Arne Arvidson

 
The basses and guitars become like new in the new repair shop!
What is happening when the guitar/bass player smack his instrument to the scene floor or when the guitar neck starts to bend and the frets needs to be grinded or exchanged? Buy new gear and throw the old gear away? No, sometimes it is actually possible to create wonders with old and worn instruments.
In a small industrial area in Stockholm, Arne has his workshop. But it is not normal handicraft or furniture that is made and repaired, but guitars and basses to the whole swedish elite of rock musicians.
- 'Most of them has been here for one reason or another', Arne Arvidson say, as being one of very few guitar and bass repairmen in Sweden.

THIS IS THE TRUE STORY AND SOME ANECDOTES, TELLING WHY BASS PLAYERS PROSHOP IS WORKING TOGETHER WITH ARNE ARVIDSON ALONG WITH OUR BUILDERS ON SERVICING OUR CUSTOMERS! 
Masters of Sabotage
Here, guitar bass players like Mats Ronander, John Norum, Kee Marcello, Tommy Cassemar, Teddy Walter,Salle and Joakim Thåström has had their "darlings" repaired and adjusted. In the beginning of the 80-ties, Thåström was one of Arnes most frequent customers.
-'He was a Swedish champion at smashing guitars during the Ebba Grön period, but he has matured a bit now', Arne laughs. 
'When I had repaired his guitars for a couple of times, I realised he would come back again. I could actually schedule the repairs as a subscriber getting the next magazine issue and predict when the next wrecked guitar would arrive, when he just got back a repaired one'.

Arne is a guitar player himself and has amongst others played with John Holm and in the band Tom Trick. In the middle of the 70-ties, he more seriously started to build and repair guitars and basses. But the interest was already born in the 60-ties.
 
It all started with a Hobbex guitar...
 
- 'It all started with my dad having bought a Hobbex guitar,' Arne tells in his typical southern Stockholm style of dialect. It was the worst type of Japanese crap that crumpled and looked like a boomerang after just one week. I got an idea of buildning a new body to it, and it gave me more appetite. Then I built a Gibson Junior-copy, made the neck and the rest and it was a very good guitar'. 

The work consist partly of repairing damaged guitars and basses, i.e. straightening and gluing bended or/and broken necks, and grind or exchange frets. But it is also about improving guitars and basses, changing poor pickups and assemble new tremolo systems. Sometimes people come up with guitar kits the want to have assembled. 
If the guitar/bass is fundamentally crap, Arne use to take a stand:
- 'Then I say no, because it would not matter whatever I would do to it! It is always better to tell them the truth, even if they get upset by hearing that their "darling" is a piece of shit. 
Some guitar players seems to be almost obcessed about constantly changing their guitars:
- After a year the guitar is feeling boring again, and they don´t get the kick of playing it and want a renewal.
Then they change parts, from chrome to gold or from gold to black'.
 
Guitar hypochondriac...
Sometimes Arne feel that aside of being a repairman, he also plays the role of a therapist:
- 'There is a syndrom, I use to call guitar hypochondriac. A guitar player maybe is not developing his playing skills anymore, and then he think it will all get better if he comes and goes here and get something changed to the instrument'. Arne also build guitars and basses, and also manufacture some of the instrumental parts. Though it is all about electric guitars and basses, the choice of material is extremely important. The feeling for what wooden parts that shall be used is almost of a mysterious touch.
Arne Arvidsson is making guitar and bass bodies out of mahogany or alder, the necks from maple, and the fretboards from palisander or ebenholtz. For ornamentation of the bodies, Arne use different woods as he call "funny wood", for example flamed maple. 

Not really surprising the true craftsman Arne is not very impressed with the level of craftmanship in Sweden or elsewhere nowadays. People seems to be afraid of even try to make the easiest adjustments on their instruments. But, isn´t that just something that makes the business more lucrative?
- 'No Arne say, I want to work from a certain level. Below that, I think it all belong to common, general knowledge to handle these things yourself, as I feel miserable about doing simple things myself, it does not give me a "kick" which I need to get from this job, or I rather be a postman instead'.
 
The Character Arne...
I first met and started to know Arne and his family in 1988 when we became nearby neighbours. I can tell a number of fun and interesting anecdotes, but will concentrate on a few that perfectly show the character of Arne and the way he works. When Berwaldhallen, a famous concert hall in Stockholm was built, they discovered some severe echo problems, that noone could solve. Arne happened to hear about this and though he is not an audio engineer, he went there, listened, made some measurements, draw some lines on a piece of paper, went home and built echo baffles that solved the problems! He also built a complete copy of a Harley Davidson motorcycle in scale 1:5, with a working engine, etc for his own son! I asked him how the hell he could build such a thing as he was not a machine engineer??? He just laughed at me, saying, 'the library had all the books, so I just went there and borrowed the ones needed to learn how to build a motorcycle! And, I always have to make my own tooling, machinery, etc for building and repairing guitars and basses anyway, so it wasn´t really any big difference'! This say quite a lot about Arne, never fear a problem, but to challange to make a solution that works, especially if it looks impossible to all others! His positive way of thinking has made him world famous for being the man who never fails in fretting a bass or a guitar (as many builders do, already when buildning new instruments)! He is always friendly, takes time when you visit him, always willing to share his remarkable knowledge, experience and expertise, with the urge to make better repairs, instruments, etc.

Arne about quality 
 During the recent years, the industrialized production of guitars has developed. A lot better pickups, pre-amps, tuners and tremolo systems has come to the market.
'But, unfortunately, the choice of correct materials is too often neglected', Arne says.
- 'It is so much about high tech-stuff, but when it comes to wood quality, it is really getting a lot worse! Sometimes I receive guitars of such poor quality that I start to wonder if the producers has no ethics at all! The bodies are made of plywood, so now I´m waiting for the next poverty level, getting guitars made of wooden chips'?!
Where is the bottom limit? How much crap can people take or accept?
Really good and well made guitars and basses cost well and above, 2000 EURO nowadays. But it is possble also to find good instruments at lower prices.