The workshop
The Eternal Guitars Workshop is a one-stop shop for all your custom and repair needs. With almost 30 years experience I offer a wide range of professional repair and maintenance services from our busy repair workshop. Everything from a simple restring or basic set-up right up to a full vintage restoration or custom build and handwound pickups. Located on the outskirts of Chichester and easily accessible via the A27 the workshop is open to visitors from Tuesday to Saturday, 9am to 5pm.
Please see below for a current price list and take a look at our Vintage Restoration page for some examples of our work.
Eternal Guitars
Unit 8a, Littlemead Business Centre, Tangmere Road, Chichester, West Sussex, PO20 2EU
If you’d like to contact me regarding repair work or to discuss a custom build then you can email me direct at dave@eternal-guitars.com or call us on: 01243-778866
Repairs Price List 2019
Standard Setup
Every instrument needs a set-up of some sort in its lifetime and a regular set-up, fretwork and preventative maintenance will actually prolong the life of your beloved instrument. Whether your guitar requires straight forward work to improve its ‘out-of-the box’ feel or perhaps more extensive adjustment to suit your specific playing needs, dramatic improvements are possible with a standard set-up.
This service includes:
Truss rod/neck relief adjustment
Frets cleaned and polished – fret ends rounded and smoothed
Fingerboard nut slots cutting and adjustment
Pick-up and pole piece height adjustment
String playing height/action set to suit
Intonation setting. The guitar will be set with your preferred gauge of strings to ensure tuning stability and consistency.
Price for all standard six-string electric and acoustic instruments- £70.00 plus strings
Fret Dress and Set-Up
If your guitar suffers from uneven ‘fret buzz’ or string rattle which compromises your desired action setting (or there is significant wear in the frets) then your guitar requires a fret dress. This is the preferred job for most (even brand new) guitars and allows us to set any action that you can play to. This service includes:
Initial fret levelling to remove wear and set a consistent fret height along the entire playing surface
The frets are then re-profiled, smoothed and polished to a mirror-like sheen
The guitar is then set-up as above.
Price for all standard electric and acoustic instruments- £110.00 plus strings
Re-Frets
There are three main reasons for performing a re-fret:
1) The existing frets are worn to the point where there is no longer enough fret to successfully level and re-profile during a fret dress. The majority of customers enquiring about re-frets are relieved to discover that in 80% of cases a simple fret dress solved their problems…
2) The fingerboard is twisted and or the truss rod can no longer adjust the neck to the correct shape. This often happens if a neck is not adjusted for many years and the wood finds its own either too convex or concave shape. In this instance, the frets are removed and the fingerboard is planed level (also known as ‘shooting’ the board) and new frets are then installed. The process is the same if the fingerboard requires some repair, modification or a new radius.
3) The customer simply requires bigger, taller or wider frets. A huge selection of fret wire is available – please contact us if you have specific requirements.
Priced from: £200.00 plus strings on non-bound fingerboards
From £250.00 on bound fingerboards.
Some refinishing may also be necessary on maple/lacquered fingerboards but we will assess and quote for this before any work is carried out. Typically, there will be an additional £70.00 fee to re-lacquer a fingerboard in a matching tint either before or after fret installation (depending on the make and era of the guitar).
Stainless steel re-frets are becoming more and more popular and we’re happy to also offer this service. However, due to the sometimes complicated nature of using this particular fretwire and the wear it causes our fretting tools, each job is quoted for on an individual basis.
Electronics
Crackling, scratchy volume and tone pots? Intermittent switches and input jacks? Sound familiar? The majority of these woes can be corrected with a standard ‘clean and check’ of the guitars electrics. All components are thoroughly cleaned and re-soldered as necessary. If any parts are faulty and beyond repair they are replaced with solid, high spec. replacement components.
To Clean and Check electrics on solid body guitars (as above) – £40.00 NB: We ONLY use high quality replacement parts from CTS, Switchcraft etc. and if needed these parts are charged in addition to the above labour.
Complete or partial rewiring, pickup installations or work on semi and hollow body guitars quoted on an individual basis.
Replacement Top Nuts and Bridge Saddles
Often over-looked but crucial to your guitars performance, the top nut (and on acoustic instruments the bridge saddle) are essentially the two open string contact points which transfer the tone of your instrument to the soundboard or pickups. We use traditional solid bone for guitar nuts on both electric and acoustic guitars, hand carved and finished to fit each individual instrument.
Prices from:
£40.00 for six-string bone nuts
£30.00 for acoustic/classical bone saddles.
7 or 12-string nuts/saddles quoted for per individual instrument.
General and Specialist Repairs
Broken headstocks and necks, cracked or split bodies on acoustic guitars, raised acoustic bridges, broken saddles and nuts, loose fingerboards and binding, non-working vibrato systems, twisted necks and fingerboards, broken pickups and many more ailments are all daily repairs undertaken here. Before assigning it to the bin, drop us a line - you will amazed at what can be repaired.
Customising
Not everyone is in the position to afford a one-off, custom or top range guitar but often your existing guitar can be up-graded to suit your needs. Dramatic improvements in tone and feel can be achieved – from a straightforward replacement pickup to a complete upgrade to pro spec hardware and components. We supply and fit a huge range of retro-fit parts including machine heads, pickups,
scratchplate’s and bridges.
Solid body guitars can be re-shaped or have comfort contours added. We can even modify the profile of your guitar neck to create a bespoke feel – remember, everyone’s hands are different so why suffer a badly shaped ‘fence-post’ neck when your existing neck can be modified to suit you.
Restoration and Relic Work
Do you have a beaten up workhorse that was once a beauty that you would like returned to its former glory? Accurate, clean restoration work is a specialty and we’ve restored hundreds of damaged or badly modified guitars over the years.
The other side of the restoration coin is our Relic Work. If the instrument is of the correct genre then we will happily quote for a full ‘relic’ job. However, we will ONLY undertake this level of work on the right instruments – a budget Strat copy for example, simply will not justify a complete refinish and all the replacement hardware, parts and labour: it would be more cost effective to buy one of our ‘Eternal Guitars’ or order a custom model which you can have built to your spec and wear level for less outlay. Even higher level production models from some of the bigger manufacturers that claim to have nitrocellulose finishes actually have nitro over polyurethane base coats. We cannot age this finish to an acceptable standard so we won’t even try without a complete refinish including stripping the existing paint work. Similarly, we will probably refuse to refinish an original, vintage piece unless it has already been modified in the past – in this instance we can happily match wear levels for replacement parts and /or finish. Please contact me for an initial quote and take a look at our ‘Vintage Restoration’ page to see some examples of our work.