Acoustic Guitar

Ask the Experts

August 30, 2023 Acoustic Guitar magazine Season 2 Episode 10
Acoustic Guitar
Ask the Experts
Show Notes Transcript

Go behind the workbench to explore the unique challenges and joys of guitar repair and restoration!

What do Dana Bourgeois, Mamie Minch, and Martin Keith have in common? They’ve all been the author behind Acoustic Guitar magazine’s question-and-answer column “Ask the Expert,” for one. Now we find out what these guitar experts wish more people would ask about their instruments, and what advice they have for you.

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The Acoustic Guitar Podcast theme music is composed by Adam Perlmutter and performed for this episode by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers.

This episode is hosted by Nick Grizzle, produced by Tanya Gonzalez, and directed and edited by Joey Lusterman. Executive producers are Lyzy Lusterman and Stephanie Campos Dal Broi.

The Acoustic Guitar Podcast is produced by the team at Acoustic Guitar magazine, including:

  • Publisher: Lyzy Lusterman
  • Editorial Director: Adam Perlmutter
  • Managing Editor: Kevin Owens
  • Creative Director: Joey Lusterman
  • Digital Content Director: Stephanie Campos Dal Broi
  • Digital Content Manager: Nick Grizzle
  • Marketing Services Manager: Tanya Gonzalez

Special thanks to our listeners who support the show on Patreon.

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Martin Keith:

Being a repair person, that's really like you're putting yourself almost in a position of subservience to the instrument, and to the work, and to the sort of arc of history of the people that have kept this guitar alive so far. And it's not about you. It's about you in service of the guitar, somehow you know.

Nick Grizzle:

Welcome to the Acoustic Guitar Podcast. I'm your host Nick Grizzle, and for this episode we have a real treat for you. You're about to hear from a panel of true guitar experts: Dana Bourgeois, Mamie Minch and Martin Keith. Each of our panelists has been the author behind Acoustic Guitar magazine's Ask the Expert column. This question- and- answer column covers guitar repair and maintenance, the ins and outs of guitar building, and many other topics related to gear. In this episode, we go behind the workbench, find out what the experts wish more guitar owners would ask, and a whole lot more.

Nick Grizzle:

Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that the Acoustic Guitar Podcast is a listener-funded show. If you're already supporting us on Patreon, thank you. You'll find part two of this episode waiting for you there. To join, visit patreoncom/ acousticguitarplus. Check the show notes for that link plus links to additional resources related to this episode. Here's a quick introduction to each of our experts. Dana Bourgeois is a builder who founded Bourgeois Guitars in 1974. He recently completed his 10,000th guitar, a custom OM style 45. Mamie Minch is is the former head of repair at Retrofret Guitars and is now co-owner of Brooklyn Lutherie. She's also an active blues player. Martin Keith is a builder and repair and restoration expert and a working musician based in Woodstock, New York. As always, thank you for tuning in and I hope you enjoy this episode of the Acoustic Guitar Podcast. To start, I ask the panel what it is about guitar repair that they truly love.

Mamie Minch:

Oh boy, I love my job. It's this really great synthesis of things that you know to be true and things that you're always finding out. So it's not like every job is the same. It's not like every next set presents you with the same set of problems or advantages. I love the way stuff smells in the shop. I get like a weirdly large amount of pleasure out of that. I love my clients. For the most part, you know they've sort of self-selected to where I'm interacting with people who kind of know the right questions to ask. Yeah, I just love guitars. I like taking them apart and putting them back together.

Nick Grizzle:

Cool. Martin, what do you say?

Martin Keith:

I came into repair from the background new guitar building and I worked for Joe Veillette here in Woodstock for 15 years and we did almost no repair in that shop during that time. And it was only when I started working for myself that repair became a more important part of my work life, and it's so different. The things that I like about repair are the things that are different from building guitars in a production setting. Which are that, it's like Mamie was saying, it's problem solving. Everything is a little bit different. So you don't get mired in routine very often because every job is always a little bit new in some way. And I also, you know, building guitars as a solo builder is a very solitary pursuit. Repair kind of keeps you more connected with my scene of local musicians. I get to see really exciting old instruments that are hugely informative to when I want to build new guitars. You know, I mean, you don't get to see like old 20s and 30s Martins, if you're just building new stuff all day, every day. But when you do see those guitars come in, you get to see what makes them really work very well, and you also get to see the modes of failure that they tend to suffer from predictably, and you get a chance to sort of try to design some of that stuff out of your own new instruments. So I feel like they're a perfect complement to each other, in that way. You know, I feel like I'm a much better new guitar maker because my repair repair work. Finally, and this is kind of a little funny, about the world of new guitar making. You know the late Rick Turner, who I have infinite respect for. He used to refer to sort of what he called the cork sniffing world of modern boutique guitars.

Martin Keith:

When you go to a guitar show, if you walk into a handmade guitar show with, like, you know, a D18 or something, it feels a bit like showing up to a classic car show with a Toyota Corolla or something. But the fact is, for 99% of the guitar players in the world, the D18 is the BMW. You know it's the top of the heap, and the stuff that us handmade people are making like may as well not exist. When you're doing repair and working with guitars at every level of price, I feel like it's really important to keep some perspective about when somebody brings in, you know, a D18 or you know a Bozeman J45 or something. This might be a guitar that they've saved up for for five years and it's like, for them, the nicest guitar you can buy. And it's just nice to keep that in perspective coming from the world of fancy- pants guitars.

Nick Grizzle:

So, Dana, how about you? What do you love about repairing guitars?

Dana Bourgeois:

Well, I'll start off by agreeing with all of the above. It's been a long time since I've repaired guitars. I did most of my repair was back in the 80s, which is . . . we're talking 40 years ago now. The guitars that I repair these days are usually my own and friends'. So the thing that I love about, you know, that occasional work that I do is breathing new life into a guitar.

Dana Bourgeois:

Breathing new life into a guitar that might otherwise be on someone's scrap heap. Not necessarily a real scrap heap, but a metaphorical scrap heap. You know, "this is a funky guitar, I'm going to get rid of it," kind of thing. So that's the thing that motivates me these days. Back in the day when I was doing more repair than building, it was a real joy to see a unique instrument come in and get to live with it for a while and understand it a little bit and understand its problems, you know, hopefully find some solutions to whatever its problems are or were, and that really that also informed my building in ways that I didn't necessarily even understand at the time. But sort of, looking back it's like, okay, yeah, we do this this way and it's because I had trouble with this guitar one time and trace it all back to some of that other stuff. But yeah, it was an important part of my career and I wouldn't have foregone it for anything.

Mamie Minch:

I really love the process of getting inside of these old instruments and opening them up and figuring it out and fixing it and gluing it back together, and it's really satisfying when nobody knows you were in there. And I also really like working with clients day to day. You know, I like it. I like having people come into the space and say "this is my guitar, this is what's going on with me, this is what I'm, you know, this is what I would like it to do. I don't know if it's possible. What do you think?" You know I like that process.

Martin Keith:

I just wanted to chime in and say that there are a lot of very nice old guitars in the world that desperately need people with Mamie's level of skill and attention to keep them alive. And you know, I mean I love seeing, like year after year, new builders coming out, new ideas. But you know, I think, like something Mamie just said really jumped out at me, which is and I've heard this from other people Flip Scipio, who we probably all know, said something similar to me like a month ago, where he was saying if, "if you do the job right, no one will know you were ever there, right, you know, and it gets, it gets down to like your relationship to the work. And if you're building a new guitar and you're putting your name on it, and it's like being out in front of the band and being like "hey, look at me, whereas you know being a repair person, that's really like.

Martin Keith:

You know people that do the kind of work where they can just go in and it's like it never happened but the guitar is better again. You're putting yourself almost in a position of subservience to the instrument, and to the work, and to the sort of arc of history of the people that have kept this guitar alive so far. And it's not about you. It's about, like you, in service of the guitar, somehow, you know. That's why I never put labels in my guitars, because I think it's like offensive to write my name, and be like "I was here, you know.

Dana Bourgeois:

So, picking up on what was just said, reminded me of an article about the restoration of a Strad (Stradivari) violin in American Lutherie, probably 25 or 30 years ago. And on the title page was an image - a drawing - of a violin top. And there was also a photo of it and a drawing of it with you know, 15 or 16 patches on the top. Each patch was numbered and there was a little chart on the side showing who had done what in what century, so to speak. So there you go, you know, keeping a fine instrument alive is a long process. Any one of us might have one little episode in that long process.

Nick Grizzle:

So you all have this one thing in common: you've all answered reader questions in our ask the expert column. So over the years I'm sure you've gotten some great ones and probably some not so great ones. What were some of your favorite reader questions? Dana, let's start with you.

Dana Bourgeois:

Early on I would be handed a few questions and say, pick what you would like to address, and there might be a couple good ones. And you know, soon we ran out of what I considered good questions and I always thought, you know, when I wrote a column it was always something that I felt that that I had to say that was unique and worth saying. And questions don't always address that. As a matter of fact, when I sort of quit writing the column it was because I felt like I'd run out of, you know, new stuff to say. Nick Grizzle: W ere there other questions or topics - and anybody can jump in on this - that you wish more people would ask about?

Martin Keith:

I feel like the importance of maintaining and keeping track of humidity, especially in the winter, cannot be like there should be, just like twice a year, an article about how to make sure that your guitar is not gonna split open in January. And I really don't feel like that point can be overdone, because it's a meaningful part of my work- life every winter when people start bringing me guitars with cracks. It's a real drag when that happens, you know, especially if it's an old guitar that hasn't cracked in 60 years and then somebody moves to upstate New York from Somewhere and then all of a sudden . . . Dana: parks it beside their wood stove. Martin: exactly, yeah.

Martin Keith:

Or sets it on their radiant floor heat. You know, which happened to me once and opened up a seam on an on a guitar, just from the floor coming right up into the guitar. Stuff like that I really don't feel like it can be overstressed, because it's the simplest thing.

Mamie Minch:

It's just the the most basic level of attention that you can encourage one to take about their guitar.

Nick Grizzle:

Yeah, you know humidifying is important. Dehumidifying is important. Mamie, what are some of your favorite reader questions that you can recall?

Mamie Minch:

Yeah, I had an experience kind of like Dana's, where I mostly picked the questions where I could say something that I felt like people could use, need to hear. I liked encouraging people to go ahead and, you know, meet a repair person and get something done. People were often more worried to get work done than I knew. "I need a refret, I heard. You know I heard that would really improve my playing experience, but I'm nervous.

Mamie Minch:

It's expensive, I'm afraid I'm gonna get ripped off and is it, you know, is it gonna devalue my guitar?" Just really basic things. And so I would always say no, you're gonna be happier, You're gonna like using it, which makes it more valuable. And you know, and you get a chance to say, it's like tires on a car. You don't want the original tires from your 1957 Bel Air, they wouldn't be drivable. You want new tires. It's OK, it's a good idea. People read a lot of just base level tomfoolery on the internet. So if you can really just encourage them that it's safe and fine, and there are good people working out there, and you can trust them. And, a way that you gauge whether you can trust someone is you ask them basic questions and they don't talk down to you. You know that kind of thing.

Nick Grizzle:

Martin, have you had any favorites?

Martin Keith:

A couple that I've been asked. The one where I really felt like I got to get up on my soapbox was somebody that wrote in and asked about getting into the business of guitar making and guitar repair and asking for advice, and it was a nicely written question. It was somebody that's obviously like being thoughtful about this and trying to come at it from a reasonable direction. And obviously I have a lot to say about that, you know, and so it was fun to be able to give somebody else all the advice that I wish I had been given. You know, when I was starting out, I really had to cut it down. Usually it's supposed to be like 800 to 1,000 words and I can't remember I must have sent Adam almost 2,000 and said "please just edit this because I can't, you know.

Martin Keith:

No, it's funny. It's interesting to me to see the kinds of questions that come in, because, living in this world as long as all of us have, it's easy to forget that some folks that have played for years or decades sometimes have never thought about this or even have never really taken the time to understand the interaction of certain things in a setup, or how a truss rod even works, or what a truss rod even is. I know guys that have played for 20 years that hardly want to change their own strings.

Nick Grizzle:

And can I tell you that the truss rod is, like our most popular article ever. I'm glad.

Martin Keith:

I'm glad, you know. And just to echo what Mamie was saying, too, just now like increasingly, year by year, the internet is just a jungle of conflicting information. And if you didn't know, going in, what you were looking for and what's right and what's wrong, I just can't imagine what it must be like to try and get a straight answer about even a basic question online. For that reason, I've tried to gravitate away from the kind of work that has subjective answers as much as possible. Like you know, if somebody brings me a guitar and the bridge is coming off, like it's very obvious what has to happen, and there doesn't have to be much of a conversation about like well, "how should the bridge go back on? What's the best way to put the bridge back on for me?" I'm just like, okay, I'm gonna take this off, I'm gonna clean it up, I'm gonna glue it back, it's gonna stay put, everything's gonna be fine. You know, and part of that just comes from the fact that I think all of us can feel that you know, like a lot of our daily life is spent dealing with clients, negotiating with clients, making our clients understand the work that has to be done, and that work is not necessarily work that you get paid for. And so you know, I've talked to other repair people who just keep taking stuff off their menu, you know, like stop doing neck resets, stop doing this and that, and so if I am choosy, I choose the work where it's just like it's obvious what has to happen.

Martin Keith:

There doesn't have to be a lot of conversation, and usually that work also kind of clusters around like sort of more important structural stuff. There's either a crack in the guitar, the bridge is coming off, the bridge plate is cracked and needs to be replaced stuff like that or the frets are worn through to the wood and it's just like, okay, we have to change the frets, you know, because it's just like it's cleaner from a client conversation perspective, and usually there's enough of just that stuff. Or broken headstocks, too, is another big one. There's enough of that stuff to keep you busy. And then you don't have to get into the more kind of conversation- driven stuff, like people that are trying to get that last 5% out of their instrument. "And what if we do this, what if we do that?" You know, because that can really just drink up your day, you know.

Nick Grizzle:

Mamie, do you have any common issues that you see over and over and over again?

Mamie Minch:

Sure, there's the big ones. You know, in the wintertime seam separations, cracks, bridge. . . I love a bridge reglue and I love a refret because they go so fast. For the most part, there's not much new that I can see there and they're good money makers. You know all the stuff that we're talking about, that we like to do - a factor that comes in is how does it sort of overlay on your business? What's the time spent and what can you make of it? And, frankly, like, this is still a pretty blue collar job. None of us are making ad executive money. You know, this is still a job where we work for the money that we make.

Mamie Minch:

I love gluing stuff. I really love frets. Don't love re-gluing loose brace ends. Been doing a lot of that recently. I just had a bunch of older Gibsons in the shop that had like 80% of their braces were loose. So I've just coming off a week where I did a bunch of that. I like how timeless the work is. It could be 100 years ago. My shop would look a lot the same, you know.

Nick Grizzle:

That's really interesting, like what would be updated?

Mamie Minch:

The glue pot's the same; the brushes made of hair. I have a vice. It's 100 years old. What else? A lot of my tools are old. My dad was a tool collector and so he'd say, "you need any chisels. I'd say yeah. I'd say okay, cool, I got some Millers Falls from the 30s, what do you need?" You know, pretty basic stuff. As far as what's updated, I have like a digital bending iron, if I ever need to do that. . . I've done some work in Cuba, with these guitar builders in Havana.

Mamie Minch:

They have these homemade versions of all of our high tech, expensive tools. It's just so cool to see their way with, say, a side bender, with a wood bender. We have one, I think it's from LMI, and you punch in the temperature that you want, and then you take the wood, and you do it, and the whole thing's over pretty quick. Not too much time. These guys in Havana have a Kawasaki motorcycle gas tank that's sliced in half, and that they bolted down to a shingle, and they put a hot coal inside. So, that's sort of an aside to talk about how there are lots of ways to skin a cat.

Martin Keith:

You know, if I can just jump in - you're reminding me of something. When I was talking about the article, where they asked me to write about getting into the guitar making business, and this is one thing that really like talking about the problem-solving and repair. One of the things from the article was that I suggested very strongly that people read guitar making books from like the beginning . . . of like Irving Sloane, Bill Cumpiano, Natelson. Those books basically were written before there was this vast infrastructure of companies that sold tools and supplies for guitarm aking and repair. Because, fundamentally, you read the Irving Sloane book, and he's not telling you to go buy the tool from the supply house. It's all about basically cultivating the problem-solving skills to make the tools you need by yourself, because you couldn't go buy them anywhere. I think the sooner somebody can get into that way of thinking, the better off they are.

Martin Keith:

And I feel like that's what's so exciting about repair. It's just constantly problem-solving and there might not be a tool, there might not be a clamp that reaches the thing you need to reach, so you have to figure it out. What's so exciting to me is seeing other brilliant repair people, and just the insanely clever stuff that they come up with. Jacks and, you know, magnets, and everything else. And the chemistry that you've gotten into with doing touch-up and like reactive chemistry and stuff. It's amazing to me, because it's such a sort of multivalent way of thinking. It's not just sticking wood together. You're playing on so many different levels of how it's gonna look now, how it's gonna look in 20 years. Who worked on it last? What did they use? What does that mean for me? All that kind of stuff. It's a deep thing.

Nick Grizzle:

I'm gonna ask you a question, and if the answer is just "maintain your humidity, we can move on, but what is, what's something that you can recommend for every guitar player to do to keep their instruments in good shape?

Dana Bourgeois:

Well, the humidi pak was really the best invention that has come along. And they go in your case, and in your soundhole through these little saddlebag thingies. They either remove moisture in the summertime or they add moisture in the wintertime. And it's so much better than the old you know sponge water, damp it, you know, kind of thing that will leak water into the inside of your guitar if you don't charge it properly, and your guitar will be desiccated, anyhow, if you don't recharge it at the right time, kind of thing. The humidi paks are pretty easy to handle. I've got them in all of my guitars. I use four of them instead of three, I just use an extra one. Mamie: Sorry to interrupt, Dana.

Mamie Minch:

How often do you replace them?

Dana Bourgeois:

Here's the thing: if you maintain the humidity (or if you maintain your case environment), you don't have to replace them that often. Typically someone - it'll be the middle of the winter, right - the top is collapsing, and they throw a humidi pak in. It lasts a couple weeks before it turns to, you know, before it turns solid. Part of the reason for that is, I think, that the case itself - the foam, the fabric in the case - is as much of a humidity sponge as the guitar itself. In fact, more so. So the last time I replaced mine was probably last fall, and they're still good.

Dana Bourgeois:

And another thing that I usually recommend is . . . You open your case, you've got your humidi pak or whatever you're using in your case. You've done everything to protect the environment. You open your case, pull it out to play your guitar, and you leave your case open for two hours. Right while you're playing, while you're playing beside the wood stove or whatever it is. Close your case! Just soon as you take your guitar out, because that's the environment that you want to maintain.

Nick Grizzle:

Martin and Mamie, any other suggestions? You know, other little bits and pieces that players can do to keep their instruments in top shape.

Mamie Minch:

I would say it's good to be curious. So really throw an eyeball at it, check it out, get close, you know, look inside, learn how to. . . So this is funny. Not everybody can do that thing where they close one eye and they sight down the neck like it's a two- by- four. It's like rolling your tongue. Some people just can't do it.

Mamie Minch:

When I you know, do an intake and I do that to someone's guitar and I say, "you know what - I'm using foreshortening to look at how straight your neck is, let me show you how." So and I say you know, it's okay if you can't get it, but just close one eye. It doesn't matter which one. The first one you close, that's the right one." because people are like right handed and I'm like left eyed, so I always do this. So that's just interesting, because when you're going to want to call me, or Martin, or Dana, is when something changes. So how it is, when you like it, I like the way it feels, this feels good, I like this action, this is how this this works for the way I play, and this is about how it looks. And then, if something is different, you can have a look and say, oh, I think it's this thing. I think I've all of a sudden I've gotten some more relief in my neck. Now I kind of know the language to use when I go to my repair person.

Martin Keith:

Absolutely! Like paying attention to when something's not right, but also paying attention to when it is. 'Cause, you know what, like what Mamie's saying, if your guitar just feels amazing, it's like taking . . . it's like if you get a really great haircut, you take a picture. You take a picture of yourself. So the next time you go to the hairstylist you can say, "I want that you know, if your guitar feels amazing, or if any guitar feels just exactly the way you want, try to figure out why, what's the action, where's the relief. This is exactly what I want to feel, because then somebody that's trying to reproduce that has a target that they can understand, even if you don't know how to put it into words. You know, um, and like I just I love what Mamie said about being curious like, try to understand the instrument you're playing.

Martin Keith:

I'm always trying to get my clients to not be scared to adjust their truss rods, provided they have the right tool.

Martin Keith:

U nless it's like some really wonky old guitar with a truss rod that could break if you look at it wrong, and those are out there. But if it's, you know, if it's a relatively modern, well-made guitar, I usually say you'd have to work really hard to break something and you'll get uncomfortable long before that happens. But the difference it can make to just, you know, turn a truss rod, like half a turn or something, will make the difference between the guitar buzzing everywhere and then feeling great again. And it's sometimes hard and, as a business person versus somebody that's been a, you know, a broke musician, I always have to strike this balance. When someone says, "oh, my guitar needs a setup, it's unplayable, and they bring it to me and I realize that all it needs is like 30 seconds of trust rod adjustment. But if I do it, there's no way I can bill them more than 10 bucks because they're going to see it took me 30 seconds, you know.

Dana Bourgeois:

You may only be able to charge 10 bucks for that particular procedure, but I'm sure you gain the respect of your client. Just for me, for honesty, they'll come back.

Martin Keith:

Well, tell you what, you know in cases like that, I don't charge them anything because then they really come back.

Martin Keith:

But it's also sometimes . . . You know the joke, right, where there's the guy, the mechanic guy brings him his car, and it's sputtering and coughing and black smoke is pouring out, and the mechanic takes a look and says I can fix that for 100 bucks.

Martin Keith:

And the guy says okay, and he gives him 100 bucks. And the mechanic takes a hammer and taps on the engine once, and the car is running like a top. And the guy says, "a hundred bucks, you tapped on it once? ! " And the mechanic says look, yeah, it was. It was a dollar for the tap and ninety nine dollars for knowing where and how hard to do it you know. So there's that part too. I've had other, more experienced repair people really try to educate me about the fact that, like, something might only take me half an hour, because I have, however, many tens of thousands of dollars worth of tools and a couple decades behind me of being able to do that in a half an hour. Because I have all this stuff that I paid for out of my own pocket, you know, and so the value of the work also has to be kept into in consideration, not just the time it takes.

Mamie Minch:

This is the difference between knowing how to do the work, and knowing how to learn your way into a business. And it's a challenge - knowing how to do that repair versus knowing how to like spin it so that everyone's happy when you charge the money that you have to charge. But it's not even really necessarily spin, because the fact is there is reality to saying, "yeah, I could only, I can only do this in 20 minutes because I, because I've been doing it for 20 years." or whatever you know.

Mamie Minch:

And that could be as simple as I have a bench fee, that's it. If it comes on my bench, that's my fee. Martin: And then there's the 10 emails prior to the visit. Dana: And the drop-off visit and the pickup visit.

Martin Keith:

Frank Ford did this thing at Gryphon once that he documented in it's unbelievable. For anyone listening, frets. com is like one of the most valuable things on the internet for anyone in our business. God bless Frank. He has saved me so much time so many times. But where he kept track of how much time he spent dealing with clients versus actually doing his work for a week, and I think it was like 50 / 50. So we can only charge so much for the work on the bench. But the rest of it is just you don't get, you don't get paid. Well, and the fact that a lot of dudes and predominantly my repair clients are dudes . . . Think it's the coolest thing ever to be in a guitar making shop, and they want a little tour. You know, they want to look around, "oh cool, what's this? What else do you have?" You know it's just like and there's 20 minutes right there, just like the dude thinking everything around you is cool and they want to know what it is. You know.

Mamie Minch:

That's funny. Most of my clients are women.

Martin Keith:

Yeah, lucky you.

Mamie Minch:

Not luck. Self-selection. You know, I also live in New York City where there's tons and tons of musicians. So imagine if you're like a gay lady in your 40s, who are you gonna come to? My shop! You know, probably anyway. But that is interesting to think about. Like, I really I do have a disproportionately large number of women and queer people and that kind of thing.

Martin Keith:

And I think we need more women and queer people in our field as well. Because all the women makers that I know are at like the top of the top of the field. And they're really good at what they do, and I think we need more of them, you know. Mamie: We just need to be more contemporary, I think. You know what I mean?

Mamie Minch:

If we don't want this field to tank out or to just come from one perspective.

Martin Keith:

That part of our shop shouldn't look like it did a hundred years ago. Mamie: You got it. Yeah, absolutely.

Nick Grizzle:

That's the end of part one. Tune in to part two to hear some hair-raising horror stories about guitar repair and advice that you can put into action right now to keep your guitars in top shape. You'll find the link in the show notes or you can go directly to patreon. com/ acoustic guitar plus. And one more thing, while I have your attention. If you've been listening to this show for a while, you've probably noticed the music played at the top of every episode. It was composed by Acoustic Guitar editorial director, Adam Perlmutter. We love hearing the interpretations by podcast guests and co-hosts, and we'd love to hear yours too. You'll find the music to play at patreon. com/ acoustic guitar plus. You don't have to be a paying member to access it. You'll also see instructions for submitting your recording for a chance to be featured on a future episode. We can't wait to hear what you come up with.

Nick Grizzle:

The Acoustic Guitar Podcast is brought to you by the team at Acoustic Guitar magazine. I'm your host, Nick Grizzle. The Acoustic Guitar Podcast is directed and edited by Joey Lusterman. Tanya Gonzalez is our Producer. Executive producers are Lyzy Lusterman and Stephanie Campos Dal Broi. Our theme song was composed by Perlmutter and and performed for this episode by Jeffrey Pepper Rogers. If you enjoy this podcast and want to support us, visit our patreon page at patreon. com/ acoustic guitar plus (or find the link in the show notes for this episode.) As a supporter, you'll have access to exclusive bonus episodes, along with other special perks. And if you're already a patron, thank you so much for your support!