When you walk past Brightwood Music, one of the things you might see is a bandsaw, a sander, and a drill press in the window. During the day, Doug Arimtage, owner, replaces strings and sets up the action and playability on violins, violas, guitars, banjos, ukuleles, basses, mandolins, and the occasional bazouki. Working on a musical instrument means you have to know what the musician is doing with it, and the way each musician plays it.
There is no magic formula for where any instrument should be set up, no matter what some guys on YouTube say. Each instrument can be played in many ways and with so many different types of music and styles of playing. The real talent a luthier learns over many years is to listen to the musician and the instrument and arrive at the best way for both to work together.
Some instruments come to the luthier with problems: a poor set up, a bad neck joint, the wrong strings; maybe the factory had substandard materials or untrained quality control personnel.
And any acoustic instrument that was purchased online (how can you even do that?) will present a variety of problems begging for a solution. Some will be easy to fix and some will be more complicated. Many instruments with manufacturing defects make the rounds and come back in with different owners and need to be kindly rejected again and again.
The most rewarding of the repairs are those fine instruments that have been repaired poorly and can be fixed. The resetting of a sound post in a violin will make a tremendous difference in the sound. The minor adjustment to a tension rod in the neck of a guitar can make the instrument so much easier to play. Old strings on a mandolin are the biggest problem with tuning issues. Banjo intonation problems can be the repositioning of the bridge by a sixteenth of an inch.
A real joy for a musician is an instrument that plays exactly the way they want it to play. For the luthier, the real joy comes from making the instrument sing the way the musician wants it to play. Sometimes a player is asking for more than what that instrument is capable of. This is very frustrating for the musician and the luthier, and that is when having a selection of instruments set up in different ways will allow the musician to choose one that is going in a better direction for the way that person is moving artistically.
Want to find out more? Stop into Brightwood Music and see what might be best for you. As of the first of the year, Brightwood will be increasing their rates due to inflation. The store currently has no waiting time for helping you be a better musician..
Brightwood Music is located at 20 E. Lakeview Drive, Unit 109 in Nederland. They can be reached at 303-258-8863. Check out their Facebook page for more information at https://www.facebook.com/BrightwoodMusic
