“You felt as if you might be in the presence of a Zen master”: Remembering Bill Puplett, the guitar sage and expert luthier loved by Johnny Marr, Adrian Legg and countless players whose instruments he rehabilitated

The late, great luthier Bill Puplett in his workshop; he was an expert in guitars, a miracle worker with repairs.

On the first occasion that Bill Puplett returned an instrument to me (a Guild F-50 jumbo acoustic), my reaction was one of astonishment. There seemed to be only two possible explanations: either he’d purloined the unplayable, pudding-sounding original and substituted this sublime replica for it, or I was losing what passed for my mind.

There was simply no resemblance other than physical to the disappointing box I’d handed in. We sat in his workshop, the tiny converted dining room of his bijou cottage in semi-rural Harrow Weald. He then proceeded to itemise the painstaking adjustments and improvements he’d performed. I resolved immediately to bring him my entire collection of instruments for evaluation, setup and modification as necessary.