Restoration of fine guitars can be performed by the Bruné shop. Past restorations have included fine guitars by makers such as Antonio de Torres, Francisco Simplicio, Hermann Hauser I and II, Gaetano Guadagnini II, Louis Panormo, Johann Gottfried Scherzer, Ignacio Fleta, Manuel Soto y Solares, Enrique Garcia, Manuel Gutierrez, Arcangel Fernandez, Domingo Esteso, Santos Hernandez, Miguel Rodriguez, Manuel Ramírez, José Ramírez, Marcelo Barbero, and 18th century instruments to name but a few. Some of these restorations have been documented and published in trade journals, and for those interested in reading about these, please visit my bibliography of articles.  We have done work for nearly every major collector, dealer, and  major auction houses.  All work is performed by Richard and/or Marshall Bruné, we work without any assistants.

The importance of having your instrument properly restored cannot be emphasized enough. We often receive older instruments for restoration that had horrific previous work.   At the time this might have seemed to have been "cost effective" or an "improvement" , but  it now represents a loss of value amounting to thousands of dollars.  Sometimes, an instrument is entirely beyond practical restoration.  In those cases, we will advise the client to not have any further work done on the instrument  to preserve whatever fragments of originality remain in the instrument.  Our first rule of restoration is to do no more harm.

 With the addition of Marshall Bruné to the shop, his skill as a violin maker (Violin Making School of America, class of 2012) have come to the forefront in advancing the methods and approaches we use in our restoration work.  Many of these traditional restoration techniques used in the violin community are time consuming, but they have proven with experience to be the right approach to preserving the integrity of these fine musical instruments.

We can only give firm estimates of restoration costs once we have seen and examined the instrument in person, estimates cannot be accurately given based on photos.  However, it is helpful for us to see photos of your instrument before taking any action, to have a general idea of whether or not it would be cost effective to restore the instrument.

 If you would like to send an instrument for estimate, please see our packing/shipping instructions and notify us  before sending it to us.  Finally we ask your patience when having restoration work performed.  It is something which cannot be rushed, nor done on a budget.