Geoff Luttrell, Owner/Master Guitar Tech
I’ve owned SF Guitarworks since 2001, and have been very lucky to do what I love for a living. I take great pride in in what we do here at the shop. Every day we make instruments play great, look great and sound great. My hope is that when you leave SF Guitarworks, you think “that was awesome!” And if you don’t, I want to hear about it. I work hard to make things right, and that’s never going to change.
Brian Shima, Guitar Technician
Cormac McGrath, Guitar Technician
Cormac McGrath is our resident bass player and wiring wiz. He has studied sound engineer and played bass with many working bands. When he’s not working on guitars, he likes to walk his dogs and play board games. He works at both our San Francisco and Sonoma locations.
Monique Hernandez-Fuentes, Shop Maven
Monique Hernandez-Fuentes is a Bay Area native and cut her teeth at Gelb Music Teaching Institute in Redwood City from 1993 – 2005. She became an SF Guitarworks customer in 2008 and that as they say is history, becoming the SF Guitarworks Shop Manager from 2014 to 2017. She spent a little time working for EMG Pickups, Guitar Tricks and Gimme Radio before rejoining us in late 2019, where she enjoys assessing repairs and getting your instrument back to you in a timely manner. When she’s not at SF Guitarworks, she enjoys working on her blackgaze project in her home studio, gardening, playing with her cat Tora and a nice Syrah. Her brand of choice is PRS Guitars and she loves a good Walrus Audio pedal.
Lewis Santer, Guitar Technician
I took a belt sander to my $20 guitar in junior high to get rid of a thick paint job. It looked rough but actually sounded better. Since then I’ve refined my technique a little by apprenticing with noted vintage restorationist TJ Thompson, participating in the Schoenberg guitar building project with Martin Guitars, and being Production Manager at Ervin Somogyi’s guitarmaking shop from 2004-2011. I make acoustic guitars and Irish bouzoukis and regularly show at the Healdsburg and Montreal handbuilders’ shows. Being a gigging musician keeps me very focussed on great tone, simple and accurate amplification and buttery setups.
In other (and sometimes concurrent) lifetimes I edited a technical manual about almond production, recorded some Irish/Klezmer fusion music for a documentary film, helped run an affordable housing non-profit, and turned bowls.