Guelph has a new luthier downtown, and she’s passionate about fixing your well-loved instruments.
Grace Da Maren has been fixing guitars since 2012, operating Guelph Guitar Repair out of her basement until opening a brick and mortar location on Woolwich Street last month.
“(I love) making broken things fixed. I love that these pieces are sentimental to the people that bring them in,” she said.
Her husband Jason helps out part-time, working on the electronic repairs while Da Maren takes care of any structural and mechanical repairs.
Da Maren actually started out working at Linamar as a machinist, wanting to eventually go into watch repair.
But one day, Jason said she could probably do a setup on his guitar, which involves things like adjusting the neck and string height. She said it’s similar to an oil change for a car; it keeps things playing smoothly.
While she hadn’t worked with guitars before, she was able to teach herself through what she could find online and in DVDs and books.
Once she started doing it, she was hooked, and eventually studied guitar building under renowned luthier Sergei de Jonge.
“It just felt so good. I always envisioned myself doing some sort of repair work. But then this thing, this company. It checks all the boxes for me. It’s something that is meaningful to the owner,” she said.
She started out doing it less than part-time; having three young kids at home, the kids would always come first.
But “this was always going to be my career plan after they all got back into school,” she said.
Over the years, she’s invested more time into the business, joining a startup program through the Business Centre of Guelph-Wellington in 2023, and gaining possession of their downtown warehouse space this year.
But she’s only just getting started.
She hopes to meet others who want to work with her “and see how we can grow the guitar repair business together.”
She said it’s a collaborative industry, “so I’m sure there’s gonna be some people along the way that I want to work with. We’ll just see how this goes.”
As long as they keep taking care of clients, she believes the business will continue to grow. To do that, she relies on what she calls the love trust triangle.
When her relationship with her clients is at its best, “it’s because they love their instruments so much,” she said. “And if they love their instrument, so do I. And they have to trust that I’m going to take care of that instrument, and I have to trust that they’re going to be patient with me.”
For example, recently she had to remove the label on a guitar to fix a crack underneath it, and had a heartfelt conversation with the owner in the process.
“If we’re moving quickly, we can take all these relationships for granted. But the instrument can be like a limb of a person who’s using it for expression,” she said. “And I just love helping get their limb working again?”
One of Da Maren’s favourite repairs was getting to rebuild a guitar that was originally built by the client’s father.
“It was a classical guitar. I had to take the back off and re-brace the top. It was a wonderful job,” she said. “I’m not the fastest or the cheapest, but I will put the most love into it.”
She said there are four or five other luthiers in Guelph, although to her knowledge she’s the only woman in the area.
“There’s nothing about this industry that should make it male dominated, except for the perception of its history,” she said. “When you dig deeper, you’ll see that women have been a part of guitar history since the beginning.”
“I haven't come across any other female looths in the area, but if she's reading this article, I hope she'll reach out to say hi,” she said.
Da Maren said she sees others as colleagues, not competition, and regularly gets together with other luthiers “to foster a network of support.”
She is also part of an international luthier community called The Looth Group, with just over 850 members worldwide. It offers learning resources for everyone from beginners to experts, and has a 24/7 Zoom video – called The Loothalong – where luthiers from all over can work together and answer each other’s questions.
“Last week, I ran into a head scratcher,” she said. The group helped her through it.
“It’s a wicked supportive, lovely group of people,” she said.
For those interested, Da Maren is offering a guitar setup workshop at DIYode on March 23.
Guelph Guitar Repair operates by appointment only. You can learn more or contact them here.