West Guitarworks

01/11/2026

Made myself a and clamp sandwich. Seriously impressed with these Northfield clamps. The Waterloo model is great for crowded soundholes and I can’t wait to reglue some bridges with these!

01/09/2026

Stainless refret on this nice black mirror

01/03/2026

Here’s the second refret in a batch of 70’s poly board jobs keeping the original finish. The frets came out nice and clean sideways, until they didn’t. Those last six frets were so short (some as low as .020”) and buried in finish that only way they were coming out was up, and not without a fight. This was the more challenging of the two but I’m happy with the results. Once again, big ups to for the sage advice on these two jobs 🙌

12/27/2025

70s poly board P bass refret keeping the original finish! Super stoked how this patience tester turned out. Big shoutout to who acted as the yoda on my back while I traipsed through the swamps of finish on this fretboard and another 70s poly board refret (this was the milder of the two. Peep the original frets swimming in poly in the last slide 🏊‍♂️

12/21/2025

Took these stainless frets up to a mirror polish to challenge the jeweled side dots to a shine off. Who do you think won?

12/18/2025

Getting these frets in this 70s poly board P bass nice and easy thanks to and Accept no imitations!

12/09/2025

Suuuuuper minty 72 Jazz Bass came through the shop for a setup so I snagged some photographic notes. Everything still original down to the foam mute on the bridge cover. Also wanted to point out the coiled cable burn you see on so many of these guitars! You can see the culprit in that picture of the case. Super fun bass that I’m glad I got to spend some time with.

10/22/2025

Expensive guitar stand announcement! West Guitarworks is now San Diego’s Plek equipped shop. Worked my ass off to get to this point and looking forward to working my ass off to pay this thing off!

09/10/2025

brought in this killer 65 jazzy for a refret on the recommendation of (thanks Mike 🫶). We decided to go for a “between the binding” refret to keep it as original as possible. Sure, you’d get slightly more real estate with an “over the binding” refret (it would have been a lot easier this way too) but Andrew loves the way this guitar feels and didn’t want that to change. The factory frets on this were a lot wider than the usual vintage spec (thanks for chatting with me about this!) so we went with 0154 (0.100”wide) to keep the same feel. Getting each fret to its exact width on a thin laminate fretboard (I’m not removing any material from the fretboard to true it up) with a radius that you’d hope was 7.25” but in reality ranged from 6” to 7.5” was certainly a challenge. Matching the varying radii and widths gave me plenty of time for self reflection. Luckily I had some advice and a crucial loothprint (if you’re not a member, you’re missing out big time) from to help me along the way. Super stoked with how this one turned out. Whilst writing this caption and tagging everyone it became abundantly apparent to me how lucky I am to be a part of this community. Anyway, if you’ve read this far, I have some exciting news to share in the coming weeks so stay tuned!

03/27/2025

The British Sound (made in Italy). Love me some Italian plastic. Setup for

03/09/2025

01/26/2025

NAMM 2025 is in the bag. It was great catching up with old friends and making new ones!