The Way Things Are Most Of The Time

It’s always nice to have an ethos, it makes life so much more interesting and challenging in a self-restrictive, masochistic kind of way. The reason I mention it is because a few rather cool people are getting-with-the-Jooky idea, and generally liking the guitars we are coming up with.

Which of course is lovely, and I’m really pleased about that. For all of my shy retiring ways, and this all being to amuse myself, a bit of recognition is good. I write this blog, after all, so I'm not kidding myself.

What I probably do not make clear though is what this Jookiness is all about, and maybe I should explain.

Firstly, I wanted us – me – to make things.
This is a departure in my life, and therefore it is about fun.

So: I want to have fun making things.

Secondly, I don’t really like things that are made by the million, even by the dozen. I like one-offs and stuff that is unique. Not that my life is full of rare and vintage bobbins, but if I get the option, I tend toward the oddball and mainly unusual.

So: I want to have fun making things nobody else has.

Thirdly, I like the idea of recycling. I mean, I’m not fighting the seagulls to sift thru your black bags, but I like the idea of making things out of old stuff. More specifically, making bedraggled looking guitars out of second-hand or battered and torn parts that I can pick up from freecycle, classified ads, on guitar forums or Ebay or whatever.

So: I want to have fun making things nobody else has from stuff other people have decided that they don’t need anymore.

Fourthly, whilst being practical and being of a mind that I’d rather finish something by buying a bit or two, instead of waiting forever for one to turn up, I do have a self inflicted rule that pretty much all of the components – body, neck, pickups, tuners etc. – must be second-hand.

This makes things a bit trickier – I can’t just decide that I want particular brands of pickups, say; I have to wait until they are available or go with an alternative. But saying that, it does keep the thing interesting – what would PRS soapbars sound like in a Strat? Does a Seymour Duncan ’59 work with a ceramic Gibson humbucker in the same guitar...? - stuff like that.

And amazingly – and whisper this as it could rock the guitar world to it’s tweedy core – as long as you can make a hole in the guitar so everything fits – most things seem to work nicely so far.

So there we are. The Jooky ethos or mission statement or something:

“I want to have fun making things nobody else has, from stuff other people have decided that they don’t need anymore, even if that can be a pain in the bum sometimes. Because it is cool, and that is a good enough reason for doing most anything.”