Ryc Rienks is putting his 20 years of experience as a musical instrument repair technician and business owner in the Seattle area to use repairing guitars, violins, clarinets and other instruments at Tony Corigâs Direct Music Source store in the Basche-Sage Place on Main Street in Baker City. (Baker City Herald/Ed Merriman)

When music store owner Tony Corig needed an instrument repair person, Ryc Rienks was ready

When the instrument repair technician whom Tony Corig relied on left

last summer, Corig, who owns a Baker City music store, had to ship

instruments to Boise, Walla Walla or Portland for repairs.

Until Ryc Rienks came out of retirement to fill the void.

For nearly 20 years in the 1980s and 1990s, Rienks ran an instrument

repair business in the Seattle area that handled repairs for several

large music stores including the Music West chain in Oregon and

Washington.

During the summer, Rienks said he was on a tight schedule to get rental band and orchestra instruments repaired before the start of school. As fall approached he found himself working day and night, repairing a record 56 violins in one day and 96 clarinets on another day.

Rienks served on an air crew in the U.S. Navy in the 1960s and early 1970s, and later toured as a bass player with the legendary group The Drifters before venturing into the musical instrument repair business in Seattle in 1981.

He eventually gave up the busy instrument repair schedule in Seattle, bought a sailboat and spent some time sailing around the Pacific Ocean.

Ryc and his wife, Penny, came to Baker City to enjoy a lifestyle of semi-retirement, volunteer service and pursuit of avocations, including music, writing, fencing and astronomy.

When Penny Rienks, who also enjoyed a music career as a blues singer in the 1960s and 1970s, heard that Corig, who owns Direct Music Source in the Basche-Sage Place, was looking for help, she and Ryc jumped at the opportunity to work part-time.

For the past few weeks, Penny has been working as a cashier and sales clerk when Corig is giving guitar, bass, piano and violin lessons.

Ryc, meanwhile, handles instrument repair jobs as they come in.

“If you can carry it in here, he can fix it,” Penny said.

Corig opened his store in the summer of 2004. During his first four years in business, when instruments were brought in for repairs Corig farmed them out, sometimes locally and sometimes to a shop in Boise.

But the local technician moved on and the Boise repair shop closed down, creating a void in certified instrument repair.

Then Rienks stepped into that void.

“Rienks is a master technician,” Corig said. “He repairs all kinds of instruments from clarinets and trombones to guitars and violins.”

“It’s in-house, personalized service, with a technician who will talk to you,” Ryc Rienks said recently as he wrapped up a clarinet repair job and started working on an acoustic guitar with a string rattle.

Rienks fixed the problem by adjusting the nut and truss rod to arrive at the proper string height and intonation.

Some guitarists have a lighter playing style and can get away with low string settings for fast action. But for aggressive players who “really get in there and dig,” Rienks said the strings need to be adjusted higher to give them room to resonate without vibrating on the frets.

“That’s true whether you’re playing an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar,” said Rienks, who is adept with both types of guitars, including repairing or adjusting the wires, pickups and other components of an electric guitar.

He also repairs and adjusts all types of stringed instruments, as well as brass and woodwind instruments.

He is enjoying getting another chance to use the many hand-made tools he invented when he worked in Seattle.

“My favorite tool is a piece of drumstick. It is perfect for pounding out dents and rounding things out,” he said.

For brass and woodwind instruments such as the trombone or saxophone, a thorough cleaning and lubricating is the best first medicine for an instrument that isn’t working properly or doesn’t sound as good as it once did, Rienks said.

That was the case with a 50-year-old wooden French clarinet he repaired last week.

“When this clarinet came in, it was all green and nasty and ugly. I cleaned up the nickel and silver, put in all new pads and thoroughly cleaned the rest of the instrument,” Rienks said. “The owner gets back a horn worth thousands of dollars for mere hundreds in repairs.”

He said the clarinet was made out of choice African wood, and when he completed the repairs, it was “a superior-sounding instrument” compared to the newer, molded-plastic clarinets.

In addition to selling new and used guitars and basses, amps, PA systems, keyboards and all kinds of band and orchestra instruments, Corig, 57, rents instruments to students enrolled in school band or orchestra programs, and others.

“All musicians deserve to have their instruments working correctly,” Rienks said.

Corig said offering instrument repair is drawing more customers into the store.

However, while he enjoys helping customers get their instruments properly repaired, Corig said giving lessons is his favorite part of owning a music store.

“I am here to build enthusiasm in the students for their instrument of choice,” Corig said. “I am well versed in classical and jazz, but I personalize my lessons to whatever style the students want to learn, including country or rock.”