In the beginning, Jooky Guitars started as a bit of an arty, in thru the out door idea, that was all about making guitars (and cigar box amps, don’t forget the amps) out of second hand parts, in a ‘Found Art’ meets ‘Upcycling’ kind of way.
This we did for quite a while, making all sorts of pretty paisley guitars and generally having a lot of fun.
However, using second-hand parts can be tiresome and over time, we slowly went for quality over price and whilst that meant that the guitars have costed more to both make and buy, the quality of them has increased dramatically.
At some point we came across Mojo Pickups which is run by Marc Ransley, who we believe is the best, most interesting pickup maker in the world. He brought some great ideas in terms of fantastic sounding pickups and wiring looms that are not only top notch quality, but works of art in their own right, which we have adopted wholesale and again the quality has improved massively.
Moving forward to 2013, we realised that the new guitars we were making were a real leap forward and that we were being constrained by making things to a price, and frankly could no longer see the point. We only make 24 guitars each year (at the very most) and whilst everyone we’ve ever made has been unique, we wanted all of them going forward to be as good as we could possibly make them and not just as good as we could make them for a price. We started to get our bodies and necks made for us specifically for each individual guitar, and we’ve chosen the best possible parts for everything else.
To make a point of this change of approach, we drew a line under the original ‘Ones’ and launched two ranges to replace them, The Jooky Customs, which for the first time would be Custom ordered guitars made to a customer’s requirements and Jooky Classics which would continue to be our own little brainstorms, which people can then buy if they so wish.
Both of these would use the best of everything and generally be as groovy as funk.
Of course, the Customs have to be something we want to make, and as I type this, of the 117 enquiries we’ve had since we started talking Custom, only four have been cool enough for us to want to take on.
That may sound odd, but as I said, we only make 24 guitars a year and if we can’t get excited about them, we really aren’t going to bother. There are loads of great people out there who will make you a Butterscotch Tele, a Sunburst Strat or a ‘59 Burst Les Paul clone, so go to them, as frankly they obviously have a higher boredom threshold than we do.
So to summarise, we make the coolest guitars, for people with the cojones to play them.
We make boutique builders look like Henry Ford.
All our guitars are individual works of art, complete one-offs, signed, numbered and dated.
If you are lucky enough to catch us on a good day, not at all boring and have something interesting to say, we may, just may, talk to you about making you a custom guitar.
And if that makes us sound grumpy, just remember it is because we may laugh, but we take what we do verily serious and we truly are quite lovely when you get to know us.
La la laaaaa
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