Barrett Culpepper

 Owner, Master Luthier, Technical Director and Head Instructor

Barrett Culpepper is the owner and Master Luthier of Southeast Guitar Repair and the technical director and head instructor of Southeast Guitar Repair Academy.

His career in lutherie began more than 20 years ago when, in his twenties, he enrolled in a local guitar-building school. He graduated in December 2005 with an education focused primarily on building guitars.

The experience gave Barrett a strong foundation in the craft, but it also revealed an important gap in traditional lutherie education.

In a 12-week program spent building multiple guitars, there was only so much time available to perform the setups, fretwork, electronics work, structural repairs, and other services required inside a professional repair shop. A student could receive a valuable education in guitar construction without completing enough repairs to become prepared for the pace and variety of a working repair environment. It was a bit short on the repair side of training. 

That realization would later influence the entire philosophy behind Southeast Guitar Repair Academy.

A few months after graduating, Barrett earned the opportunity to apprentice under Mike Marshall at Southeast Guitar Repair. It was not an easy position to obtain. The experienced technicians working in the shop told Barrett he had won the lottery of jobs. As his career progressed, he realized how right they were.

The apprenticeship gave Barrett the opportunity to move beyond theory and learn through repetition, observation, problem-solving, and daily work on customer-owned instruments. He developed his abilities inside a real repair shop where quality mattered, customers had expectations, and every guitar presented a different challenge.

Barrett approached that opportunity with the mindset that has continued to define his career:

“If you’re going to take the time to do something, do it right.”

A natural perfectionist, Barrett takes pride in every detail of his work. That commitment to doing things correctly helped him build a loyal clientele of happy customers early in his career. Guitar owners learned that they could trust both his technical ability and the care he gave their instruments.

Over the years, Barrett advanced from apprentice to Master Luthier and eventually purchased Southeast Guitar Repair from Mike Marshall. He has since spent more than two decades working professionally at the bench, refining his methods, solving complex repair problems, training technicians, and establishing the technical standards that define the shop’s work.

He has developed new repair techniques and created products for the lutherie field, but his greatest contribution may be his ability to turn years of hands-on knowledge into a system that can be taught to others.

The foundation of Southeast Guitar Repair Academy began as an internal training course Barrett developed for technicians hired by Southeast Guitar Repair. He needed a consistent way to teach the shop’s repair methods, expectations, and quality standards without leaving critical knowledge to chance.

The results exceeded expectations.

The system helped new technicians learn quickly and develop practical repair abilities, including people who entered without previous formal lutherie schooling or professional repair experience. Barrett and Mindy realized that the same system could give aspiring guitar repair professionals everywhere access to the kind of focused, real-world education Barrett had once worked so hard to find.

That internal training system became Southeast Guitar Repair Academy.

Unlike programs centered primarily on guitar construction, SEGRA was intentionally designed around the work technicians perform in a professional guitar repair shop. Barrett’s curriculum reflects the realities of the bench, the standards expected by paying customers, and the methods developed through thousands of completed repairs.

His teaching is not based only on what he learned in school more than 20 years ago. It is shaped by decades of continued professional work, changing instruments, difficult repairs, customer expectations, technician development, and the daily responsibility of leading a working guitar repair operation.

As head instructor, Barrett teaches students the techniques he has developed and perfected throughout his career. As technical director, he protects the repair standards behind the curriculum and ensures that SEGRA’s education remains connected to real work happening inside Southeast Guitar Repair.

Today, students around the world learn from the knowledge Barrett first developed through guitar-building school, apprenticeship, professional experience, and more than two decades at the bench. SEGRA graduates have carried that education into their own careers and businesses, furthering the standard of professional guitar repair within the industry.

For Barrett, seeing those students develop their abilities, serve customers, and succeed in the field confirms what he and Mindy believed when they first decided to share the shop’s internal training system:

This knowledge was too valuable to remain inside one repair shop.

Mindy Culpepper

 Co-owner, Entrepreneur, Brand Builder and Business Growth Strategist

Mindy Culpepper is the entrepreneurial and strategic force behind the growth of Southeast Guitar Repair and Southeast Guitar Repair Academy.

Barrett possessed extraordinary technical talent. Mindy recognized how to bring that talent to the masses.

When Mindy began building the business around Barrett’s work, Southeast Guitar Repair was a small, three-bench repair shop. She saw the potential to create something much larger: a distinctive, trusted brand that guitar owners would recognize, remember, and seek out.

Through strategic marketing, brand positioning, customer communication, relationship building, and an unwavering focus on the client experience, Mindy helped transform Southeast Guitar Repair into an internationally recognized guitar repair business. Today, clients ship their instruments to the shop from across the United States and around the world, and the company has earned recognition and authorization from some of the guitar industry’s leading manufacturers.

Mindy’s role has always extended far beyond promoting the work. She helped create the brand, establish its voice, communicate its value, build customer trust, and develop the experience that keeps clients returning and referring others.

Her ability to grow a service-based business comes from more than 20 years of entrepreneurial and customer-facing experience. Her professional background includes photography, sales, real estate, administration, retail, and customer service. She has also invested in professional sales and marketing training and applied that knowledge inside businesses where every decision directly affected customer acquisition, reputation, and revenue.

In many of the businesses Mindy created, she began as the only employee. She was responsible for the marketing, sales, customer communication, scheduling, administration, service delivery, and daily operations. Growth depended on her ability to create demand, recognize opportunities, understand the customer, and produce results.

That experience taught Mindy to view a business from both sides: as the owner responsible for its success and as the consumer deciding whether to trust it.

She instinctively recognizes what makes one business stand out while another blends into the competition. She understands how potential customers evaluate a company, what makes them feel confident enough to take the next step, and what kind of experience turns a first-time client into a loyal customer.

Mindy also recognized that Barrett’s knowledge and teaching methods could reach far beyond the technicians working inside their own shop. What began as an internal training system became Southeast Guitar Repair Academy, giving aspiring guitar repair professionals around the world access to the techniques, standards, and real-world knowledge developed inside Southeast Guitar Repair.

While Barrett created the Academy’s technical curriculum and repair instruction, Mindy built the brand, platform, customer journey, marketing strategy, and business structure that brought his knowledge to the masses.

Together, they created an Academy that teaches more than guitar repair. SEGRA helps students turn technical ability into a professional career, a trusted business, and a future built around work they genuinely love.

Today, Mindy also shares her business-building experience directly with guitar repair professionals through SEGRA’s business education and Private Business Growth Assessment. She helps owners see their businesses through the eyes of their customers, strengthen their positioning, distinguish themselves from competitors, identify overlooked opportunities, and create a focused strategy for sustainable growth.

Mindy did not simply market a guitar repair shop.

She took the business surrounding Barrett’s talent and helped build it into an internationally recognized brand.

Southeast Guitar Repair

The Working Repair Shop Behind the Academy

Southeast Guitar Repair Academy was built inside a real, working guitar repair shop.

The techniques, systems, and quality standards taught through SEGRA are applied every day at Southeast Guitar Repair by Barrett, Gavin, and the shop’s team of professional technicians. They work on customer-owned instruments, solve real repair challenges, train developing technicians, and uphold the standards that have earned the shop the trust of guitar owners and leading guitar manufacturers.

Our curriculum is not based on theory alone. It continues to grow from decades of hands-on experience inside an active repair business.