Some custom motorcycle builders grow up riding and wrenching, and that early start is obvious in their work. On the flip side, 25-year-old Nick Hooper’s been fiddling with bikes for less than three years now?but you wouldn’t think it, looking at this perfectly proportioned Honda CB750.
Nick lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he works as a music producer and session guitarist. A friend got him onto his first bike, a Honda CB350, just a few years ago. He jumped in with both feet, teaching himself to maintain the little Honda via YouTube videos and online forums.

After a few months of daily riding, Nick needed something more capable and reliable?so he bought a Ducati Panigale 899.
?It was a blast to ride,? he says, ?but I quickly missed the character that the old Honda had. In the back of my mind I wanted to get back on a retro machine that didn?t perform perfectly all the time.?
?So one fateful day, I was talking to a client that I was editing and mixing a few songs for. He was telling me about his old CB750, which he had been struggling to get running after a crash in the rain.?
?He said he was considering selling the bike, so I offered instead to accept the bike as payment for the work I was doing for him.?

They reached an agreement, and Nick soon had the 1975 Honda CB750 home and ready to diagnose. ?Originally my intention was to just rebuild the engine,? he tells us, ?and make a few aesthetic changes to make it look like the cool cafe racers I saw on...