The rock ’n’ roll repair crew at Royal Oak’s Guitar Hi-Fi

A strip mall in a Detroit suburb houses a dream team of rock ’n’ roll repairmen — and this in-demand duo has worked with some pretty big stars.

Guitar Hi-Fi is the home of Jason “The Rock Mechanic” Portier and Tom Currie’s Detroit Amp Lab, who have been at the store since it opened in 2022 in a former barbershop on Washington Avenue. In addition to Portier’s and Currie’s repair services, the store offers new and used musical instruments and equipment.

Together, Portier and Currie have decades of experience. Both got their starts doing their own thing and later worked at Echopark Guitars, a guitar manufacturer that relocated from Los Angeles to the Detroit area in 2017.

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Portier grew up Lansing and is a self-described “DIY guy” who says he worked in construction starting at a young age.

“I grew up that way,” he tells Metro Times of his penchant for repairs. “Mostly, it was financial. One, that’s just what my family did, and yeah, it was also cheaper.”

His love of guitars and woodworking led him to enroll in the Galloup School of Guitar Building and Repair in Big Rapids, and in his 30s, he was much older than his fellow students.

“I had already been fixing my own stuff for years, and had worked at several guitar shops ... and I had also been a carpenter,” Portier says. “So having all that behind me when I went as the older guy, I think I ended up getting way more out of it than a lot of people. Some of them had never touched a power tool in their life.”

The course requires students to build two guitars. “If you can build them, you can fix them,” he says.

Portier relocated to the Detroit area in 2011, though he was already familiar with the area. “I mean, I’ve been coming down here my whole life, to go to shows and play gigs and just hang out,” he says. For about a decade he has played in a local honky tonk band called the West Seven Mile Renegades, and has also performed with Ryan Dillaha as well as in an AC/DC tribute band called ICY/DICEY.

“I’m just a guitar player that needed a day job,” he says.

Calling himself the “Rock Mechanic,” Portier prides himself on what he calls his “turn and burn” speed.

“I try to get stuff in and out within two weeks, which, for most shops, that’s real fast,” he says.

Some of the big-name clients he has served include Todd Rundgren, multiple members of Queens of the Stone Age, Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Rich Robinson of the Black Crowes, and Dweezil Zappa.

“I mean, whatever,” Portier nonchalantly says. “They’re all guitar players … I really try to look at everything the same, just totally objective, whether it’s the shittiest Squier to a $10,000 thing.”

Meanwhile, Currie also says he has been a longtime tinkerer and musician, playing in local bands like Saturday Looks Good to Me, Red Iron Orchestra, I the Magician, and Kind Beast.

He says he got his start “pretty much just playing in bands when I was younger, and just just showing an interest in fixing things … and it turned into this.”

He first set up shop in the garage of his Ferndale home in 2014, and was soon performing repairs for acts like Neil Young, the War on Drugs, and Alvvays.

“I just got a phone call,” he says of his repairs for Young. “The night before in Cleveland, he was on stage, kicking his amp. I saw a video of it. I got a phone call around noon, one of the runners from Pine Knob drove it out here, and I got it back to him by like four or five o’clock.”

Aside from guitar amps and pedals, Currie also specializes in servicing Tape Echo and Echoplex machines from the 1960s and ’70s, which create echo-like effects by recording sound on a magnetic tape, which is then played back at a delay.

“I get them shipped here from really all over the country,” he says of the machines. “For a while it was like one a week. It was hard to keep up.”

He adds, “I love working on those more than anything.”

Currie says his love of Tape Echo machines started when he got his first one in his 20s.

“I couldn’t get it working, and just took it apart and figured out how it works,” he says. “And they’re really pretty simple, once you figure it out.”

He says he prefers older technology because, “the old stuff was made to be worked on. It was made to be serviced and fixed. The new stuff is [disposable]. You can fix them, but repairs might cost as much as a new one.”

He adds, “These old Fender amps, nothing beats them, really.”

Guitar Hi-Fi is located at 607 S. Washington Ave., Royal Oak; 248- 808-6769; guitarhifi.com.