Where Broken Guitar Strings Get a Second Act

Every guitarist worth his salt has been there. A snapped guitar string derails a recording session. Or worse, a live show. In the moment, it’s easy to picture a busted-up guitar, but what happens to those guitar strings? 

It’s a curious question. It led Chicago music and cultural juggernaut FRET12 to devise “The String Thing” and so much more since its 2008 founding.

The String Thing is part of the backbone of FRET12, launched in part by Dan Tremonti. But the company sells everything from coffee to vinyl to clever stickers, and perhaps most importantly, a line of rugged and rock n’roll-inspired gear and apparel, with a road-ready story to match. 

“Honestly, it wasn’t one lightning-bolt moment so much as all of the lessons I learned from being inside of the music industry,” said Fret12 Co-Founder Dan Tremonti. You might recognize his last name. Dan is the brother of Creed’s Mark Tremonti and gleaned serious insight into the music industry as the hard-charging band soared to vast heights.

Dan also cut his teeth visiting record stores and skate shops, merely hanging out and absorbing culture, as it were.

“You’d form a relationship with the person behind the counter and they’d turn you on to the next band,” Dan said. 

His older brother’s rise to stardom wasn’t an overnight success, the result of becoming a self-taught musician who eventually played stadiums with Creed.  

“… But nobody gets to see the work that goes on behind the scenes that actually makes that happen—the countless hours alone practicing, the rehearsal spaces, the gear, the green rooms, the work,” Dan told me. “That’s when I came up with the idea of peeling back the curtain, and that’s what led to FRET12.”

The company also grew out of The Sound and the Story, both a tutorial and a documentary pulling back the curtain on the music industry at large, where a dozen different guitar players made up what the company called “The Army of 12,” talking all things live music and guitars. 

Plug in and turn it on up, as FRET12 says.

The String Thing has an even more authentic story behind it. Dan Tremonti recalls the moment vividly. 

“I was side-stage at a show talking to a guitar tech who was restringing a guitar. He opened the bottom drawer of his road case and it was full of neatly coiled used strings, each one with a piece of tape marking the venue and the date,” he said. “I asked what that was about, and he told me he just didn’t like throwing them away; he collected them as mementos from the tour.”

Tremonti was given a batch of strings, tossing them in a junk drawer before dabbling in creating the first String Thing Mummy using an old action figure. Quite clever, a bit humorous but above all, sustainable and eye-catching in the best way for the music enthusiast. 

“Now there’s a hoard of string-wrapped mummies out there, no two alike, each one basically a physical record of somebody’s time as a musician,” Tremonti said. 

Today, FRET12 works hard and plays hard, dabbling in just a bit of everything across the Chicago music scene, hosting sessions for local musicians at buzzed-about Chicago venue The Salt Shed and collaborating with the likes of vintage-inspired Americana retailer Huckberry. 

That partnership centered around The Rail Jacket, a 1920s-style locomotive jacket that has homegrown roots. It was designed, patterned, cut, and sewn entirely in the FRET12 studio in Chicago. To celebrate, FRET12 served up its own beer with Hop Butcher for the World. Cheers, indeed. 

A word to the wise. You can pre-order the Huckberry  jacket here.

“Both brands are aligned in our belief about heritage and function over trend, so the whole process felt less like a deal and more like working with people who actually care about the same things we do,” Dan Tremonti told me. 

FRET12 also cuts and sews products like the Studio Shirt out of Japanese denim at its Chicago workshop, with what Dan Tremonti calls a “worn once, looks broken-in forever” quality.

Tremonti also admires local producers like craftsman John Furlan of Furlan Guitars. “Honestly, most of the brands I gravitate toward share one thing. They’d rather do things the right way than rush to get something out the door,” he added. 

One glance at what FRET12 produces, with its dusty dive bar sense of spirit, seems to say that the entire aesthetic is vintage Americana plus rock n’roll, with a dash of Chicago fun rolled in (Malort and Old Style sold separately). 

FRET12 works as frenetically as bands plotting a cross-country tour. 

Newfound fans and regulars of the company should now look for new product drops on the 12th of every month, not unlike fans tuning into “New Music Friday” for the latest releases.

Beyond rugged menswear, music-inspired art, and the ultra-clever String Thing, FRET12 has a larger mission in mind, its co-founder said.

“Everything we do comes back to the same idea: We want to connect people through music and give them a way to express their love of music in everyday life, and we’re betting that craftsmanship and human connection still matter—maybe now more than ever.” 

For now, it’s mission worthy of an encore for FRET12 out of the Windy City.