I consider myself a guitar player in only the loosest sense.

I’ve never had formal lessons and usually don’t venture too much up the fret board. But, I do enjoy fumbling my way through some Jim Croce, Bob Dylan and Jimmy Buffett.

My parents got me a left-handed* guitar for my birthday years ago (you know, something constructive) and it still stands as one of my most beloved and highly-used gifts of all time.

Not long ago, my great power-chording abilities were threatened by worn frets after years of (what I like to think of as) rocking. I’d carved some pretty deep grooves and once-clean notes now echoed with a metallic buzz.

What next? I could retire from guitar and focus all of my energy on mastering the harmonica and unicycle, or find a quality guitar tech to replace the frets. At 25, I figured I had a lot of rocking ahead of me.

A quick Google search of “new york guitar repair” ironically yielded newyorkguitarrepair.com, the Web site of a talented guitar tech named Evan.

I called and set up a time to drop off my guitar at his home on the Upper-West side of Manhattan (he’s got a cool little shop set up next to his living room). Evan was extremely friendly and promised to have my six-string back to its old self soon. True to his word I was playing again in just a couple days and my guitar sounded great. Quality work at a reasonable price with great customer service. That’s how you run a business.

*I’m right-handed so to me it makes sense to strum with my left hand and manipulate the strings with my most dexterous hand, my right hand. Doesn’t this make sense to anyone else?