Thursday, October 8, 2009

Inside Taylor Guitar Repair

Here is where we did most of our training, inside the Taylor Repair Department. Here are some pics of the guitars from production waiting in pieces for us to assemble and set up.



Inside R Taylor

The R Taylor shop




Monday, September 28, 2009

Taylor Trip 2009

This September I went down to Taylor where I was able to spend a whole week in El Cajon, California participating in a Repair Summit. Taylor had invited down their warranty service technicians who cover Canada, as well as two other guitar techs from Canada who will do in-house warranty work at the music stores they are employed with. A guitar tech from Sweetwater Sound in Ft. Wayne, Indiana also joined us. Myself out West, and Al Clegg out East have been doing Taylor warranty work for over a decade now. I started doing warranty work for Taylor when I worked for Front Porch Music.

It's always nice to be able to visit and get updated in person on the most recent repair and service techniques that a guitar manufacturer is doing. Last time I was down, Taylor had not yet introduced their T5, T3, or any electric guitar, so there was some catching up to do.

Day one started with an extensive factory tour including many behind-the-scenes areas that are not part of the regular tour. We also toured Taylor's new Repair Department area which is now accepting all brands of guitars for repairs. We toured the R Taylor shop and saw some very nice guitars. R Taylor operates in a small, two room shop. One side is for building and the other for final set up. If you haven't experienced an R Taylor yet, you should really play one. http://www.rtaylorguitars.com/

Day two started in the Taylor Repair Department with Rob Magargal, Taylor's Production and Repair Training Manager. He brought in loads of acoustic bodies and necks fresh from production. After a training walk-through with Rob, we installed new ES pickup systems into the guitars, installed the necks with the correct shims, and set them up to Taylor factory specs with new strings. Over the next couple of days we moved from the acoustics to the electrics, installing pickups, hardware, necks and doing final set up.

The last two days of the week consisted of training on repairing and finishing with the UV finish that Taylor uses. We were able to participate in repairing damaged wood and finish on a demo body using the Taylor Repair Shop's tools, spray booths, and UV equipment. We also finished bare wood panels starting with filling the pores, shooting finish, UV curing and final buffing. For those of you who have had any experience in finish work, it's usually a long and tedious job. Not with the UV cured finish. It was almost magical how quickly and well it worked, and it looked good.

What a great trip! I was infused with so much great training, tips and information. Thanks to everyone at Taylor Guitars for inviting me down and being such a great group of folks.

Here are some pics of my trip for you to enjoy.


-James