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Don't fret, she'll repair your
beloved guitar She'll patiently shave off a few millimeters and stick everything back together. And your beloved will be singing sweetly once again. Pastella, who operates from her home near Fort Eustis, is a rarity among a rare breed. She is a luthier, a worker of wood and wonder who can take a valuable but broken instrument and bring it back to life. And yes, she is a woman who makes her living in a workshop wrestling with hundred-year-old glue joints. For most of her customers, her gender is no big deal. It was much tougher breaking barriers in the 1980s, she said, when she managed an automobile body shop at a local car dealership. ``Once in a blue moon,'' she said, as she meticulously scraped calcified glue from an acoustic guitar's neck joint, ``someone will say, `Can I speak to the owner?' '' Pastella will say that she is the owner. Then they'll ask to speak to someone who works on guitars. Her reply: ``That would be me.'' Most of her business comes from customers recommending her services to others whose heirlooms are in need of restoration. That's why the issue of gender rarely rises anymore, she said. Then again, Pastella never let societal expectations rule her life. Her love for manual work came from her father, an electrical engineer who repaired televisions in a basement shop. She remembers going there as a girl of 6 and being handed a soldering iron. It gave her confidence and led to another hobby that has come in useful in her current profession, competing in model car building contests. She was the odd woman contestant crafting intricately detailed models from around age 9 until she ran out of time when she turned 30, she said. Her father died when she was 12, or she likely would have followed in his footsteps and become an electrical engineer. Instead, in high school in Yorktown, she was ``the girl who primered her own car and did body work.'' She met her husband, Tim, when she was 15. They worked on cars together, and he didn't mind that she wasn't interested in cooking. Still isn't. For Christmas, she asked for a roll-away toolbox and he asked for a new set of nonstick cookware. Tim is a blueprint reader and welder at a local shipyard. Pastella is teaching him the fine art of guitar building. Pastella builds guitars herself only to learn more about construction, knowledge that she later applies in her repairs. So how did she get from the body shop to guitar repair? Blame it on Isle of Wight Instrument Co. When Pastella moved to Smithfield in 1988, she dropped by the music store. She found a career. The shop belonged to Bill Colgan, and in the back, behind glass, he and his crew crafted custom guitars. Pastella was mesmerized. She became a ``pest,'' dropping by regularly, organizing the craftsmen's tools. Eventually Colgan just put her to work on minor repairs. At 21, she was apprenticing with Colgan, whose Spirit Wind guitars had a national following. Pastella had finally found a job where she could use her hands, without getting them covered in grease. Then Colgan's cancer returned, and he closed his business. In his final months, he brought his backlog of guitar repair work home and asked Pastella to come and finish it for him. It was while working in his basement and wondering what was next, she said, that Pastella decided to try going it on her own. She's operated her business for the last four years. The name, Fret Not Guitar Repair, is a play on words and the faith that keeps her going. It comes from Psalm 37, she said, and became the motto of her shop: ``Fret Not the evil doer . . . trust in the Lord and do what is right!'' After a couple of slow initial weeks, the instruments began flooding in. They have come from as far as Japan, where a woman spotted Pastella's Web site fretnotguitarrepair.com and decided that only she could work on her guitar. A lot of Pastella's work comes from New Jersey, although she has no idea why. Most of her instruments are expensive. People don't spend time and money restoring junk. There are famous clients, but Pastella won't say who or use them as advertising. In fact, she doesn't do any advertising. She's already got all the business she can handle. At one point, her backlog had stretched to a full year. Instruments had overflowed her shop and taken over spare bedrooms and other corners of her home. Her stress level was rising with the wait list. So she learned to say no. She stopped doing purely cosmetic work and, because of her allergy, all refinishing. The backlog is much more manageable now. It varies by the type of job and is outlined up front with the customers. Pastella admits she's not much of a player herself. She always preferred to rip a guitar apart than through a song. And while she works she listens to contemporary Christian music, not guitar virtuosos. For her, music's magic is in the lyrics, not licks. She prefers that her customers make an appointment and come by with their guitars. She will sit and watch how the customer plays -- how hard she frets, how far he bends the strings -- to judge how the instrument should best be set up. Sometimes she discourages a customer from having a guitar repaired. The work might be more than the guitar is worth. But value is a funny thing, and some players are willing to pay any price to bring their baby back to life. Pastella understands. And her satisfaction comes in seeing the customer's reaction when she hands back a guitar, neck reset, action at the perfect height, old damage invisible. It keeps her constantly aiming for perfection. ``When you pick up your instrument, I am going to know how you feel about it,'' she explained. Reach Tony Germanotta at german@pilotonline.com or 446-2377. |
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Vintage Martin Guitars For Sale
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