Back in 2011 I took a trip to Chicago. While I was there I picked up a 1960s Kalamazoo KG-2a for the bargain price of $90.00. Although it wasn’t a great playing guitar, as you may expect for a $90.00 guitar primarily made out of MDF, it had a certain charm about it. The guitar sounded great but felt pretty rough around the edges. I was very fortunate to already own a USA Stratocaster and a Les Paul Standard by this point.

Over the past 9 years I have taken this guitar to a few guitar “technicians”. One failed to set it up, another shoved his business cards in the neck pocket to act as a shim and another even refused to look at it and showed me the door.

At this point I had a bit of a complex about this guitar. I was worried about being laughed at by another guitar snob and shown the door – leaving thinking I had picked up a piece of junk.

Then I met Andy. He invited me to drop by his house and welcomed me into his workshop. I was a little nervous to show him my exhausted cheap guitar, but he clearly loves what he does and was intrigued by the guitar. I explained to him what the issues were and what I loved about it. I left it with him. I recieved a message only a few days later to say that the guitar was ready to pick up.

I returned to Andy’s work shop to see what he had managed.

I asked him “how much have you had to do?”. “A lot” – he replied. This was clear to see when I picked up my guitar. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that he had worked some kind of magic into the guitar. The action is now fantastic, the neck now parallel to the bridge and the scratchy pots and switch now buttery smooth. Andy had not only replaced the bridge but he modified it to work with this specific guitar. Gone were the business cards acting as a shim and replaced with Andy’s home crafted mahogany shim.

I had fallen out of love with this guitar prior to taking it to Andy but now I have the guitar that I knew this had the potential to be. I haven’t put it down all week. I have already dropped a second guitar round to Andy to work his magic on.

Thank you Andy.