Martin Guitar Repair Summit

On August 1st and 2nd 2011, CF Martin & Co. hosted their first Martin Guitar Repair Summit at the factory in Nazareth, PA. The event included tours of the factory and museum but more importantly the opportunity to hang around the repair department for 2 days and watch the Martin repair staff at work.  There were 57 Martin warranty techs in attendance from all over the US and two or three from Canada.  We were broken up into small groups to rotate through various repair stations and points of interest.  Most useful was the opportunity to ask questions of the repair staff relating to common repairs and also to see some of the tools that Martin has developed in-house to assist in certain repairs.  Equally valuable was the after-hours shop talk that took place over meals and at the hotel lounge and pub.  Most of the repair techs at the event had decades of experience, so the collective pool of knowledge and experience at this event was impressive and very useful. 

Dale Trach doing abalone inlay
work for a D-45.  Dale is one of
three generations of the Trach family
that have worked or are working at
CF Martin & Co.		 Lon Werner discusses neck angle as Steve Sauve and another Summit attendee look on Repair Dept. employee Dave Strunk involved in setting the neck angle on a 30s 000-18.

Milt Hess and Rich Starkey examine a bridge plate removal tool used at the Martin repair dept. Dale Eckert installs ribbon lining into the rim of a D-18 Authentic guitar Neck fitting
Fred Castner cleaning out fret slots
on the neck of a J-40		 Tracey checks the neck alignment on a guitar undergoing reset Cleaning the old glue from the
dovetail of a neck that has just
been removed for reset
Warranty agents David Nichols
(Custom Pearl Inlay) and John Hall
(Blues Creek Guitars) examine a
display at the museum		 The entire group of warranty agents in attendance at the Summit

 
© Steven Kovacik all rights reserved