Professional Guitar Repair & Luthier Services in Portsmouth
Precision Electric, Acoustic & Bass Guitar Setups Serving Portsmouth, Southsea, and the Surrounding Hampshire Region.
Workshop Services & Pricing
*Prices exclude the cost of strings. You are welcome to supply your own or purchase them at the bench.
Guitar Restring & Clean
£30"Mini Service"
Old strings removed, fretboard deep cleaned & hydrated, frets polished, and hardware tightened. We complete every guitar restring with your preferred string gauge, tuned precisely to standard or custom pitches.
Standard Guitar Setup
£60Highly Recommended
Our signature bench service covering electric guitar setups, acoustic guitar setups, and bass guitar setups. Includes a full Restring & Clean plus precise truss rod profiling, neck relief calibration, saddle/bridge action optimization, pickup height tuning, and an electronics flush to eliminate scratchy pots. Essential maintenance to stabilize intonation and eliminate fret buzz.
Advanced Setup & Fret Leveling
£120The Ultimate Upgrade
Includes our comprehensive guitar setup checklist plus precision fret leveling, recrowning, and edge dressing. Finished with a mirror-shined polish to eliminate dead spots, low frets, and uneven string choke across the entire fingerboard.
About The 1982 Guitar Company
The 1982 Guitar Company is run by Sam, a trained luthier, and music producer.
From the Studio to the Bench
Before dedicating himself to lutherie, Sam spent decades working as a professional recording engineer and studio producer, collaborating with Grammy-nominated artists and major touring bands. Having spent years refining sound profiles in the studio, he understands exactly how an instrument needs to feel, respond, and inspire when it's in a player’s hands.
Traditional Luthier Training
After honing his woodworking skills in furniture-making classes in Los Angeles, a visit to friends in Athens, Georgia, sparked a turning point. There, Sam trained directly under master luthier Scott Baxendale in his renowned vintage guitar restoration program.
Under Scott’s mentorship, Sam specialized in the intricate art of rebuilding vintage Harmony, Kay, and Silvertone guitars. This process involves executing full structural neck resets, complete re-frets, and converting primitive ladder bracing to a custom X-Bracing system. The result is a guitar that plays with the precision of a brand-new instrument, but possesses the unmatched resonance of seasoned, 50-to-60-year-old tonewood.
Journey Back to Portsmouth
Following his training, Sam relocated to Seattle, running a dedicated guitar repair shop for three years before returning to the UK. Driven by a lifelong curiosity about human creativity and performance, he spent the post-pandemic era studying psychology. Today, alongside his luthiery work, he completes his MSc in Coaching Psychology and runs a private practice helping individuals in the creative and tech industries thrive.
The 1982 Guitar Company was born out of a desire to keep working with his hands, maintaining a dedicated focus on precision fretwork and structural instrument optimization from a specialized bench.
Work With Us
The 1982 Guitar Company is going to grow from a compact bench space within an artist’s studio. The focus will be on precision setups, player-focused optimization, and essential maintenance at this time until the shop is more established and can accept greater volume of guitars and tools.
Whether your favorite gigging guitar needs its action perfectly dialed in, seasonal electronics troubleshooting, or you have a unique instrument you would like us to handle for you via consignment sales, drop us a line.
Because we operate strictly by appointment out of our Portsmouth studio, your instrument will receive our undivided, focused attention.