The new guy... (Willian Jeffery Jones guitars)

I have been talking lately to Jeffery Jones. He is a ridiculously talented sculptor and luthier out of Neosho Missouri. His fretless guitars are starting to generate a buzz in the jazz end of the pool and he is now looking for someone to make some pickups that are more to his liking. His comments to me were very specific ... he needed P-90 and he needed them to be humbucking.

This got me thinking about a similar request I had about a year ago. George Thorogood tours with about 6 guitars. These are specially built Gibsons and all of them sound very different. Sometimes this can lead to strange issues. One of the guitars his tech was working on just sounded too bright and thin no matter what they did to it. I was asked to try to build something to beef up the tone of this guitars in a Dog Ear P-90 style and it needed to be humbucking. I came up with 3 different designs for George to try out. In the end he decided the guitar was just too bright sounding for any pickups to fox and he opted to use a preamp to shape the tone of that problem guitar. Since they didn't use the pickups they sent them back and thanked me for trying to tame the beast.

I was disappointed... I always am when I fail to give someone exactly what they want. But what can you do? They are good pickups... just not for this guitar. So the humbucking P-90s went in a box in the shop and have sat there ever since.

Until now ! I have resurrected two of these pickup designs to see how they sound a WJJ guitar. I am very excited at the prospect of seeing some Searcy String Works pickups in the William Jeffery Jones guitars. After talking to him on the phone I can tell you that he has some big surprises in the works. But we'll talk about that later.

I would like you to meet Leif Renwall (Le-Re pickups revisited)

Maybe some of you have read the epic saga of how I was asked to rebuild two very strange 1950's lap steel pickups for a guy named Kari "Max" Laine in Finland. The guitar was made in Finland by a company called Malmström. The pickups were made for Malmström by an other Finnish company called Le-Re. Le-Re is short for Leif Renwall. Well, Max has been busy tracking down as much information on these remarkable instruments as he can. He has found them as far away as Australia. Every once in a while Searcy String Works gets up dates from him. His latest fine is nothing short of amazing! But don't take my word for it...

Hi Clint, I visited Mr. Leif Renwall, the maker of those Le-Re pickups, yesterday at his home in Helsinki. He is 82, and still doing fine. He told me he actually used to buy earphone sets (he thinks the brand was "Olympia") and dismantle them to get the coils/magnets. So we were right about the source. He thinks he made around 30 of such pickups, so that would probably be the total production of those guitars. I know the whereabouts of six, I wonder where the rest are... He has long lost his own guitar, but was delighted to see mine with the restored pickup. See attached picture! The both pickups are still working fine, so thanks again!

Regards, kari

How cool is that? I am very happy to know that my rebuild met with the approval of Mr. Renwall. And remember, if you have one of these fine historic guitars be sure to drop me a line. Max and I would really like to hear from you.