ksdaddy's site
Welcome to my site. My user name, ebay name, email name (etc) is ksdaddy. The reason is simple: I have two daughters names Kim and Sarah. Makes sense now, right? I've been repairing, modifying, and (now) building stringed musical instruments since the mid 1970s. When I was in high school, buying a Fender or Gibson guitar was out of reach. I owned many garbage guitars, lots of Harmonys, Silvertones, stuff like that. I think we all did. Over the years I've owned many guitars, good names and bad, that needed work. And I like to think my talents as a repairman have evolved, expanded, and improved over the years. It doesn't seem that long ago when I made up all kinds of excuses to "not" do a refret because I didn't know what I was doing. I'm sure I screwed up a couple before I got the knack. One thing I've learned over the years is that there are lots of fancy tools out there and the companies that make them would have you believe you can't do the job without them. I've learned that if you want to learn something bad enough, you'll find a way around it. For years I wanted a fret radius jig that was about $90. I could never justify the expense so I learned how to radius them by hand, first with a notched pair of needle nosed pliers, then with a concave block of wood and a brass hammer. A couple years ago I bought a box of guitar junk, scraps of binding, NOS Fender parts, etc.... lo and behold, there was a Stew-Mac fret radius jig in the bottom of the box! And trust me, it's a sweet machine. But I don't think I would appreciate it as much had I not learned to do it by hand first. One lesson I've learned over the years is to respect and preserve instruments as much as is practical. If a guitar doesn't suit your needs, sell it to someone who will appreciate it and then buy what suits you. I once was friends with someone who had no respect for instruments and ruined many "improving" them. Granted, some instruments have weak points, like tuners that won't hold, pickups that are weak and sound like crap.... but to add a third pickup to every Telecaster you own? I used to trade back and forth with this guy and after a while I began to make excuses why I wouldn't trade him a guitar, trying to keep it intact! One day in 1984 I was in the
local pawn shop and the owner asked me to fix a black Ovation guitar. The bridge had come unglued and a retired shop teacher had attempted to repair it. What a mess. I removed the bridge, cleaned all the old glue off, reglued it properly, and charged him $10 for the work. I've been repairing for him ever since. I'm not sure my rates have gone up that much with him either, but he's always treated me right and my credit is good there. I can pretty much walk out of there with whatever I want and pay him whenever I want. Having said that, I don't abuse the privelege and I don't think I've had anything "on account" for about five years. It's just nice to know if he took something in I wanted, I could grab it just by saying so. I've always been available for repairs, but other than a brief 2 year stint running a guitar shop out of my house in the mid 80s, I don't advertise much.... word of mouth and a few business cards. The whole home business thing... ugh. I ate a lot of macaroni and cheese and heated the house with a kerosene heater. I didn't have the head for business anyway, I was too nice a guy, taking crap in on trade just to make a sale, allowing too much for trade-ins, etc. I'm just not a businessman.
In
2005 I was approached by the retail manager of Aroostook Music in Presque Isle, ME, asking if I would repair a
guitar for them. That began a long and lucrative second job with them. I ultimately was responsible for the
refurbishing of all the rental stringed instruments of all four stores owned by Northern Kingdom Music in Maine. It's my understanding they have a total of over 900 instruments in circulation and "on the shelf". They didn't have anyone to repair them, so when they would be returned at the end of the school year or when the kid got tired of taking lessons, they would simply get piled up in a back room. In 2 years I repaired a couple hundred of them, mostly violins. I made sure they played well. Most of these student
grade instruments weren't anything great, but that's no excuse for them to play like crap. If a kid can't press down on the strings without bleeding and they give up after three lessons, then we have a problem. So I repaired many, many instruments for them. Sadly someone in upper management made the decision to shift all string repairs to someone closer to their main store. At that point I chose to disassociate myself from that store chain altogether rather than just take on the occasional repair from them.
Click here to see some of my repair work....
As I get older I'm getting wiser. I'm beginning to realize how important some things are in life and how UNimportant other things are. 2007 was probably one of the worst years in my life due to health problems. The short version of this story is that Doctors don't have all the answers and I urge anyone to get a second opinion for anything that they're going through.
I used to sell a lot of stuff on ebay. I pretty much got myself out of debt as a result. The down side to all that is that I obsessed about it and lived for it. I was up all hours of the night and when I wasn't making money I was plotting how to make more. When the market for used motorcycle parts began
to wane I realized I had put all my eggs in one basket, in more ways than one. I basically had no life
other than ebay. It was then I decided to shift my attention more to instruments (again). I think I have
found the balance between maintaining a hobby that brings in a few bucks on occasion, playing music some,
spending some time reading or being a couch potato, torturing my cats with affection, and mentally abusing
my wife and kids. I'm kidding. I don't really torture my cats. In any case, I built this site to showcase my instruments. I don't refer to it as a "collection", because it really doesn't have any theme or focus, just a bunch of instruments that I own. Some I've had for years, and are "keepers", and also some that will come and go, depending on my whim or financial situation at that moment. I've been known to own a guitar for less than a day, so those don't make it onto this site! The ones here are the ones I intend to keep (for a while anyway....) I'm not a great player, I'm not in a band, I do this for my own enjoyment. In 2007 I scrimped and saved and went on a brief but expensive vacation. I flew from Caribou, ME to Bozeman, MT to visit the Gibson factory. Here's a pic of me and the Gibson homecoming group in front of the Gibson factory in Bozeman, Montana. And here's a pic of Bill Gonder, Gibson's Acoustic Product Specialist, presenting me with a new 2007 Gibson CJ-165 Rosewood.
Feel free to email me with questions, comments, etc. I love to discuss guitars and I am very open to helping someone with a repair project... I have no trade secrets. If I can help you, I WILL.
This site will be updated as the instruments come and go. I don't save the ones that get away though.... Click on the links below to view the stuff that crowds me out of my house:
1968 Fender Shenibu Frankenstein guitar
C.1900 Oscar Schmidt (?) parlor guitar
1958 Gibson C-6 Richard Pick model
1971 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe gold top
The Hatchet (handmade travel guitar)
My Gretsch inspired blonde rockabilly guitar
Handmade dulcimer from 31 years ago....
My custom made Cox Robinson Englund banjo
Seeger style long neck banjo from an unusual source!
Below are a few pages about non-guitar stuff. I will be adding more pages soon, so check back once in a while. Be prepared though; I'm just as eclectic when it comes to other things!
1961 International school bus with at least nine lives
1958 Baker-Jewell boat with badass tailfins
An old page from 2005 I had forgotten about but may help my family put me away some day....
Steel string acoustic guitars
Classical and/or nylon string acoustic guitars
Solid body electric guitars
Hollow bodies and archtops
Basses
Other Instruments