Whether it's fixing an 1876 Martin acoustic guitar, a retro-looking Korean electric guitar or a fretless Middle Eastern "ude" they'd never seen before, it doesn't matter to the guys at Mannella Guitars.
A broken instrument is a riddle they're determined to solve, which they do -- in as little as an hour or even up to two years.
"If it has strings, we'll work on it," said Dave Mannella, 50, of Murrysville, who has been in business for 25 years, the past five on Verona Road in Penn Hills. "We do things nobody else in town can do, wants to do or is willing to do. We're problem-solvers, and not many people do that anymore."
Repairs are done by the two-man team of Mannella and Frank Giove, both of whom used to travel the country in the 1980s as members of different bands. Giove still plays with "Chizmo" Charles Anderson, Pittsburgh's senior statesman of blues, and Gary Belloma and the Blue Bombers, local legends in their own right. Mannella no longer plays professionally.
"I came off the road (in 1976) and didn't want to see a guitar, hear music or anything," Mannella said. "Then I did an about-face."
Mannella Guitars typically has about 100 guitars on hand from around the country needing repairs, but the company does more than guitar work. It also fixes old amplifiers and has eight professional instructors who teach everything from piano and voice to drums and, of course, guitar.
Fixing instruments is a complicated business that often requires imagination and creativity along with power tools, chisels and a tiny hand-held camera on the end of a wand that can poke into crevices where an eye cannot see.
"Finding the problem isn't always the tough thing," Mannella said. "It's getting to it."
Other times, it's figuring out a way to fix an instrument when no ready-made part is available. That's when Giove springs into action. The shop's "electronic guy" has a passion for woodworking and regularly whittles replacements for parts that are no longer in production or were one-of-a-kind components -- sometimes making the instrument sound better than ever.
That's what he had to do with a 60-year-old "tipple," a 10-stringed, ukulele-shaped instrument, that needed a new bridge to hold the strings. No parts store in the world carries the piece to make the whole.
"It's not something you can just call (a manufacturer) and order," said Giove, 57, of Churchill.
No matter what's done to the instruments, Mannella and Giove share one tenet with doctors and surgeons: Do no harm.
"We work with things that are museum quality," Mannella said. "The authenticity is the main thing, and that's why a lot of customers come to us. ... Everybody remembers that tone they heard in their head, and they're forever chasing it. We try to help them find it."
As for the owner of the century-old Martin, he'll just have to wait. Such intricate repairs come only during truly inspired moments for these craftsmen.
"It took 100 years to fall apart, so you want to take your time," Giove said. "That'll wait. It's waited this long."
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