In my young teens I wanted to start playing electric guitar so that I could join my friends band.
When I thought about how to get an electric guitar I realized there had been one in really bad condition hanging on the wall in my house my whole life.
It was an old höfner solid body guitar my dad had exchanged for his rickety car in the 70s.
I brought the guitar to my local guitar repair shop and they made it playable again. But there was a wire that came loose, so I learned how to fix it. And then it came loose again, and again, and again. Finally after a lot of soldering practice I managed to make it stay.
I realized how satisfying it was to make something work again. The guitar was still in poor condition and I learned how to change the frets and rewind the pickups.
I became more and more nerdy and tried to get an apprenticeship at the same guitar repair shop to learn more. It didn’t work, but they told me to get the Stewmac guitar player repair guide book and learn from that. I did that for a couple of years and then I realized I wanted to build guitars from scratch instead.
I love the aesthetics of a guitar, and the thought of being able to design and build exactly what I want was thrilling.
To learn how to master the guitar building craft I completed a two year long education in fine carpentry.
When I finished the education I worked as a cabinet maker and also with traditional window renovation. Meanwhile I started to build guitars a couple of days and nights a week in the workshop I still have today.
Now I have made my dream come true and I work fulltime in my workshop building electric guitars.
Here is an interview in Swedish with me.
Made by Ultimate Guitar Gear Podcast.
CLICK HERE