Gruhn Guitars
A visit with Nashville's John Hedgecoth, head repairman at Gruhn Guitars
It's not by accident that George Gruhn has become the best known vintage fretted instrument dealer. It's a result of decades of writing magazine articles and books, publishing and circulating stock lists of vintage instruments, maintaining a retail storefront in Nashville, and establishing one of the more important web sites in the field.
I was in Nashville for the A. S. I. A. board meeting which adjourned for a quick visit to Gruhn Guitars.
Here's George (right) talking to Ren Ferguson of Gibson's Montana division:
The first floor showrooms are packed with swell instruments
We almost lost Tom Ribbecke to the display of exotic vintage archtop guitars on the second floor:
Being luthiers, we went quickly to the fourth floor way up there:
John Hedgecoth heads up a team of four full time repair technicians:
He's getting into this D-28 for some crack repair.
The large, well-appointed repair shop is a busy place, but John let us just poke around all we wanted.
That's A. S. I. A. director, Rick Davis in the middle of the picture below:
And on the left it's Jay Hostetler of Stewart-MacDonald checking the inventory of Stew-Mac products.
To get glue right up to that loose brace way in the back of the D-28, John tells us he'll be using his special remote control glue spatula:
It's a short palette knife blade soldered to a stiff wire with a rubber tube running along it to conduct the glue to just the right place.
At the other end, John has a syringe to force feed the glue:
As we departed, John "modeled" the rig for my camera: