Straight frets Guitar Repair
Austin: (512) 626-4694
Houston: (713) 320-3635
Born in Austin in 2007, and expanding to Houston in 2024, Straight Frets is Texas’ premier guitar repair business. We supply and service and your instrument with precision fretwork, high quality nuts and saddles, setups, and electronic work that will bring positive results to your tone, playability, and experience with music.
Our turnaround time is roughly one week, making us the most time efficient guitar repair service in the area.
plek machine
The Plek machine is a German-made CNC specific for guitar frets, nut slots, saddle slot, and fretboard planing during a refret.
classes
We offer setup classes for electric and acoustic, in addition to guitar lessons in small groups: finger style mechanics, Bossa Nova, and scales/theory.
general guitar repair
From refrets, setups, and electronic work to neck sets and headstock breaks, Straight Frets is your one-stop shop to get your instrument right.
Our team
Here at Straight Frets, we are very lucky to have a staff of competent, hard-working, driven and talented luthiers that not only strive to provide you with high-quality results you are guaranteed to be satisfied with, but also do so in a timely manner.
Danny Shoemaker
After building a few guitars in high school in the late 80's, Danny acquired a bachelor’s degree from Florida Southern College and then a master's from Florida State University in classical guitar performance, while studying piano tuning and fine tuning many concert classical guitars. After a decade in Atlanta expanding as a tech, teacher, and performer, Danny moved to Austin in 2007 and established Straight Frets with the intention of providing precise and clean repairs on anything with frets. He has worked on tens of thousands of guitars for various stores and recording artists in the pop/rock field, in addition to many internationally famous classical guitarists.
Jai Kaminoff
Jai Kaminoff was trained at Musician’s Institute Luthiery Department almost 10 years ago. After graduation, he worked at Guitar Center in Hollywood and Eric’s Guitar Shop for several years, in addition to Lucky Strike Hollywood and The Whiskey a Go Go. During his time in L.A. he has worked on guitars for George Lynch, Dug Pinnick, Jared James Nichols, Jackson Browne, Mitch Perry, Nuno Bettencourt, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and many others. During Covid, Jai worked at Bogner Amplification assembling, testing, and shipping cabinets. Jai’s career has also included touring nationally and worldwide for artists like Tal Wilkenfeld, Dee Snider, Ghost, A Day to Remember, and Gojira. Jai’s expertise in setups and electronics are only surpassed by his commitment to customer service and calm demeanor.
Leland Isley
Leland Isley is the newest member of the Straight Frets team with many years of playing and touring internationally with many American Roots music groups (Trudy Lynn, Theodis Ealey, R L Burnside, Lil Brian and the Zydeco Travelers, and Global Village), and teaching in the Houston area, which he continues to do two days a week. A graduate of University of Houston, he teaches from beginner to advanced levels, and specializes in prepping college bound students for jazz and popular music programs around the country in addition to teaching here in Austin and working at Straight Frets on the weekends where he is great at setups, pickup swaps, assisting with the setup classes, and excellent with customer service. If interested in possibly taking lessons from him, click on his picture and send him a message through Facebook, or check him out around town with Ms. Mack and the Daddies.
Mason Reeves
Texas born and raised Mason graduated from The Bryan Galloup School of Luthiery in 2019, then started working at Collings Guitars. Mason was picked up during the Covid shutdown and has proven to be an excellent luthier, especially with structural repairs, neck sets, and bridge duplication. Mason also takes old Harmony/Silvertone guitars, rebraces them and returns the original back and binding occasionally for sale on Craigslist. He is also starting to learn the Plek machine, in addition to being on the cutting edge of continuing to learn other techniques.
Straight Frets wouldn’t be successful without the occasional help from the following luthiers and amp techs. A real thank you to: Tom Oatley, Walker Doubleday, Tony Nobles, Peter Skermetta, Ben Nippes, Jimmy Somma, and Jeremy Slemenda.
I’d like to shout out a sincere THANK YOU to all of the guitar stores and businesses that refer my shop for repair work: Jim at Guitar Resurrection, Steve at Austin Vintage Guitars, Omar Vallejo at 512 Studios, Matt Parmenter at Ice Cream Factory Studios, Brady at Muckleroy Basses, David Marshall at Fast Horse Studios, and especially Taylor and Collings Guitars. Please go do some business with these folks.
Other luthiers that I must thank for sharing knowledge, resources, tips and tricks along my journey: Garrett Lee, Greg Byers, Stephen Marchione, the fine folks at Precision Pearl, Beau Hannam, Bernie at Fret Guru, Joe Glaser and the late greats Thomas Humphrey, and Bill Collings.