Chris started as a guitar tech over 20 years ago, fixing up guitars to play in rock bands in high school. He focused on playing and worked on instruments for fun through the 1990’s.
In 1999, he decided to focus more on professional repair and attended Minnesota State College South East Technical, or Red Wing Tech, to learn violin family repair and guitar building and repair under Lisbeth Nelson-Butler and Dave Vincent.
After graduation with honors, he went to work for Simon Mc Hugh, a violin dealer from England, in Wichita, Kansas. Simon is an expert bow restorer and helped Chris focus on this aspect of repair, while also working on fine violin family instruments.
In 2002, Chris went to Victoria British Columbia to study advanced bow restoration with Michael Vann, a well known bowmaker. In 2005, Chris brought his wife Charity and their 2 boys to Nashville to do bow work for The Violin Shop. In August 2006, their third son was born and in January 2008, Chris joined the team at Williams Fine Violins and Luthier Studios as a bow and instrument restorer.
With Chris’ knowledge of not only violins and bows but in fretted instruments as well (especially mandolins) he is the man to go to for professional mandolin set-up and repair.
