I first met John Wescott while browsing in a vintage guitar shop where John happened to be returning a vintage Fender Precision bass to the shop owner after he had done a refret on it. We talked a little, I got his card, and after he left I hung around and went over the P bass with my glasses on. (Eyes like an eagle with those glasses... blind as a bat without 'em as we'll soon see....) I checked out the finish on the fretjob and it was easily as good as any I had seen. Polished, detailed, uniform, No nicks, no buzz, no errors. Perfect. I kept the card....

Sometime later I happened to be in another well known vintage guitar store in LA. and ran across a Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster in a gorgeous metallic green with matching headstock that turned out to be # 21 of a run of 28 ordered by Guitar Center. They were famous for ordering these bunches of 60s "reissues" in classic colors and with a certain neck profile, etc. This one turned out to be a so-called "64" Reissue because it has narrow dot spacing and a chunky neck. It also happened to have a Pao Ferro fingerboard and the letters "SRV" tattooed on the neck heel, which brings us to John Wescott. You see, I bought this guitar while my glasses were at HOME, not on my NOSE, and when I got to my glasses I discovered that somebody had done a hack job and filed the top half of the frets off. Obviously, Stevie Ray's favorite profile was not to the liking of the original owner (who, according to the dealer, was supposedly Mick Mars of Motley Crue who had liquidated his collection with this dealer after having marital problems. Whoopee.). Now I had a guitar that I loved the look and sound of, with the frets ground off. Take it back, or get it fixed? Where's that fret guy's card.....

I didn't think there was any way to rescue the old frets, but John wanted to try, and he succeeded in putting a crown back on and setting up the guitar to be buzz free, saving me the cost of an entire refret. He could just as easily have agreed with me that the frets were toast and that I got screwed, and allowed me to pay the penance for my blindness that I was clearly willing to pay. That Strat is now a cherished friend, not for sale, and has, to say the least, a one-of-a-kind fret profile! Lets your fingers reach the Ferro like a vintage mapleboard. Great fun to play.

Sometime after, I bought a James Goodall Jumbo. Gorgeous, tone to the bone, very expensive by my standards. About six months later, frets started popping out of their slots. I emailed James Goodall and his lovely wife Jean answered and told me to take the guitar to a certain shop in the LA area where they would fix it free. I was reluctant to give up the guitar for as long as that shop wanted to keep it, so I decided to go to John with it and just pay for the repair. This time, John hesitated to try and reseat the popped frets, preferring to refret the guitar for the best results. I said, OK, you're the doctor. He did the job in only a few days (even though his wife was in the hospital having a baby). The frets are perfect, the guitar is perfect, and I took it home, satisfied.

Several weeks later, I got a check in the mail from James and Jean Goodall. It seems that John took it upon himself to email them and tell them what he had done for me, and they decided to pay me the amount that their repair facility would have charged them to fix it.

What do you say about folks like that? I can say this: I don't need glasses to see the class of people like the Goodalls and John Wescott.

Signed, Bob Wall