It all started in the mid-’70s, I was 13 and wanted to be a rockstar. We borrowed an acoustic guitar from a family friend and I was hooked. Soon my dad bought my first electric guitar from a garage sale. It was a Telstar and even came with a coily-cord. I saved up my paper route money and bought a Silvertone head and a Fender 2×12 speaker cabinet. I struggled getting my guitar to play well and I had heard that the frets could be filled to help lower the action. What does a 14 year old with a passion for tinkering do? Well, I went out and got a file and filed those frets flat and I mean flat. I did not know that I needed to also recrown them and soon realized that was now a new problem to solve. I soon went to get a new guitar with my dad and we bought a Fender Mustang in bright yellow with an orange competition stripe. 

As the ever tinker-er, I soon wanted to get rid of the “un-cool” competition stripe. There was a kid at school I took a few lessons from and come to find out, his dad used to refinish pianos. I got some tips from him and set out to “fix” my guitar. I stripped the finish then filled some of the cavities with epoxy and wood. I dove in head first with a couple of coats of white paint followed by the clear coats. I was not satisfied with the end result, there was too much orange peel but it still looked good for the first time ever trying this. 

I had heard of a local guitar repair man named John Brown and he owned a shop called The Village Luthier here in Phoenix. I stopped by when I could and showed him what I had done. He was impressed with the work as a first timer. I spent the next couple years learning from him. He showed me how to spray real lacquer and make other repairs. He was an authorized warranty shop for Fender, Gibson, Martin, and others. I learned a lot and eventually made a replacement body for my Mustang that better fit my preferences. 

Life had other plans and as I was preparing to get married in 1981, I had to make the hard decision to move on to more lucrative means of work. I had built a small clientele and did some side work out of my home for a few more years under the name “Fret Not Fret Shop”. I put away my tools and put the repair work on hold for a couple decades. In 2004, I was asked by a friend to paint a guitar. My oldest son, Cameron, took an interest in what I was doing and had recently picked up playing guitar. He and I worked together on that project and the next year we put together his first guitar. It was a thinline T-style guitar. Over the next 15 years, we both had various contact points with guitar making. In 2019, we decided to have a go of it and started our own business doing guitar building part time and engineering services the other part of the time.

It took 2 years to get the production process worked out between other work on the engineering part of our business. I am very proud of the final products we are offering here and hope the passion for guitar we have is reflected in every part of our business.

Thanks for reading and checking out what we can offer to fill the space in your musical journey.
Darrel Miller