Welcome to the Famous Frets Website!

The site is split into 2 sections:

1. Famous Frets: takes at look at some of the recognisable guitars Steve has worked on and in addition gives us an insight to the guitars featured in the Famous Frets book where he attempts to find out why the iconic guitars favored by famous historic musicians sound the way they do and to establish whether custom parts were fitted. Over the decades, the guitars issued by Fender and Gibson changed, sometimes due to shortages of materials, other times the change was down to new manufacturing technologies. The outcome was not always for the best!. Hence 1959 Fender’s sound different to 1970’s. Steve has managed to compile all his favourite Famous Frets into the forthcoming book, published by Wymer UK and is available to order using this link. https://www.wymeruk.co.uk/webshop/books/rock/various/famous-frets-by-steve-clarke/

Steve’s second book Famous Frets Fotos is now on sale at all good bookshops, Amazon or click the link below:

https://www.wymeruk.co.uk/webshop/books/rock/various/famous-frets-fotos-vol-1/

In his first book Famous Frets Steve Clarke took a forensic deep dive into many famous guitars with detailed specifications of their construction with supporting photographs.

This book Famous Frets Fotos is volume one in a series of two, where Clarke focuses on the images of the guitars rather than the very detailed approach as used in the first book.

As part of Clarke’s role as a guitar consultant, he is often invited to view a single guitar or, as was the case with Peter Green and KK Downing, entire collections to assess, and in some instances repair guitars in a very short time.

So deep dives are not always possible. With the Peter Green collection Steve looked at one hundred and fifty guitars and banjos, 4-string Turkish lutes, amps and mandolins! That collection was so large it was located across two sites in London and Oxford.

Steve did however manage to take more intricate details on a few of the most known guitars, some from his Splinter group period.

Having been so lucky to have had such opportunities. For Steve there were a number of ‘pinch me’ moments, for example looking at the Graffiti Yellow Strat owned by Jeff Beck.

Now guitar lovers can also get to view many of the guitars that Steve has been fortunate enough to be able to photograph in the course of his work.

2. Steve’s Blog: will be populated with articles which are not about famous guitars, but cool or quirky jobs Steve encounters when setting up guitars (which is how Steve earns a crust). One such story is of the Russian made guitar which was fitted with accordion buttons because the parent company made accordions!  Or the emergency repair neck break which had to be turned round in 24hrs because a gig depended on the guitar being fixed.

Steve Clarke has been a guitar tech for over 40 years and during this time he has re-fretted, repaired, altered, customized and created Relic look-a-like guitars. He is totally passionate about what he does and this is reflected in every job he undertakes. Based in Manchester, UK, Steve has been a guitarist, songwriter and producer playing guitar in bands  such as The Drones and Taxi. Although no longer gigging, Steve’s passion for playing, writing music and sorting out the tech side of things helps him to communicate with his customers as he understands exactly what they need.