Dr. Fretgood

Amps: Nick is great. Never any issues on this aspect.
Guitars: Decent work. A little more attention to detail would be desired, but overall decent.
One guitar caused a decent headache for me. I had a Floyd Rose equipped guitar in for the pickups to be replaced and to get a setup with a tuning ½ step down (this was noted in the initial work order). I provided the pickups. I got a call telling me the guitar was ready, so I went in to pick it up. Tested it out, and the output from the neck pickup was extremely low. I asked them to fix this. Got a call back later saying it was a defective pickup and I needed to contact the manufacturer. I first called the vendor of said pickup asking what I needed to do (they are another review… not extremely happy with them but read on.)and after a while got a response to contact the manufacturer (Bare Knuckle). I did so, and not soon after, I got a call back from Fretgood’s guitar tech saying he had made a mistake, and the pickup was fine, I could pick the guitar up later that day. This made me feel like a dick for telling the manufacturer they had messed up. What irks me there is, instead of thoroughly checking his work, he seemed quick to blame the manufacturer.
Went in, checked out the guitar, and now the sound was fine, except that it was set up in E standard, not Eb standard. Now, for any other guitar, this is not a big deal, but on a Floyd Rose guitar, this is an hour long fix for me to tune the guitar and balance it… or I could wait for them to do it which would be another 2 – 3 days. I was a bit exasperated at this point and just took it since I had already waited so long. They gave me a pack of strings for the inconvenience. Considering the amount of money that went into the work… I hoped for a little more.
The above is an isolated occurence. I’ve taken my guitars to them since with no problem. For some reason it seems to be a trend among guitar techs to forget to tune my guitars to Eb. For the Floyd guitar, I think I’ll just do all future setups myself. Not once has it been done right. It’s really annoying.

Love this place. Quality work in a short amount of time, always ready when promised, nice friendly folks, right near my place. It’s on California, just north of Armitage. I’ve had 3 or 4 guitars worked on here. It’s the only place I’ll bring em to. You won’t be disappointed with the service and price.

I sent an e-​mail before the store was open and received a fast response. I was able to take my guitar in for some adjustments on short notice and the work was completed quickly and at a reasonable price. Thank-​you!

I’ve been a loyal customer for several years. I’ve brought both my classical (new tuning machine, fretwork) and my electrics (pickup installations, set ups, fretwork) in to Ivan, as well as my cherished Trace Elliot amp into Nick when it suddenly died. I’ve always been pleased with the results.
They’ve done great work for me at very reasonable prices. They’ve always been responsive to questions and emails, and have never had anything but a good vibe dealing with them.
I highly recommended their services to any guitarist!

I’ve been taking all my gear (guitars, pedals, amps, etc.) to Dr. Fretgood for the past five years for any necessary maintenance and/​or repair work. The prices are far, the turn around time is fast and the work is always above and beyond my expectations.

Excellent place to go for guitar and amp repair. After having some guitar work done, I took in an ancient GK guitar amp that had been rotting in my parents’ basement. After dropping it off for some diagnostics, there was a bit of a misunderstanding about the initial estimate, and the owner offered to let me take the amp as is and eat the parts and labor they had already put into it. I respected that he was willing to do whatever it took to make the customer happy. I ended up having them rebuild the amp and it sounds excellent. The prices are reasonable and these guys are talented and trustworthy. I plan on using them for my all my guitar needs. They also have some rebuilt stuff for sale that seems intruiging, but the limits of the bank account and space mean I’ll probably have to wait.

Can’t say enough good things about the guys here. I’ve taken amps and guitars to Dr. Fretgood for the past few years and have always received stellar service. Whenever anyone compliments how well my guitars play, I just tell them Dr. Fretgood.

They did a nice job replacing an intermittent volume switch and fixing a tingy sounding G string.

these guys rule. No bullshit, no hassle. Friendly, down to earth and very reasonable. I called them on the phone once and gave them my name and he recognized me after not speaking to him for close to a year. They repaired my marshal head in good time and at a great price. I easily could have gone downstairs from music garage but I gladly went out of the way to give them my business.

I have a gig tonight, so of course when I plugged my guitar into my tuner to tune it, the washer falls off and the plug in mechanics fell off into the guitar. I hustled over to Dr. Fretgood, told Dave what had happened, and he said it would be an easy fix and cost about $ 15. «That sounds great!» I said. «The only thing is… I need it tonight. Can you do it right now?» Without missing a beat, Dave took my guitar, fixed the problem, and checked everything out when he was done. Took a little over half an hour, and that included the time it took Dave to have a charmingly awkward conversation with some dude who wandered in to talk about his Robert Plant poster that he wanted to sell for $ 4000.
We’ll see if the repair holds up, but so far, so good!

Good shop to get last minute stuff if you are playing Ronnys down the street. But they close at 4pm on saturday! BOOO!

Nice dudes. I stopped in when I first moved to Logan Square to take some guitar lessons, which are reasonably priced. My teacher was very cool, relaxed, and knew his guitar stuff. I think I might have needed a little more structure, as I kind of felt like I dropped in every week not really knowing what I wanted or needed to learn (clearly, I just said «he knew his ‘guitar stuff’» up there, I know nothing about gutar) and he didn’t really prepare anything either. Overall though, GREAT place!

I give Dr. Fretgood only three stars because I’m HUGE on receiving GOOD customer service and Dr. Fretgood appears to not have ANY customer service at all. The first time I stopped by, the associate (don’t know his name) appeared to be somewhat annoyed by my disruption because he was repairing equipment at the time. He didn’t smile, his greeting was very dry and there really wasn’t a genuine appreciation from him of receiving my business. His dog was much more friendlier than he.
The second time, was the same situation. The only reason I came back a second time is because of its convenient location. Will I return again, most likely. Hopefully the next time, he could be more friendlier, especially for a returning customer.

Dr. Fretgood is a great place. Ivan helped me and he was extremely nice, was obviously really passionate about guitars (he wanted to show me an archtop he had just made), and was generous with his time.
I took my hollowbody archtop guitar in because i had it professionally set up at another shop but the intonation seemed really bad to me. I thought that was strange so i took it to Dr. Fretgood for a second opinion. It turns out the pickup i installed was too close to the strings and was making the strings sound dissonant. He checked the intonation, adjusted the pickup height and charged me $ 0. I insisted that he should charge me for his time but he refused. I will definitely be taking my guitars there in the future. They really know their stuff.
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Update 2012
I’ve since taken other guitars here for nut and fretwork. I was really impressed with how clean the fretwork was. One of the best shops in the area for this. They also took the time to fix little things i hadn’t even noticed like lifting frets. This is by far my favorite place for trickier setup jobs.

When I was 17, after years of playing flute throughout grammar and high school, I got it into my head that I desperately wanted a 5 string bass guitar. A high school graduation gift, that lovely instrument sat in my corner undefiled for years. Sure, I knew I should probably make some attempt to learn it, but taking lessons seemed incredibly daunting and expensive. When Dr. Fretgood opened literally downstairs from my apartment, I knew the world was trying to tell me something and finally mustered the courage to go in for lessons. After weeks of hearing music and twangs emitting from the store, assuredly produced by people who, um, actually knew how to play guitar, unlike yours truly, I was fearful of scorn from the musical boys who ran the place. Surely they would scoff at me! I was terrified, yet I went ahead and scheduled a lesson.
Almost a year later, I am assuredly no prodigy*, but I can definitely eek out a number of songs and have a basic grasp of what I’m doing. My fears were completely unfounded, as the guys were incredibly nice and supportive. What’s great is that they clearly take a personalized approach to learning – they ask about some songs that you like, listen to them, and help you learn them. which is certainly the best way to keep students engaged. Taking lessons here is more like hanging out in your cool and incredibly musically knowledgeable friend’s apartment, and having them teach you their enviable skills. That, combined with incredibly reasonable prices (30 minutes of private instruction is only $ 19, which is far less than most places) will likely keep me a customer and student for a while to come.
In addition to lessons, the store also repairs and cleans guitars and amps, sells accessories, and usually has some secondhand items for sale as well. At one point during my lesson, Nick (one of the owners) noticed one of my strings was making a weird feedback noise. and promptly fixed and cleaned it at the front of the store like it was nothing. Love. This. Place.
*My lack of skills after this amount of time is very much correlated with lack of practice, not the quality of instruction.

I brought my boyfriend’s guitar in to Dr. Fretgood to be fixed as a surprise for his birthday. I was clueless about what needed to be done and how much it would cost. Nick was easy to talk to and helped me understand what repairs needed to be done for it to sound great again. The price was reasonable and they did excellent work according to my boyfriend. I was happy to support a local business and even happier that the owners were down to earth guys who really know what they are doing.

This place is right down the street from me and I’d walked by many times before finally stopping in to inquire about having some work done on my guitars.
The owners are pretty cool and the prices reasonable. They completed setups on my Washburn D11 and Danelectro baritone for a nice price and I have since gone back for lessons. Good independent business that’s conveniently located in my neighborhood.

I recently took my 60’s Supro in for a total cap job and various other repairs. Nick did a great job of getting the amp sounding the way it should. He was unable to find a replacement for one of the parts, but came up with a workaround. I also took my Les Paul in for a total re-​fret and a custom electronics mod. Another part took a while to get but the guitar plays like it did when I first bought it and the mod sounds great. The price is very reasonable and they’re a friendly group of guys that do good work. Thanks!