thing, but dad's Martin D-28? The former seems like a fitting guitar for testing YouTube-instructed setup skills, but with the D-28 it's probably best to find a repair tech with experience working on Martin guitars.
A simple safety test to keep you from getting in over your head and doing real damage is this: If you're altering a replaceable part on a guitar, such as the bridge saddle on an acoustic, or if you're making an adjustment that can be reversed, such as to the truss rod, go for it. However, if you're disturbing glue joints or a major part of the guitar, slow down. Taking the saddle out of the bridge on an acoustic guitar and altering or replacing it is one thing, but trying to reglue a loose or cracked bridge can result in real damage. (My rule of thumb is that those who have paid someone else to restring their guitar are probably not candidates for learning even the most basic setup that requires only screwdrivers and Allen wrenches, such as on a Strat.)
Yet a long-term solution to delays for instrument repair is going to require a more basic adjustment, and that's in how people who fix things are regarded by society at large. While luthiers who build guitars get lots of respect, those who repair instruments do not, even though guitar repair techs often have a tougher job.
This is because while the guitars they work on may be very similar, the people playing them often vary widely. Yngwie Malmsteen and Ry Cooder approach the Fender Stratocaster with very different goals (and very different strings), and acoustic guitarists have an equally far-ranging approach to playing instruments that are remarkably similar despite different woods and body shapes. Favorite guitar repair techs are often one part mechanic and two parts psychologist: They're good at what they do because they understand both you and your instruments. Only when repair techs get more respect, and better pay, will there be enough of them to meet demand.
