Jim Warkway's 1967 Fender Jazz Bass

Here's a rebuild I did a few years ago.

The W. Jeffrey Jones "Proteus"

Perhaps you remember the new prototype humbucker pickups I made for W. Jeffrey Jones a few months ago. Well, those pickups went into a guitar that is currently making the rounds at some guitar shows and feed back is great so far. Here's what one player had to say about it.



"The Proteus is one of the very best electric guitars I've ever played. Not only is the design beautiful and comfortable to play, the clarity of the sound brings out each note that I played like separate voices in a vocal quartet. The harmony comes out rich and united, yet each note has a great vocal quality to it. The guitar responded well to single-note playing as well as more contrapuntal solo jazz guitar work. I couldn't stop playing it and it made me want to keep making music. Truly, any instrument that can inspire creativity is special and this is definitely unique. Kudos to Jeffrey for putting so much love into his work."

Az Samad

It's nice to hear things like that once in a while. Oh, and Jeffrey has ordered some more of those so the shop bustling with black humbucker bobbins right now.

Six String Bliss Retro Zone #10

For the last few months I have been hosting some special Six String Bliss show while Pipes and PT take a break. We are calling them Retro Zone shows because we are covering the lost 12 shows from the guys early work. Show #10 is currently up. If you would like to give a listen just go click on this link. Six String Bliss

The V-90 single coil

I've been working with W. Jeffrey Jones on a lot of new designs lately. We have brought back the classic V-90 pickup from a few years back for some of his newest guitars like the Deamon Sassefrax .
There have been several new P-90 single coil pickups. One of them is the new Tap-90 that features an honest to god old school coil tap. It runs about 8K tapped and about 12.5 K un-tapped. I'm looking forward to seeing these put to use!

Happy Halloween

Words getting around...

Here's another amazing guitar from W. Jeffrey Jones. This model is called Proteus. It sports the new Saturn Set that were developed in a joint effort with Jeffrey. Here's is what Jeffrey had to say about the pickups.


One other defining feature of this particular instrument is the set of pickups, custom-made for this guitar by Clint Searcy of Searcy String Works. I can't say enough about them. I prefer a clean, clear pickup, especially in the neck position. The music I play myself consists of chords that are comprised of close harmonies and a pickup has to be capable of voicing those harmonies without turning them to mud. And the bridge pickup gets up and rocks when you need it. Clint never lets me down with his work. He also gave me black pole screws for an equally clean look, as well as full adjustability of all the poles spaced specifically for the string spread of the Proteus. These are incredible humbuckers that I plan on using regularly in many of my future instruments where humbuckers are called for. I can't say enough about them. They complete the whole package of this versatile guitar.



Check out more information about the guitar HERE

The Saturn Humbucker Set

We're getting the final production details worked out on some of the new pickups. Let me take a moment to tell you about the Saturn Humbucker set.

The Saturn Humbucker Set is comprised of the Anthe Neck pickup and the Janus Bridge pickup. Both of these pickup were born of a desire to offer a very evenly balanced and clear sounding humbucker with crisp response that was geared towards finger style players and jazz tones. Unlike the slightly mismatched coils on many of out rock humbuckers, the coils on the Saturn pickups are perfectly matched for dead silent operation. It was decided that these pickups would not be wax potted because many players feel that unpotted pickups impart a bit more touch responsive reaching to changes in the players approach. The magnetic structures on these coils are also identical to make sure the signal from each coils is a perfect mirror image. We decided to use screw poles in both coils to offer the player the ability to fine tune the poles to perfectly match their playing style and string choice. Four wire leads allow for many wiring options.

The Anthe uses an Alnico 5 magnet and has a DC resistance of about 7.5K ohms. The Janus is identical but weights in with a DC resistance of 13K ohms. Both are available in 50mm or 52mm string spacing. While some of our early prototypes and promotional units have been Zebra with chrome screws the production models will be double black with black screws.

More to come... Stay Tuned!