Services - Beck's Guitar Specialty Services

Expert Instrument Repair & Setups

Expert Instrument Repair

Welcome to BECKS GUITAR SPECIALTY SERVICES, (Beck's guitars for short). Since the early 1960's, I have had a burning desire to play guitar. In the 70's, a great playing guitar with easy-non-buzzing action and perfect intonation was hard to find. In fact, at 20 years of age, I owned a Martin D-21, a ‘57 maple board Strat, a ‘59 GIBSON dot neck, and several other guitars. The Martin, Strat and the Gibson all had different and great tones and features, but the one thing in common they all had was: a hard to play action and bad intonation (but they looked and sounded kool). As I hunted the local area, I could find no one who really could answer my basic questions, or successfully adjust my guitars. (I even found one "big name" repair gie … he really screwed-up my dot neck.)

What was intonation? Why did my guitar fret out in the upper register? Why could I get them in tune in one chord, but when I played another chord, the tuning was way off? It was from this frustration, I began a lifelong and never ending series of experiments. I purchased a strobe scope and discovered that many bridges were in the wrong place. I discovered flat frets reduced the sustain and diminished the tone-intonation. I began to invent specialty tools to reshape the frets. I pioneered many specialty fixtures and techniques, designed from scratch, all in my pursuit of having the best playing/tuning guitars.

Whether your instrument needs world class refretting, or basic maintenance and a set-up, Beck’s Guitars can handle all aspects of your guitar repair needs … WE GUARANTEE IT!!

Set-ups
Expert Refretting
Fret Leveling and Crowning
Bone/Ivory/Graphite/Brass nut fabrication and installation
Custom Neck re-shaping
Broken Headstocks restoration, (one of our specialties)
Acoustic brace repairs, top flattening, bridgeplate repairs
Binding repairs
Crack Cleating
Acoustic Bridge fabrication and re-gluing

These are just some of the thousand of repairs we regularly perform!!!!

PROFESSIONAL GUITAR SET-UPS: THE SECRET OF GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR GUITAR

Have you had your guitar set-up by Beck? Now that you have purchased that beautiful PRS, that killer Martin, that wild Parker, your precious Fender ... Gibson ... Taylor ... what next? Are you getting all you deserve out of your guitar's playability and tone? We at Beck's Guitars know better!! Every day we receive requests like "I bought a new guitar. Can you make it play better?". The answer is YES! All new guitars and bass's come from the factory poorly adjusted.

We have over 26 years of experience in the fine adjusting and calibrating of quality guitars for all guitar players. Just take a look at our client list.

I can’t overemphasize the importance of having a fine guitar (be it a beginners guitar, a terrible guitar, or quality guitar) set-up, and adjusted … especially if it’s new! Glen Campbell said“ Rich sets up and adjusts every single one of my guitars before I go out on stage, and I use about 6 guitars during my show.”

Ray Herndon (Lead guitarist with Lyle Lovett, McBride & the Ride) - “Rich has set-up and dialed in all my guitars. He’s refretted my stage Strat three times in 10 years, got my Gibson 175 cooking along, and I couldn’t use my acoustic Gibson without his gentle touch.”

Jerry Cantrell (Alice in Chains) - “Beck did so much work on my main stage guitar. He recessed the kahler, installed a Floyd Rose Nut. He finally made it playable, and I’ve used it 90% of the time over the past 10 years”.

I have set-up, done repairs and maintance to guitars for nearly 30 years. I’ve been honored to have refretted Jesse Johnson’s Gibson (guitarist with PRINCE), done tons of repairs for George Lynch, Michael Schanker, Herb Ellis, Gardner Cole (songwriter with Madona), Glen Campbell, Jessy Valenzuela, Scotty Johnson, Robin Wilson, and every great player has one thing in common: Every single one of them had a different idea of what good action was. Glen likes his action super low, you can run the truss-rod almost dead straight. Jesse Johnson, he plays like king-Kong. Don’t get me wrong, he’s great, but if I handed him Glen’s strat, he would throw it back at me. Jesse likes his action real, real, well … HIGH! Some gies play extra hard, some play extra easy, and some fall somewhere in the middle. That’s why its always important to have your personal guitar set-up to suit your personal style.