blvd. | music
Axe men NICK PLESZ STRINGS SUCCESS AT A CHARLOTTE GUITAR-REPAIR SHOP WITH A ROCKIN’ REPUTATION. story and photos by John Gessner
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here are an estimated 16 million guitar players in the U.S., and, as with many passions, you can’t just have one. Eventually, those guitars need repairs and servicing, creating an opportunity for Nick Plesz, owner of NC Guitar Works near Charlotte’s Camp North End, who is just as passionate about repairing guitars as his customers are about playing them. “[We] literally have over 200 guitars in our shop constantly for repairs. I don’t think anybody has that much work across the nation,” says Plesz, 47. Plesz moved from Pittsburgh to Charlotte in 1998 to start a homebuilding company with his brother, Chris, who had come to North Carolina three years earlier. In 2004, the business was hired to construct a guitar-repair shop in a warehouse. Plesz took on
the project and asked for his payment to be instructions on how to build a guitar. Before his own instrument was completed, the client, Landau Guitar of Harrisburg in Cabarrus County, offered Plesz a job. He spent the next several years learning the business, and in May 2012 he bought the company and renamed it NC Guitar Works. Plesz’s company has thrived during the pandemic, with business doubling over the last 18 months. “We used to be busy with 80 to 100 instruments in the shop. We have been hitting over 200 constantly, and it’s actually kind of out of control,” Plesz says. “I had to stop taking in work for a few weeks, but it was still coming in. It’s hard to tell people, ‘No.’” The first guitar that Nick built was a Gibson Les Paul copy. southparkmagazine.com | 51
