Most guitar shops will sell you a brand new Fender Stratocaster, Gibson SG or a big, dreadnaught acoustic guitar — fresh out of a cardboard box and still smelling of wood glue — just as fast as you can whip out a credit card.
But Eric Miller, owner of Hands On Guitars in Centralia, prides himself on providing an entirely different experience to his customers.
“It’s not a huge money maker,” Miller said. “It’s more like a ministry.”
Miller emphasizes quality over quantity at his Centralia shop, where he sells new and used guitars, basses and other items, services those instruments and creates his own custom electric guitars.
Rather than focus on the amount of money coming in and guitars going out, he prioritizes the quality of the customer’s experience. Each person gets a consultation about what guitar might be right for them.
“It’s always been very personal, very one on one,” Miller said. “I treat anyone who walks in here just like they’re the most important person in the world … I’m expensive, and I give people the quality for it.”
He spends between one and three hours setting up each instrument based on the individual needs and desires of its new owner — tweaking string height off the fretboard, or action, filing down sharp fret edges or adjusting a pickup. Little adjustments make for a huge difference in the sound and feel of the guitar and the enjoyment its owner feels.
“I do sell guitars in a box if people beat me up and make me do that,” he said. “But they’re just going to be sorry.”
When a prospective buyer walks into Miller’s shop, which more closely resembles a workshop than a retail sales floor, the first thing he does, after asking about a budget, is size up his client, especially someone new to playing a guitar.
A person’s body size and shape, the length of their arms and the size and strength of their hands all become factors in finding the perfect instrument.
“There’s no one size fits all at all,” he said.
Based on a variety of factors, including the player’s budget, Miller brings out a selection of half a dozen or so instruments from his back room.
An expensive instrument is not always the best quality, he cautioned.
“There are $300 diamonds and $3,000 dogs,” he said.
In addition to being a salesman, Miller, 65, is a trained luthier— a person who builds and repairs stringed instruments.
He started playing guitar at 11 years old, but his lifetime spent as a luthier started with his first vintage guitar — a 1964 Gibson reverse Firebird.
“I was having trouble with one of the frets,” he said.
Miller took the guitar to one of the best luthiers in New York City, who he knew he could trust. However, an apprentice did the work on the electric guitar and when Miller picked it up, the instrument was worse than when it started.
At about 19 years old and with a hardly-playable guitar, Miller took matters into his own hands.
“I had to learn to do it myself,” he said.
He started by buying cheap guitars at swap meets or garage sales, taking them apart and fixing them to sell for a small profit.
Miller was able to become an apprentice for guitar maker Jimmy D’Aquisto and began learning the trade that would become his devotion over the next four decades.
“I went to see him about being an apprentice and it turned into a life-long friendship,” he said.
Miller opened Hands On Guitars in 1984 in Boston, and worked out of his home for 15 years. He later spent 14 years working out of The Matrix in Chehalis before it closed. Since January, he’s been at his new location in Centralia.
In-between selling new guitars and building his own, he does the occasional restoration of a guitar damaged in a flood or other accident.
“It is all word of mouth,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for 35 years so a lot of people in the business know me.”
Today, Miller said his work as a luthier is sought out by roadies to the stars and his custom electric guitars sell for about $9,000.
“I like to think I sell somebody their first and last instrument,” he said.
