About Alan's Guitar Shack
Our Story
Hi, I'm Alan, founder of Alan's Guitar Shack. I have been playing, building, maintaining, modifying, buying, selling and generally enjoying guitars for over forty years.
I've had over fifty guitars during that time, and after retiring from a business career, I have set up Alan's Guitar Shack to utilise those skills to provide quality guitar care at affordable rates in the Bedfordshire UK area, and also sell selected and beautifully prepared used guitars.
Our Services
We offer quality guitar care at affordable rates in the Bedfordshire area on a fixed price menu.
Bronze service £25 – Polish, fretboard condition and restring. Recommended annually.
Silver service £50 – The traditional full set up. Deep clean all hardware and electronics. Condition fretboard. Polish frets and spot level up to three frets if required. Adjust neck relief, string action and intonation to factory or your preferred settings. Deep clean and three coats of wax on the body.
Gold service £75 – All of Silver, plus full fret dress – all frets levelled, crowned and polished.
All prices include Ernie Ball strings, or your preferred set at extra cost.
Other repairs and upgrades - We will happily quote for any other work your guitar needs, please contact us to discuss how we can help. We work off a minimum charge of £25 then £25 per hour plus the cost of parts.
We can also offer collection and return service to Bedford, Milton Keynes, Luton and Northampton priced at 25p per mile. Please enquire for details.
Sales
We usually have a small number of carefully selected and fully prepared instruments for sale via our Reverb shop (link below.)
We specialise in good quality instruments from Fender, Epiphone and PRS SE ranges and our philosophy is simple - buying a used guitar should be pleasure and you should receive an instrument that is everything you hoped it would be.
Sadly, the reality can be different. Electric guitars are complex items, mixing mechanical, electrical and natural wooden components, and it takes time and patience to learn the skills to properly adjust, maintain and care for a instrument. Many people buy them with high hopes of learning to play, but for all sorts of reasons the passion fizzles out and and many used guitars appear on the market neglected, dirty, badly maintained and often priced unrealistically compared to well looked after examples.
But all is not lost, because that is where we come in! Almost any guitar can be saved, and every instrument we sell has been thoroughly refurbished to look, play and sound their best. Our process involves:
- Deep clean and polish the body and neck and apply three coats of quality guitar wax
- Clean all electrical components and correct any soldering defects. Replace crackly switches and jacks with quality components
- Check all frets and dress as necessary, often including a full level, crown and polish. Check and adjust the nut where necessary
- Restring with quality strings and full set up including neck relief and angle, string action, intonation, tremelo operation (where fitted)
- Play it for hours to ensure all is well!
BUILD STORIES; A SELECTION OF OUR WORK FROM OVER THE YEARS
