Picture a small building in the industrial section of Baton Rouge. Walking in, there is a small main office, a demo room and a workshop filled with tools.
All of these spaces have a common feature: guitars hang on every wall. The guitars all have flaws, major and minor. From a broken neck to a tarnished body, guitars from every decade and every maker sit side-by-side waiting for their turn in the hands of Tim Lawson, the man whose job it is to bring them back from the abyss.
Tim’s Guitars Repair and Workshop tucked away on Dallas Drive just off Airline Highway, is the guitar sanctuary owned and operated by Lawson. There, he returns instruments from the grave with the restoration skills that come with 35 years of experience.
In terms of age, Lawson says there is no guitar the shop will refuse. Guitars dating back to 1905 have passed through the shop. Washburns, Martins and even early Gibson mandolins “all have something worthwhile to repair,” Lawson said.
Lawson spent his early years in Tennessee until moving back to his hometown of Baton Rouge to begin grade school. When he began college at the University in the late 1970s, Lawson said that he wanted to play guitar and found himself in a local band that “was playing from Thursday through Sunday every week.”
Two and a half years later, Lawson left the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle for work on the sidelines of the music business. He began teaching lessons for a local music store called Werlein’s for Music. Lawson found that surrounding stores performed restoration work that was riddled with “shoddy workmanship.”
Lawson was called to action by an advertisement in Guitar Player magazine for The Apprentice Shop, a guitar building and repair workshop in Springhill, Tenn. He attended the program and found restoration work from both Werlein’s for Music and Romero’s Music, another successful local operation at the time.
Lawson showed promise at the workshops and returned two more times before establishing a brick-and-mortar operation near the now-demolished Belmont Hotel on Airline Highway. From there, Tim’s Guitars moved around the city before landing on Dallas Drive in 1992. Lawson said the shop’s location is dictated by the industrial codes involved in the business’s chemical-based finishing work.
The shop boasts work for a wide of range of brands such as Guild, Alvarez, Gibson and Fender. Lawson and his employees have specialized training in the restoration of certain makers like Taylor, Martin and USA Ovation, which means attending workshops to adhere to strict product guidelines.
Lawson said he is proud of his accomplishments as a craftsman of guitars. The shop welcomes customers with whatever trouble their instruments suffer. Alongside guitar work, Tim’s Guitars sells a variety of accessories, including high-quality strings, knob sets, straps, road cases and amp stands.
Tim’s Guitars accommodates all customers by offering service to not only guitars, but bass guitars and amplifiers as well.
Tim Lawson places an electric guitar on the shop table for repair Friday afternoon, Feb. 7, 2014 at Tim's Guitar Repair and Workshop.
