Repairs & Restorations

Repairing and restoring top-grade fretted instruments is where I started out in the early 1960s in Greenwich Village, several years before opening my store here. It began with fixing everything I could find as a little kid, gaining tool skills and woodworking and machine skills along the way, and knowledge of processing all kinds of natural materials (wood, metal, plastics, glass and more) for manufacturing processes. Having also grown up in the music world since infancy, building and rebuilding musical instruments came naturally in my teenage years and by the time I was fourteen or so I had started working on fretted instruments, my first love. Restoring Martins and making electric guitars were natural ways to go and I was off on a tear, doing it professionally by the time I was seventeen. Opening my store came about five years later, doing all the repairs myself, and on to running the business for the next forty-eight years, finally deciding to close the retail end and keeping our long-since internationally-acclaimed repair department open.

While we have closed the retail side of the store, our "Best in New York" guitar restoration and repair department (and I can say that with great confidence) remains quite open, by appointment, serving New Yorkers and musicians from all over the world in the same location that the store had been in for the last thirty-five years. You're welcome to email info@umanovguitars.com to arrange for a day and time (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm) to bring your treasured instrument in for anything from bringing the Martin that's been in your family for over a hundred years back to life, to straight-ahead Strat or Les Paul setups, and everything in between. We'll take care of you in the same that way we always have, with uncompromising professional attention, since the 1960s.