Lexington, KY - Having done repair and restoration work on guitars and other stringed instruments (like an English citern from the 1780s) for over 40 years, Bob Willcutt of Willcutt Guitars has learned a few tricks when it comes to fixing up your grandfather's old six-string, or even mending a shoddy mail-order piece.
"I've gotten pretty good at straightening these things out. I've got my own procedures I've developed over the years," he said. "I can save a lot of these guitars, for a reasonable price."
Willcutt says that aside from fine tuning jobs on guitars' setups -
adjusting the truss rods and bridge and pickup heights, buffing the frets -
the culprit he diagnoses in a lot of problems that come in is humidity. Guitars, even electric ones, are made out of wood, and are therefore "hygroscopic" (susceptible to change due to water absorption). Willcutt says guitars want to see 45 percent humidity, and most factories (and his stores) maintain this level, but the average home in Kentucky during the summer, for example, will have a humidity of 10 - 15 percent.
"That's the crux of most problems, on acoustic guitars especially. Somebody has let them dry out," he said.
Along with guitars and basses, Willcutt sees mandolins, banjos and even dulcimers arrive in need of some attention. "The thing with dulcimers," he said, "a lot of them are homemade, so they're just not made right to begin with."
As one of the largest guitar dealers in the world (through the store's web presence), instrument repair and restoration, time consuming as it may be, isn't the bread and butter for Willcutt's business. However, his affinity for fixing a busted rig or restoring the luster to an older, high-quality guitar (or a lousy one, with sentimental value), keeps Willcutt in the workshop of his Rosemont Garden location.
"I'm not doing it as a living, I'm doing it because I want to do it," he said.