The Story of our Plek Station
A visit to NAMM in January 2016 introduced us to the Plek Station. It was an incredible piece of machinery that acted as a tool that not only performs precise fret dressing, nut slotting/shaping, bridge slotting and engraving but also helped with quality control and research and development. The whole team fell in love and we knew we needed to bring it home. The Plek Station was absolutely groundbreaking. It would open up many doors and possibilities for our technicians and the way customers were serviced. A Plek Station meant that customers could get the most precise fret-work done on their guitars. And the best part about it is that each guitar’s serial number and settings were saved into the database. If the guitar needed work again in a few years’ time, or even if they wanted another guitar set up identically, they could just bring up that guitar’s profile and it would be perfect - every single time. So, we seriously thought about it. It was a big financial investment, but our customers mean the world to us, and it meant that we could give them exactly what they deserved.
It was a big decision, and at the time, there were very few Plek Stations in use in Canada. At NAMM 2017, we bought it. But, we had one condition - that it was delivered in time for our annual summer music festival - CosmoFEST - which was occurring on June 3 that year. We had converted a former play-test room to house the new Plek Station. The room was glass-walled and sat directly across from our service centre’s desk. Contractors were hired the weekend before CosmoFEST to set it up in the room. They had to run air compressor lines, and install new telephone lines and computers in the room.
We wanted it to be a full retail and customer service experience - you can watch your (or another customer’s) guitar being worked on by this incredible machine. In fact, there are only four locations in the entire country that has a Plek Station - one is strictly a repair shop, another is a guitar distributor, and the third is a small boutique guitar store. So, it really is a sight to see!