Fretwork

Built on a bench in Obs

Guitars, pickups and valve amps, made and mended by two people

See what's on the wall

Work slowly and it lasts

A guitar takes about eleven weeks here and most of that is waiting. Tops sit in the rack until the wood has stopped moving, the finish goes on thin and then gets left alone between coats, and nothing is hurried to make a delivery date that was never realistic in the first place. That works out to roughly thirty instruments a year between the two of us. There is usually a list, sometimes four or five months of one, and we would rather tell you that on the phone than take a deposit and go quiet on you.

What happens here

Tops and bracing
Tops and bracing
Frets and setups
Frets and setups
Valve amps
Valve amps
Pickup winding
Pickup winding

Nothing leaves until it plays

Every instrument gets a full setup on the bench before it goes out — nut, saddle, relief, intonation. Bring it back after the first month and we do the lot again for free, once the wood has settled.

The amp is half the sound

Most of what comes through the door is an amp somebody has been told is finished. Nine times out of ten it is filter caps, a tired rectifier and forty years of dry solder joints, and it is worth fixing. We rebuild the power supply properly, replace what has drifted out of spec and leave the rest of it alone. Valves get matched and biased on the bench before it goes home, not guessed at. If the cabinet has a blown speaker and a baffle that rattles we sort that out too, because a good circuit through a bad box still sounds like a bad box.

On the wall this week

Come and play one

Lower Main Road, Observatory. Tuesday to Saturday, nine to five, and most Sundays if the roller door is up. Plug into whatever is on the wall — that is what it is there for.