Guitar doctor has cure for bad sound By: George Lenker glenker@repub.com
Source:The Republican (Springfield, MA) Monday, August 18, 2003 The shelves at Lucchesi Vintage Guitars in Holyoke might resemble a musical morgue, but the shop is actually more like a Lourdes Sanctuary for lame instruments. Broken bodies and wrecked necks may fill the room, but they are only waiting for Frank Lucchesi's healing touch. Lucchesi, however, sees his trade evolving into more than simply repairing cracks and sanding scratches. To him, it's also about breathing life into history and renewing memories. "One reason I like working on older instruments is the history that's involved," the Holyoke native said. "I see an old guitar and wonder how many honky-tonks it's been in and how many people played it." Lucchesi gathered his respect for instruments' history through years of both repairing them for others and also making his own guitars. Lucchesi started repairing guitars in 1972 when he could not afford to hire someone to repair his own. After graduating from the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Phoenix in 1976, Lucchesi launched Sound Guitar Co. on Suffolk Street in Holyoke, where he sold new and used guitars and also designed and built custom guitars and basses. In 1984, he renamed his business Lucchesi Vintage Instruments, and moved to Holyoke's Highlands section. Although using the word "vintage" in the name of the business may imply that Lucchesi and his associate Shane Loiselle work only on higher-end instruments, nothing could be further from the truth. To Lucchesi, any older instrument can be considered vintage in some way. "I'll work on anything with strings. To us, there are no bad guitars," he said. "Each guitar has its own sound and that sound may be useful. It's not bad guitar if you can incorporate its sound somewhere." While Lucchesi will work on just about any instrument, he will also advise a client if the repair job will cost more than the instrument is worth. "If they need a $300 fret job on a $150 guitar, I'll tell them they should just buy another guitar," he said. "But some people have sentimental reasons for keeping an instrument that you or I may not think is any good, and I respect that. Some people may look at certain guitars and call them junk. But I'm glad there are customers who love their instruments that much." With more than three decades experience, Lucchesi has some funny stories about his line of work. In the guitar business, Lucchesi has a reputation for doing top-notch work for a fair price, so he gets numerous referrals from other guitar shops. But some people blanche at paying for his expertise. One story he likes to tell involves a customer who wanted a certain difficult repair done on his vintage guitar. Lucchesi assessed the parts and labor then quoted an $850 estimate for the job. The customer didn't want to pay that much so he brought the guitar to another local shop. Because the repair required a lot of expertise, the second shop called Lucchesi to have him do the job. They in turn quoted Lucchesi's $850 price to the customer, who - even though he didn't realize they were contracting the job out to Lucchesi - again turned it down. The exact same sequence happened at two more shops as the client searched for a better deal: The shops knew only Lucchesi could do the work and called him - quoting the same price to the bewildered customer. Finally the client brought the guitar back to Lucchesi, who told him that the price quoted at each place came from him. "I'm sure he was wondering how all these shops kept quoting the exact same price, as if it was in a book somewhere," Lucchesi said with a smile. "A lot of shops just handle basic set-ups of guitars, so they all were calling me do this job." This reputation keeps Lucchesi fairly busy. Although he maintains that his shop doesn't have a high profile, he gets jobs from all over the country. His phone also rings off the hook on any given day with new jobs or people seeking advice. Because Lucchesi is generous with his time and loves to talk guitars, he has to watch himself with how much free advice he gives, lest he put himself out of business. "People call with a few questions, and I don't mind answering a few, but a few turns into 15 or 20," he said. "But I had one guy who would call just to test my knowledge. So I would give him wrong answers and tell him to go look them up just to take up some of his time." It also can get exciting. Lucchesi's innate love for old guitars keeps him focused on every job. But the jobs that really jazz Lucchesi are ones on rare instruments. One recent job involved a Gibson Harp-Guitar from 1918. This large and ornate instrument features a normal guitar body and neck augmented by 10 sympathetic strings that resonate between the body and an extended head stock that flares off the top of the guitar. The guitar is worth about $5,000 but had suffered several cracks in the top of body (where the sound hole and strings are). These problems put the instrument in danger of being pulled apart by the tension of the strings. This type of injury is one of the hardest to fix, Lucchesi said, because the top of the body has the most stress on it and also is the most visible. "You have to fix the cracks and make them go away so people can't see them," he said. With the steady hands of a surgeon, Lucchesi then used several meticulous processes to fill and smooth over the vertical cracks, as well as repair several other broken or worn components of the Harp-Guitar. But it all started with learning the history of the guitar so he could do the best job possible. "We pride ourselves on knowing the history of a guitar so we know how it's supposed to be put back together," he said. "It's not rocket science but it's work that requires patience. You have to go a little at a time to make sure you're getting it right." Lucchesi emphasizes the history aspect because he has first-hand knowledge of seeing repair jobs by others that destroyed the guitar's integrity. Some of the hardest jobs we get are re-doing bad repairs by others," he said. Lucchesi also stressed knowing guitar history to Loiselle when he first started working for him. Eager to learn his craft quickly, Loiselle asked Lucchesi which guitar repair books he should buy. "I said 'none.' Buy guitar history books instead." Lucchesi said. "I had the fortunate - or unfortunate, depending on how you look at it - experience of having no books when I was learning. I learned by doing it and studying the history." | 
