Welcome Guitar Geeks, to our humble online abode.

Here you will find the widest range of vintage, restored, repaired, reloved and revived stringed instruments. From 1890 parlor guitars to our brand new Custom Wallpaper Tele’s, we got it all. Check out our Guitars, Banjos, Mando’s, Ukuleles, Basses, Solid Body’s, Hollowbody’s and a wide range of Pencil Crayons. Click the about us pages to see a little of our story so far, our friends page to see who we rub elbows with and of course take a look at all our fancy stringed things. Don’t forget to check out our FAQ section for bunch of answers to common repair questions and our products section to see the vast range of different products and materials that go into making and restoring guitars to top notch condition. and if all this isn’t enough for you then

visit the old site here

A beautiful bass modelled on the 70’s P-Basses’ made by Guitar Repairers lurker Will Beckwith. A pur nitrocellulose walnut finish over a beautifully figured ash body. A lovely maple neck with a light flame through it and all high quality chrome hardware, it supports Wilkinson high output ceramic pickups voiced for a vintage tone.

It has a bright chiming top end with a sweet midrange and should appeal to all P-Bass lovers out there

Another addition to our Roadkill series, proffesionally distressed by master-basser William Beckwith. This bass was made in the image of a 62′ style P-Bass and brings all the character and tone of the real deal.

A nice barky midrange with a tight top end thanks to a maple neck with rosewood fingerboard gives this a true worn in vintage sound.

This is a Genuine 1934 Harmony Moonlight parlour guitar completely restored with a maple fretboard and birch back and sides.

This one has a lovely bright top end on it and plays very smoothly. Very comfortable guitar and quite loud for its size. These stenciled guitars go like cookies so be quick

$1450

This little baby came to us in pieces but right away we saw its potential. Completly structurally reinforced, oversprayed in nitrocellulose vintage tint lacquer, compensated and setup this baby is now restored to its former glory!

A sharp V-neck, light resonant construction and brazilian rosewood back and sides reminds us that this is a beautiful guitar from an almost forgotten era. Surprisingly loud, a bright top end with a nice clear tone and not to mention bucket loads of warmth and resonance.

$2900

here it is, our latest prize possession. Forget roadworn, forget relic, Roadkill is where its at. Proffessionally distressed by us here at the guitar repairers this guitar is a killer!

A vintage style neck that nobody has been able to believe, this thing plays like a dream. Sporting standard strat pickups we don’t know what it is but this thing sounds sensational. It has that hard bluesy crunch but also a bitey top end making it one of the most versatile strats we’ve ever put together.

This lovely Kasuga F5 Style flatback mandolin has a lovely sweet tone. Made in the late 70’s, this mandoling barely needed any work from us to bring it up to scratch.

If you’re an F5 lover than this one is worth a look

$1595

This is a custom T-Style guitar we just finished for a customer. He wanted that awesome tele crunch but with much more midrange so we said “sure! leave it with us”. An all maple neck, nice ash body, b5 Bigsby, mini humbucker in the neck and a chrome plated P-90 in the bridge and of course a lovely vintage style nitro cellulose Butterscotch finish is what we came up with. Not bad eh?

Sounding as nice as it looks, as promised it has a nice bitey top end with a good thick midrange crunch.

Another proud creation of us fella’s here at the Guitar Repairers

pictured as well is the tele a la natural. We thought it looked so good natural that we had to post it as well

A  Top  Quality String Perserver

• Unlike most string lubricants ours does not contain silicon or any other harmful lubricants, our product is all natural baby.
• It neutralizes the pH value of sweat (the number one cause of string corrosion) so that you can get up to four times the life out of your strings.
• One bottle should last you close to three years! (a few drops on a flanel cloth after every time you play is the recommended usage).
• and it smells great!

Keeps strings fresh for up to 4 times their normal life. Harmless  ingredients  lubricate, clean,  fortify and protect your strings.

Each batch is bottled with high attention to detail and our product is quality reassured. Tried and tested by all of us here at the Guitar Repairers. So come in and pick yourself up one today!

Restoring vintage and rare instruments is the driving passion behind us here at the Guitar Repairers. Seeing a beautiful old guitar from say the 1890’s restored to a playable condition is what makes all our hard work really pay off.

Why do we do it?

Well, from a luthiery point of view we restore old guitars because:

•    Older timber is much more resonant. Over time wood dries out and the dryer it is, the harder it is, causing it to resonate sound rather than absorb it. (even modern kiln dried timbre is not completely dried out)

•    The less moisture there is in wood the less it will move over time as well. Through seasonal changes new wood still warps and moves slightly. An older guitar has done all moving and warping so we’re left with a very sturdy instrument.
•    The timbers used in older guitars are of very high quality. Brazilian rosewood- the best quality rosewood- for example was once used almost exclusively in old guitars. It is now a protected species and can’t be used anymore. But often when we get an old guitar in we find that it has lovely brazilian rosewood back and sides.
•   They all have stories. Dings, dents, scratches and marks, these are all tell tale signs that a guitar has led an interesting life. Knowing that an old 1900’s parlour guitar from the US of A was once some young musicians bread and butter makes for a much more interesting history than some man named Django CMCing them from a factory in Moosejaw, Canada.

What do we do exactly?

The most common restoration job is as follows:

•    On old pre 1940’s guitars, of which we see many, they have ladder bracing. Ladder bracing was a suitable bracing if you were to string your guitar with gut strings. But with modern day steel strings the ladder bracings cannot support the high tension. So we remove the back, remove the ladder bracings from the soundboard and replace them with the modern x-bracing pattern. We use spruce obtained from century old German pianos so that the braces themselves are quite resonant and won’t move over time either.

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•    The bridgeplates of the old guitars are either worn out or wouldn’t be able to support the ball of the steel strings. So we replace the bridgeplate with a rosewood one.

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•    The next step is to replace any loose kerfing, re-glue any loose endblocks and then re-glue the back.

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•    The bridge also has to be replaced more often than not. So Luke, our talented luthier makes rosewood bridges from scratch, complimenting the style and theme of the guitar.

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•    Once glued on, the bridge then has to be drilled and the saddle slot routed.
•    If the guitar doesn’t have a truss rod or even a “steel reinforced bar”, which they often don’t, we have to remove the dovetailed neck from the body, shim or shave the heel and re-glue it back on. This is called resetting the neck.
•    If the neck doesn’t have to be reset then it usually has to be refretted. We remove the frets, sand a radius into the fretboard, install new frets, level and recrown them and polish them to a shine.
•    The machine heads also will often need replacing. So, to do that requires doweling the old holes and redrilling them. We then usually put on a set of vintage style machine heads that match and emphasize the original style of the guitar.

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•    Then we cut back the guitar and overspray it with vintage tint nitrocellulose lacquer to add a coat of protection and really bring out the grain and tone of the old timber.

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•    By this point we’re almost done. Now come the intricacies of the setup. John makes, from scratch a nut and saddle, (made from brazilian bloodwood with a compensated nut). Then sets the action height, intonation, nut spacing, string tension, saddle width and overall playability to get the very best feel and sound out of the old girl.

Phew, and this is just a basic run down of what needs be done. Sometimes more work has is needed like fixing and cleating splits and cracks, hole repair, rethreading screw holes, making new scratchplates, replacing fretboards etc etc.

The End Result

What we have after these countless hours of sweat blood and tears is a beautifully old instrument that not only feels great to play but has a sound that is loud, resonant, clear and always a surprise at how well it comes out. A restored 19th century parlour guitar is louder and more vibrant than its modern equivalent.

So come on in and have a play yourself and see that there is no substitute for a restored vintage guitar. Unparalleled in its resonance, quality and structure and plays as easily as any modern guitar, our restorations are completely unique in style and sound.

“William, William it was really nothing” these lyrics are my catch cry greeting whenever I see Mr. William Beckwith. For seven years now Will has worked with us as a part time member of our stag. The unseen force that creates some of the finest work we produce. For seven years he has also put up with me singing that Smith’s song to him as well. I doubt whether he’ll ever listen to that song again in his life Time. What can I tell you about Will?… Well, for one. He has an ear which is so tuned in to bass tones it has become an obsession with him. When Will and I listen to music together, it becomes quickly apparent that we are not “really” listening to the music so much as the bass lines. Above you will see some of the basses selected, built, restored and modified by Will. So here is a quick lowdown on Each.

• 90’s Yamaha BB. Will sourced this bass on our behalf. The modifications easily outweigh the selling price of this bass, however as I said earlier, Will is a perfectionist. The mods read like this: Completely refinished, 70’s Dimarzio J bass pick up fitted, Fret dressed and set up $695.00

• ‘51 style P Style bass, built with super resonant re-cycled timbers of unknown origin. Sorry to say she sold immediately.

• 70’s Canora (made by Ibanez) fretless conversion. The neck through body design was irresistible to William, it just had to be fretless! The tone is woody and sustains “bloom” upon the initial touch making it hard to believe that she is a passive bass.

• 60’s Voxtron. Rebuilt, re-fretted, re-wired and anything else that needed to be done. The light weight body and short/medium scale length makes this instrument the perfect thing for those with smaller hand and/or stature. OH! and she sounds big and woody just like you’d expect.

This guitar came to us in an abysmal state. Painted green with a brush and housepaint, directly onto the woodgrain. the customer wanted us to sand it back to get a lovely Mahogany wood grain finish. The odds of getting this were nonexistent. But we didn’t give up there.  Will Beckwith worked his usual finishing magic and tirelessly sprayed the entire body and neck a beautiful off white. Working through such problems as moths and flies being attracted to the drying white paint and getting stuck inbetween coats, much to his disdain. But the end product was totally worth it, we installed a bigsby, cleaned up all the original hardware and a put on a new set of machine heads. It came up looking pretty spiffy indeed.

who the *#^% is Egmond i hear you say. Well they were a Dutch company turned violin manufacturing into guitar making after the war, much in the same way that Hofner, Framus and Hoya did. This guitar was sold to us in the condition you see below. There were no electronics and certainly no existing parts available. The guitar was overall in a sorry state. So this is what we did next. We dissassembled the guitar and started again from scratch, reassembled the old girl with the additon of a new fingerboard, new frets, new machine heads, three P-90’s and all new electronics. Look at her now, she plays and sounds every bit as mean as she looks. If youre a Rocker or a Jazzer, this is one guitar you really need to look at $2295.00 inc case

$2295

We see a lot of 70’s Stratocasters, some good, some not to. This one is definitely a keeper. Resonant, medium weight American Ash body, medium shouldered “u” shaped neck with a nicely aged tobacco burst. 100% original in original case, heye it still has the little packet with the allen keys in it.

$2950

The Firebird V came about as a re-working of an existing Explorer design by car designer Ray Deitrich and first appeared in 1963. The edges were rounded, and the headstock was fitted with “banjo” style machine heads,  however, more important was the construction; the Firebird is the only Gibson made with a laminated “neck thru” body. The tone is woody and dark which is offset by the bright PAF Mini Humbuckers. This little beauty was made in 1998 and is a bargain at 2250.00 with original case.

“Relic”, “Road worn, Aged? What does it all mean?

I think it actually started when Hot Rodders in the America began to make their “Rods” look like they’d been sitting in a shed for 50 years. This resulted in a new kind of hot rod. I give you the “Rust Rod”. Why do these fanatics want to make their cars look like this? I don’t know, however I personally love them to bits.

Right then, I suppose you can think of the trend towards replica “aged” or “worn” classic guitars as being a bit like the above. To achieve this look takes a lot of time, patience and dear I say skill. The result sometimes turns into something more than just a replication. I would describe the end product as a piece of art. Each custom instrument is totally unique and bears the distinctive “Guitar Repairers” touch. The choice of materials, the shaping of the neck, the fret size, the tone and most importantly, the balance. What is that? I hear you say. Balance is how all the components come together to make the whole. For example, we might swap the necks three times before we find the “right” one for a particular guitar. It isn’t a formula or an exact science, it’s more about trial and error and what “feels” right. Our ambition is to produce a guitar that wraps itself around you like a glove and won’t release you.

One thing folks always say about a vintage replicas and that is “Wow! They really look beat” and indeed they do. When I was a younger chap and playing “Rawk!”5 nights a week in sweaty Queensland pubs, our guitars really took a beating.

The sweat, the heat, the booze, the occasional mishap…or not. Really took it’s toll. Many folks who’ve visited us have enquired about my ’92 Strat’. Sixteen years of gigging has taken it’s toll (in a good way). So if you can imagine what 40 years of gigging might do, then you’ll understand that my interpretation of “aged” is reaaallly aged!