Guitar Maintenance

Taught by David Whiteman and David Crozier.

If you’ve ever wondered how to successfully adjust the action on your guitar, set your pickups to an optimum height or correctly clean and maintain your frets and fingerboard, then these courses are for you. Often seemingly tiny adjustments can make a huge difference to your playing and this course will help you get the very best out of your instruments.

The main skills covered are applicable to all types of guitar; electric, acoustic and classical. Even mandolin and ukulele players will find them useful! However, so that we can look in detail at specific areas we offer both an electric or acoustic/classical guitar option.

We’ll cover:

  • Polish frets and dress fret ends

  • Clean and feed fingerboard

  • Check nut and adjust slots

  • Check integrity of machine-heads and adjust drag

  • Check and clean saddle

  • Check integrity of strap buttons

  • Check integrity of all screw fixings

  • Correctly restring and tune

  • Adjust action using the saddle or saddles

  • Adjust neck relief with the truss rod

  • Polish and maintain the finish of the instrument.

  • Check intonation and adjust if possible

  • Check integrity of internal braces/struts

  • Check and clean electrics (Electric option)

  • Adjust height of pickups (Electric option)

  • Balance or lock down tremolo (Electric option)

Please bring an instrument to work on. If this is problematic please let us know so we can provide one. All tools needed for the course will be provided and advice given about putting together a toolkit yourself. We’ll also provide a set of basic workshop notes which you can add to as the session progresses. These will be invaluable for any future maintenance projects of your own.

Each course is limited to 2 – 3 people and takes place on Saturdays at the Shoreham-by-Sea Workshop. You’ll be working from 9.30 – 12.30, and after a break for lunch we’ll continue from 13.30 – 16.30. The courses are taken by David Whiteman and David Crozier.

If you would like more information about the Electric Guitar Maintenance Course, please email David Crozier at davidcrozierguitars@gmail.com

For information on the Acoustic/Classical Guitar Maintenance Course, please contact David Whiteman at davidrwhiteman@aol.com

1 Day Intensive Guitar Maintenance Course: £180, 9.30- 4.30 with an hour for lunch.

Tutors: David Whiteman and David Crozier

Please bring a set of strings. Alternatively, we will have some available to buy on the day.

Advanced Repair and Maintenance Course

We’re finalising details of our advanced guitar repair courses which will be aimed at teaching more advanced techniques such as complete fret dressing, re-fretting and nut and saddle making. These courses will suit players wishing to undertake more complex work on their own instruments, or those aiming to get into professional guitar repair/technician work.

If you’re interested in this, please get in touch to discuss course dates and details.