CITY FOCUS:A haven for guitar lovers

In Laguna Beach, a town known for its arts and views, sits a small shop on North Coast Highway. It doesn’t seem like anything special, it doesn’t stand out in comparison to the buildings around it, especially with a beautiful ocean view down the street.

But open the door to this small shop and you enter a guitar player’s paradise, a store that has everything a guitar lover could ever imagine or dream of.

Above the Guitar Shoppe is a workshop the store’s owners use to create high-end guitars for musicians around the world.

Kirk Sand has been with the Guitar Shoppe since its opening in 1972. He began building guitars in 1978 and he and co-worker Jim Matthews eventually bought the shop and became co-owners.

For Sand, building guitars is more than a job or a hobby, it’s an art.

He begins with Brazilian Rosewood, which is considered to be a superior guitar-making material because its density allows beautiful tone.

“I buy wood now that I’ll be using five years from now,” Sand said.

Just the thin strips of rosewood Sand fashions the guitar’s body out of costs him about $1,000 on average, making it no surprise that his guitars sell for multiple thousands.

He shapes the body and the neck of the guitar using a variety of hand and mechanical tools, each piece coming together over time. He only makes about 30 guitars a year, and none of them ever hit the store’s shelves — they are personally ordered by the player in advance.

“We build guitars here the old-fashioned way,” Sand said.

Since each order is made individually, Sand customizes the guitar in minute detail to suit the needs of the player. This can involve variances on the length or width of the neck, the body’s shape or even the patterns shown in the wood.

Big names like Jose Feliciano and Chet Atkins, one of the most prolific guitar players of the 20th century, have purchased and used guitars built by Sand.

Atkins even took one of Sand’s designs to Gibson, who produced Sand’s guitar with Chet Atkins’ name. They split the royalties.

There are four guitar builders who work from the Guitar Shoppe, and each has his own brand name. There’s Hobo Guitars, made by Sean Lindsey Copeland, Angus Guitars, made by Mark Angus as well as Sand and Matthew’s guitars.

All the guitars made by the shop’s four guitar builders retail for $3,000 or more.

That’s because building a guitar as a fine instrument as opposed to the mass produced products found in other guitar stores and garages is an extremely difficult process.

“There’s a lot of mystery involved in acoustic guitars,” Matthews said.

But despite the prices, Sand says business is thriving because the Shoppe serves a niche group of customers.

“Guitar Center has come in and wiped out all the mom and pop music stores,” Sand said. “Except for the shops with specialties.”

And specialties the Guitar Shoppe has. Matthews said much of their business is based in repairs. Matthews said many people come in after damaging their guitars or finding a guitar that’s been neglected for years and hope for a musical resuscitation.

According to Matthews, there’s not much that’s beyond the realm of their repair specialists.

“We don’t want to claim special powers, but we’ve brought some guitars back from the dead,” Matthews said.

Ben Wagner, one of the Shoppe’s repairmen, instructors and resident guitar experts, said player and instrument are so close they become like family.

“Almost every day someone comes in for a repair and says ‘take care of my baby,’” Wagner said.

The Shoppe also does repair and tuning to get new guitars into playing shape. Matthews said many people play guitars that are close to unplayable, or hard to listen to for the trained ear. The Shoppe’s repairmen try to fix that and bring a guitar to its utmost playability.

“A guitar that’s in tune is really sweet sounding. A guitar that’s out of tune is like a root canal,” Matthews said.

The Guitar Shoppe uses its repair expertise to order guitars from manufacturers all around the world, bring them into the workroom and soup them up into fine instruments. They then sell them under the brand name of Laguna Guitar Company.

The types of guitars available in the Laguna Guitar Company line is impressive. They offer affordable electrics, electric basses, acoustic basses, basic steel string guitars, nylon stringed classical guitars, steel bodied guitars, banjos, and even ukuleles. The store also carries other big name brands such as Martin and Fender.

Like many galleries in Laguna, this guitar players’ haven has it’s showpieces, such as special editions, antiques and reproductions of historical instruments, such as a reissuing of Roy Rogers’ iconic guitar. Only 14 were reproduced and re-released by Martin.

Along with the guitars and the multitude of accessories for them, the Guitar Shoppe also offers lessons.

The Guitar Shoppe is at 1027 N. Coast Highway. For more information, call (949) 497-2110.