William Jeffrey Jones Arcadia Skull and Roses Electric Guitar

I don’t know what it is about William Jeffrey Jones Guitars, but he keeps putting out one beautiful guitar after another. The guy is extremely talented and continues to prove that time and time again. Here he is with a new creation called the Arcadia Skull and Roses.

-Arcadia Skull and Roses Specifications-
Body: chambered walnut with bookmatched maple top, handcarved maple applique
Neck: bolt-on walnut angled 3×3 headstock, ebony faceplate, carved logo, dual-action trussrod
Fretboard: ebony, 12″ radius, Mother of Pearl sidemarkers
Scale length: 24.625″, 24 frets
Nut: graphite (options available), 1.7″ width
Pickup: Searcy String Works Saturn humbuckers w/wooden covers
Switching: volume, 3-way selector
Bridge: black hardtail
Tuners: Wilkinson 3×3, Grover style
Finish: aniline dye, cherry-tinted Danish Oil and Tru-oil neck
Weight: 8 lb 2 oz

William Jeffrey Jones Guitars iO Longhorn

William Jeffrey Jones is at it again. This time he has a variant on his iO design that he calls the iO Longhorn. The iO Longhorn features a one piece Walnut top with a maple veneer accent, maple neck, Macassar ebony fretboard, and Lollar P90s. The iO Longhorn is a beautifully designed guitar and the one piece Walnut top is just gorgeous. Walnut is really becoming one of my favorite woods from a visual standpoint and this is largely due to all the beautiful Walnut tops William Jeffrey Jones is using. This is another guitar that is currently available for sale from William Jeffrey Jones Guitars. To learn more about this guitar, visit:
William Jeffrey Jones iO Longhorn

iO Longhorn Specifications:
Body: one-piece walnut top/maple veneer accent/walnut back
Neck: maple, angled 6-in-line headstock, walnut faceplate, ebony logo inlay, dual-action trussrod
Fretboard: Macassar ebony, 12″ radius, Mother of Pearl sidemarkers
Scale length: 25.5″, 24 frets
Nut: graphite (options available), 1.7″ width
Pickup: Lollar P90s
Switching: volume, tone, 3-way selector
Bridge: tune-o-matic
Tuners: Gotoh locking (nice!)
Finish: Danish Oil and Tru-oil
Weight: 7 lb 14 oz

The Daemon Sassefrax Electric Guitar From William Jeffrey Jones Guitars

I just got word that William Jeffrey Jones has a new guitar currently available. The guitar is called The Daemon Sassefrax and features a beautifully contoured Sassafras body, cherry neck, east indian rosewood fretboard, and a pair of reverse-wound Searcy String Works P90s. The grain on the Sassafras body is just beautiful and really fits the organic style of the new William Jeffrey Jones Daemon design. The guitar also features glyphic “tattoos” of inlaid ebony which adds a nice touch to the back of the cherry neck. I really like William Jeffrey Jones designs and this new model is no exception. He continues to put out one beautiful guitar after another. The price for this one is only $3200.00. That a a really good price for a fully contoured William Jeffrey Jones guitar. You can get more information on this guitar by clicking on the link below:
The Daemon Sassefrax From William Jeffrey Jones Guitars

The Daemon Sassefrax Specifications:
Body: solidbody sassafras
Neck: cherry, dropped-down 6-inline headstock,dual-action trussrod
Fretboard: East Indian rosewood, 12″ radius, Mother of Pearl sidemarkers
Scale length: 25.5″, 24 frets
Nut: graphite, 1 5/8″ width
Pickups: P90s
Switching: volume, 3-way selector
Bridge: hardtail
Tuners: Gotoh
Finish: Danish Oil
Weight: 5 lbs, 12 ounces

William Jeffrey Jones Kronos Fretless Electric Guitar

This time around I wanted to show the Kronos Fretless 6 electric guitar from William Jeffrey Jones Guitars. The Kronos body style is one of my favorite designs, if not my favorite design, from William Jeffrey Jones. This particular guitars is a fretless guitar, which as you probably guessed means it has no frets. The Kronos Fretless 6 electric guitar shows the organic style of building that William Jeffrey Jones is known for. It features a beautiful one piece Walnut top, soft maple back, Honduran Rosewood neck, and fretless ebony fretboard. William Jeffrey Jones is building some of the most beautiful guitars available and the Kronos Fretless 6 is one of my favorite guitars he has done. It is a perfect example of the natural and organic style of William Jeffrey Jones Guitars.

-Specifications-
Body: Semi-hollow soft maple w/ one-piece, air-dried walnut top
Neck: Honduran rosewood, 3×3 headstock, dual-action trussrod, moderate V carve
Fretboard: Fretless ebony, 24 frets, 12″ radius, maple slot inlays
Scale length: 660 mm (26″)
Nut: Ebony, 1.70″ width
Pickups: Single Kent Armstrong humbucker, covered
Switching: Volume control only
Bridge: Sculpted ebony floating bridge w/hard maple saddle
String spread: 2 3/16″
Tuners: Black Grover locking 3×3
Body finish: Danish oil
Neck finish: Natural (none)
Total weight: 6 pounds, 6 ounces

An Interview With William Jeffrey Jones of William Jeffrey Jones Guitars

Interview by Ron of Boutique Guitar Resource

Boutique Guitar Resource: Can you give us some information on your background and what got you interested in art and sculpture?
William Jeffrey Jones: Since I was very young – before gradeschool – I loved to make things and draw. My parents are both craftspeople and I grew up around the philosophy of DIY (do-it-yourself). My mother is a perfectionist and my father is a resourceful kinda guy who thinks constantly about different things to build. We had a wood shop as far back as I can remember and I was using scrollsaws when I could barely see over the saw table. My family wasn’t “artsy” so much as it was “craftsy” in a Missouri Ozarks kinda way. People around me just did things themselves, whether it was clothing or funiture or you name it.

Throughout my school-age years, I continued learning how to be a craftsman and create. My favorite thing to do as a child was drawing hundreds of car, airplane, and boat designs in paper tablets. It’s rather ironic that 40 years later, I still operate the exact same way.

However, when I entered the Tulsa University art program, my whole life felt like it just began. I realized that all my visual ideas and philosophical eccentricity wasn’t so eccentric after all. People closest to me think I changed, but I really just let myself become myself and I’ve never even considered doing anything but art for the rest of my life.

Boutique Guitar Resource: You spent a lot of time working as a full-time commercial sculptor. What type of work were you doing and what are some of your favorite pieces that you developed during this time?
William Jeffrey Jones: I began my “art career” thinking I wanted to be a fine artist or one who exhibited in galleries, but commercial work was always the means by which I could have some income without having to flip burgers or push shopping carts. I also grew more as an artist out of necessity while a commercial artist.

Some of the first commercial sculpture I did was for the architectural ornament industry. Fountains, decorative panels, columns, planters… name it. I even did my share of ducks and bunnies for yard ornament production. That kinda swung me into exhibition sandsculpture and larger commercial displays for malls and a variety of businesses. I think I did a sandsculpture in almost every state East of Colorado in a period of only a couple years. All those gigs were large scale projects. Some – like a Santa Claus I sculpted for a store in Germany – were as much as 35-feet high.

I was also doing smaller-scale figure projects for the gift and figurine industry to fill in the gaps of my work schedule. When I was getting tired of travelling, I sent porfolios out to the toy companies and landed some toy work that led to a staff sculptor gig for McFarlane Toys. It’s all about the portfolio, kids.

I think I spent just under 5 years with McFarlane, then I decided to move back to Missouri and build a new house and studio where I worked freelance for the toy industry for a few more years. I still live there and work out of that studio.

While at McFarlane, I really got the opportunity to sculpt some cool action figures. I was one of their sculptors who had a lot of anatomy experience, so I also sculpted a lot of realistic pieces, like sports figures and movie characters. Between those, however, I got to sculpt some of my favorite pieces, sometimes designing them on the fly. My specialty in the toy industry was female figures, so I was thrilled every time I got a chick figure assignment. Some memorable pieces from those days were McFarlane’s Dorothy from their Twisted Land of Oz line, Mary Slaughter from a Clive Barker line, Camille Noir from a Clive Barker Tortured Souls line, and Elizabeth Bathory sitting in a tub of blood. The two Ravenspawn figures that I sculpted for McFarlane are also still my faves.

Some of my other favorites since that time were Sin City’s Shellie and Goldie, Resident Evil’s Ada Wong – all for NECA, and a couple of collectible figurines for a Buffy the Vampire Slayer line. Those are the standouts off the top of my head, but I sculpted a huge number of figures, some of which I can barely remember, but at least I have my portfolio to remind me. It’s all about the portfolio, kids!

Note: To see more of William Jeffrey Jones’ sculpture work, visit:
William Jeffrey Jones Sculptor

Boutique Guitar Resource: How did you make the leap from being a full-time commercial sculptor to designing and building hand carved guitars?
William Jeffrey Jones: Throughout my life I’d always worked in wood, everything from fine furniture to construction work. I’ve also played musical instruments, sang, and composed music for as long as I can remember. I’ve played guitar steadily for over 30 years, though my trumpet chops are really rusty these days. Building my first guitar was really just a matter of deciding to do so. I already had a great background in woodworking and 3-Dimensional design. I decided that if I could sculpt a portrait head 3/4″ high from scratch, I could certainly sculpt a guitar.

One of my other hallmarks in the toy industry was my clean, crisp style. The precision and attention to detail that I incorporate into my guitars is really nothing more than an extension of the way I’ve always worked.

My first guitars were a bit more “normal” than they could have been, but I was getting familiar with the territory before cutting loose. After I built about 5-6 instruments, one day I was speaking with a good friend who’s been a director of my work for years. He said point-blank – as I always expected him to do – “the guitars you’ve been building don’t look anything like guitars Jeffrey Jones would build.” I knew exactly what he meant and I’ve stepped up my game to more closely resemble the sculpture and design work I’ve been known for for years. I’ve really just scratched the surface, though.

Boutique Guitar Resource: How does designing and building guitars differ from working as a commercial sculptor and in what ways is it similar?
William Jeffrey Jones: One of the biggest ways they differ is that I don’t have to answer to a whole heirarchy of directors, product managers, and intellectual property owners for each project I do. When creating a commissioned guitar, there’s only one person that I have to please (besides myself, of course) and that’s the client. Otherwise, when I’m building especially unique guitars for the sake of my own expression, the main person I have to please is me, but I set the bar pretty high for myself. Higher than most other people would set it for me.

As far as how the two are similar, I still work the same way in that I design like crazy until the idea really moves me, then I work almost obsessively until I turn that idea into a reality.

Boutique Guitar Resource: Did you have any formal education or are you a self-taught luthier?
William Jeffrey Jones: I don’t have any formal education as a luthier, so I suppose you have to say that I’m self-taught. But, in a way, you can say that I was taught by a professional craftsman, given my experience. I knew enough to know what I didn’t know and therefore seek out those answers – either by trial-and-error or by simply knowing whom I needed to ask. Does that make sense? The precision with which I’ve had to work as a commercial sculptor was more than enough experience to enable a smooth lateral shift to the precision required by luthiery. It also helped that my standards of craftsmanship were so high. They still are. And getting higher.

For each “successful” guitar I’ve completed, there are probably 4-6 that were learning experiences and will never see the light of day outside my shop, so I’ve built a lot more guitars than those that appear in my portfolio. While I don’t have the instrument repair experience or the years of working for other makers, I do have a large amount of guitar building and design experience. When you look at my intruments or pick them up and play them, that amount of experience should shine through.

Boutique Guitar Resource: Where does the inspiration come from when you are designing your guitars?
William Jeffrey Jones: A lot of it comes from my affinity for historical styles of art and architecture juxtaposed with the contemporary object. I describe my visual philosophy sometimes as that of a steampunk. Instead of a “cyber” punk who lives in a world of computer software and hardware, I think in terms of the more classic ornamentation. If I had the time, I’d engrave scrolls and any number of classic adornments on even my drywall hammer.

I’ve said on many occasions that contemporary guitar hardware looks so generically mechanical, like it was manufactured to be a part of an industrial heating sytem. The same is true of a number of guitars out there.
I want my work to be more organic and personal than that. While I incorporate commercially manufactured parts in some of my guitars, I also design and build as much of the instrument as I can in order to compliment my original scheme or motif. The bridges on my Satyrn and Proteus models are a good example. If I were more of a machinist, I’d design my own tuners in a heartbeat.

Boutique Guitar Resource: Your “Syrena” guitar is just breathtaking. Can you walk us through the design and building process of this guitar?
William Jeffrey Jones: That’s a very good example of my process. After having created the Dragonwing, I wanted to incorporate a female figure into an instrument to bring my guitars that much closer to my sculptural work. The mermaid motif was the perfect bridge, so I drew a large number of mermaid designs, working them out within my iO shape. The iO is really my favorite shape to work with and play.

Once I’d arrived at a concept drawing I liked, I sculpted the piece in clay so that I could think my way around the design and easily make any adjustments that needed to be made, from the standpoints of both the image and the ergonomics. I wanted to make sure such a serious ornament was comfortable to hold and play, before I ever touched the wood I’d chosen for the body. For that reason, people who consider owning and playing my guitars can know that I’ve thought hard about these types of issues and addressed them.

With the clay completed, I began carving the body using the clay as my reference. Since I’d already sculpted the image once, I was familiar enough with it to be comfortable to just start removing wood and watch the Syrena guitar take shape a little at a time. I made a few changes on the fly to the bridge area based upon the way I wanted to incorporate the tune-o-matic bridge and make it look more like an integral part of the guitar, rather than just an added piece of hardware. For my other guitars that use a tune-o-matic, I prefer to inset them into the body for just that reason.

When the guitar was all carved and the cavites routed, it was time to sand the snot out of every nook and cranny to 1000 grit. After all, I don’t use a film finish on my carved guitars, because a glossy film would make the carvings look like cheap, cast plastic. Every millimeter of the wood has to be as perfectly smooth and devoid of scratches or tool marks as possible, because it’s not going to get filled with vinyl or covered over with lacquer or polyurethane.

Boutique Guitar Resource: When building a guitar, what is your favorite part of the building process?
William Jeffrey Jones: I enjoy so many of the aspects of producing my guitars, but I suppose I really, really love designing. It’s a very engaging part of the process for me. I arrive at a direction or goal to pursue – even if it’s a vague sort of through-a-glass-darkly sort of goal – then I work toward it like I’m solving a puzzle.

I have to also say that one of my favorite parts of the building process is shaping and contouring the guitar. I work directly in the wood with everything from angle grinders, knives, and chisels to rasps and files or sandpaper. To me, that’s when the real magic happens of bringing a 2-dimensional drawing to life as a 3-dimensional object that’s not just intended as something to look at, but something the human body interacts with and uses to create more art beyond the instrument itself. The actual complexity of that task gives me goosebumps to think about, which is why I do it.

Boutique Guitar Resource: What are some of your favorite wood combinations to use for your guitar bodies?
William Jeffrey Jones: Personally, I prefer domestic hardwoods. I’ve got lifelong experiences with woods such as walnut, cherry, ash, maple, and of course, oak, but I don’t use oak in my guitars. It’s great for furniture, but I find its toughness is also its drawback when it comes to tonal qualities. Walnut and cherry are some of my absolute favorites to work with. I get any quantity of those I want or need just minutes from my studio at a local sawmill owned by a good friend of mine.

I use maple quite a bit for tops and especially necks, but I do use a soft maple for bodies. Our local soft maple is one of my favorite tonewoods for electric guitars.

Boutique Guitar Resource: Do you have some particular woods you prefer to use for fretboards and necks?
William Jeffrey Jones: I use some combinations of domestic and exotic woods in my necks, preferring to laminate the blanks for stability and stiffness. Using a combination of different woods, I can highlight some specific qualities. Rosewood is one of my favorite necks, especially with a cherry or walnut body.

Hard maple is one of my basic favorites. It’s got a nice brightness to it without being too “brittle” or trebly, tonewise. Walnut is a good neck, not unlike mahogany, but it’s kind of dark at times. I mean “not bright” when I say “dark.” Then again, it can be just right like on a couple of my DonnaKay models. I do like to brighten the walnut up and stiffen it a bit with some maple stringers, but I also do that with cherry, too. Lately, I love cherry necks. They seem to have the right strength to weight to tonality ratios that I love. Cherry is a nice closed-grain wood, too. It can chip sometimes, but otherwise, it’s a pleasure to work. And play. And it smells amazing when I’m working with it. It just smells like what you might imagine cherry wood smells like.

For fretboards, I usually stick with the favorites of East Indian rosewood and ebony, though I’ve also been working more with cocobolo, too. If I’m building a fretless, I try to have something durable, like ebony, but cocobolo isn’t a bad fretless wood. I like bloodwood, too, but I have to say that the ultimate fretless board that I’ve found is Honduran rosewood. It rings like glass.

Boutique Guitar Resource: What do you look for when picking wood for a guitar?
William Jeffrey Jones: You know, when I think about it, oftentimes I don’t necessarily pick the wood for the guitar so much as pick the guitar for the wood. I spend a lot of time with a chunk of wood in my hands when I’m designing or deciding on a guitar and just the heft and taptone can tell me a lot about what guitar that wonderful piece of material should be. I have a lot of the wood in my stash earmarked for specific designs or types of guitars. When I get a commission for a specific type of instrument, I’ve already got a selection of woods narrowed down that I can suggest for that particular gig.

One thing that I do look for in the woods I prefer to work with is a more unique figure pattern or a piece of wood that will look like someone took a good handful of figure and threw it at the body. I know a lot of people prefer a 5A figure or a consitency that, to me, looks almost fake or at least contrived. I like to celebrate wood for what it is – a unique and natural material. I look for woods that won’t look exactly like a thousand other pieces of wood.

I think that’s why I lean toward electric instruments, because I don’t have to depend on perfectly straight grained wood with little variation for stability.

I do consider tonality, quite a lot, though. As I mentioned earlier, I work a lot with cherry and walnut, but not just because they’re available and plentiful for me. They’re very exciting and complex woods tonally. What I mean is, when I tap on a billet of rosewood, it has a certain ring. When I tap a billet or top of walnut or cherry, it just seems to have a more complex tonal character. It’s hard to explain. It’s just something I hear. If you’ve ever handled a great piece of spruce before it gets carved into an archtop, you’ll understand its ability to amplify just the movements of your hands as you touch it. It’s the same with walnut and cherry for me. Those woods just seem to be more lively than other hardwoods I’ve worked with. Mahogany is okay, but I just don’t respond to it like I do cherry and walnut. That’s not to say that I don’t work with other woods.

Boutique Guitar Resource: Do you prefer nickel or stainless steel frets and why?
William Jeffrey Jones: I work almost entirely with nickel fretwire, but I’ve just started working some with stainless. I tried the EVO gold fretwire that LMI sells and I loved it, because it’s harder than nickel. I hammer my frets in and the harder wires go in soooo nicely. Stainless is the same way, though it’s harder to work with, because it dulls the tools so much.

Boutique Guitar Resource: Tell us a little about the pickups you use in your guitars?
William Jeffrey Jones: My favorite pickups are made for me by Clint Searcy of
Searcy String Works in the Nashville area. Clint and I have talked pickup concepts until we’re worn out and he somehow gleans the exact specs I want out of those conversations and builds me the perfect pickups for what I want in my guitars.

Since I build some unique instruments, I want pickups that are made by a special craftsman who’s sensitive to my work and that’s Clint for me.

I love the P90 sound, but I abhore the noise of a single-coil pickup. Clint started making me a humbucking P90 that’s not simply a couple of stacked single-coils. I used the first one in my Dragonwing and it was one of the best sounding guitars I’ve ever played. Seriously.

The music I play involves a lot of chords with close harmonies, so I build my guitars to voice the notes that comprise those harmonies with distinct definition. I want each note to be defined. So many pickups on the market make those chords sound like mud, so Clint builds my pickups to suit the kind of definition I’m all about. They’ll play cleanly, but will warm up and drive when you want ‘em to.

I’m also using some superb humbuckers that Clint makes and has dubbed “Saturn.” I feature these in my Proteus guitar and am using them in a number of new guitars coming up. They’re amazing for jazz, but will turn around and rock when you tell them to.

Boutique Guitar Resource: Can you describe the finishing process that you use?
William Jeffrey Jones: I use a couple processes, but I’ve evolved to using one in particular. I used a product called Tru-oil on a lot of guitars. It’s not really an oil…more a high-grade wiping varnish and I really learned how to apply it in a way that works for me. My Arcadia DC Jazz model is one of the best examples of that finish. Believe it or not, that’s a wiped-on Tru-oil finish that I gave a little hand polishing at the end.

My Tru-oil technique involves wiping on the finish with a small folded square of cotton cloth one micro-thin layer at a time. The finish is built up with sometimes at least 2-dozen applications, rubbing it out almost after each coat. It’s fairly labor intensive, but it eliminates harmful overspray and vapors in my shop. It’s not as durable a finish as lacquer, but it brings out the grain and figure in ways that lacquer and poly don’t. Tru-oil is an absolute favorite of gunstock makers. It seems to have been formulated specifically to enhance walnut.

The technique I use most now, however, involves a penetrating Danish oil. It penetrates the wood and hardens there, which also enhances the grain and figure. As I explained earlier on, this finish isn’t a film or a coating, so my forms have to be sanded and smoothed with all imperfections eliminated, because once this finish is applied, those imperfections stick out like a sore thumb.

After shaping and developing the form, I refine it with fine riffler files and sandpaper, sanding every square millimeter up through 800 grit. Then, I apply the Danish oil by brush and keep laying it on as it soaks deep into the wood. Once it’s no longer drinking it up, I let it sit for a half hour, then wipe it off and apply another coat, which I also wipe off after another half hour. I let that dry for a week or three, then I wet sand it with 1000 grit using the Danish oil as a wetting agent. The surface I end up with is soooo smooth and soft, yet when you’re holding one of my oiled guitars, you’re touching the actual wood, not a plastic coating.

Boutique Guitar Resource: What is the current wait time when ordering one of your guitars?
William Jeffrey Jones: It varies, of course, depending on the projects I’m working on or the instrument ordered. The intensely carved guitars take a lot more man-hours to produce than a straight-ahead player, but by the time you figure in my contouring and finishing processes, even those straight-ahead guitars are much more labor-intensive than a lot of guitars out there.

Currently, with my present work load, the average wait time is about 6-8 months, which isn’t too bad. For a complex fully-carved and embellished piece like the Syrena, the wait time may be longer. I’m not completely backed up for a year, but it’s always best to contact me as soon as possible in order to get onto my schedule. I do build a number of spec guitars, because I have so many ideas all my own that I want to produce, so if people are willing to wait and watch my site, I’m constantly coming out with new instruments that can be had with little or no wait times.

Boutique Guitar Resource: Can you you tell us about the ordering process and what a customer should expect when working with you on a custom guitar?
William Jeffrey Jones: First of all, let me say that I’ve worked with custom clientelle for my whole professional career, so I’m used to involving the client in the design and production process. I’ve been a hired gun for as long as I can remember and while I’m also building the instruments now that I think need to be built, I’m no stranger to being the hands and eyes of the client to produce that special piece.

I’m quite used to getting notes and comments on my work as it progresses. There are times during that progress when the piece doesn’t look like what the client feels it should look like, but that’s just a case of impatience or a misunderstanding of the process. I can’t go straight from a drawing to finished guitar in a day, so it takes awhile to coax the instrument or its embellishments out of the wood.

When a client contacts me and gives me the basic request, I ask that client to give me some more detailed explanations or impressions of what he or she wants the guitar or embellishment to convey. I’m looking for those abstract sort of phrases that give me the impressions of which directions to take the design and construction. The intended purpose for the instrument also plays a part in these decisions. Once we’ve dialed all that in, we’ll work on the specs. The point is to dream. And when we’ve got that dream by a tenuous grasp, we’ll decide how best to execute it, with what materials, hardware, and dimensions. It’s a fun part of the process that I’ve always enjoyed, whether sculpting toy prototypes, architectural ornamentation, or guitars. This aspect always produces an addictive amount of brain candy for me. The other part of the process that produces that many feel-good chemicals in my brain is the actual construction.

Once we’re under way, I’ll send update photos about 2/3 of the way through or so, depending on the preferences of the client. I’ll send progress shots earlier on by request, but the project – in its fetal state – sometimes triggers more questions than it answers. It doesn’t happen overnight, so I’d rather show the client something later in their instrument’s evolution. That said, I do take photos frequently of the various stages of construction, though I usually show the client many of those at the end.

It’s also exciting to see the difference between the unfinished wood and that same wood with finish applied. It really comes to life. I do a set of photographs just before I assemble the instrument with the hardware, electronics and strings, then another after it’s all fully completed. Once we take care of the final financial arrangements as per our agreement, I pack it as carefully as possible and ship it to its new home.

Boutique Guitar Resource: Out of the guitars you have built, which is your favorite and why?
William Jeffrey Jones: I like a number of them equally, but for different reasons depending on what the intent of the instrument is. For instance, I love the Kronos fretless models I’ve designed and built. They have a definite organic quality to them that I think suits the organic qualities of fretless playing.

I like all the embellished guitars I’ve built, because they incorporate more of what I really am, which is a sculptor. I’ve taken some criticism from players out there who just can’t see themselves playing anything so ostentatious, but hey, I’m a trained sculptor. It’s what I do. It’s what I think about. For me to copy a factory guitar would be an absurd waste of everyone’s time and money.

Usually, my favorite pieces are my most recent, because they’re the best example of what I’ve got going on in my head at that current time. I really like the iO Blackthorn and the Proteus models, but I’ve got some instruments waiting in the wings that I think will be my next new favorites.

Boutique Guitar Resource: If you were having a custom guitar built, what builder would you choose?
William Jeffrey Jones: Good question. Hmmm… there are several that I really like, but I’m not sure they’d want ME for a client. I’m a fan of David Myka’s guitars and I’d love to have one of his Dragonflies. He and I have been threatening to do some collaborations for a couple of years and I’d love to do some tasteful embellishments on a Dragonfly for myself.

Boutique Guitar Resource: Do you keep up with the work of other builders and if so, who are some guitar builders that you admire?
William Jeffrey Jones: Like I said, I’m a fan of David Myka, but I also like what Scott Walker is doing. Our styles are different, but I admire their open-mindedness. Sakashta and Beauregard build some amazing archtops that I just love for their modernity while they also give a nod to the traditional archtop.

Boutique Guitar Resource: What do you see in the future for William Jeffrey Jones Guitars?
William Jeffrey Jones: I see a continuation in the trajectory I’ve been taking. What I mean is, I plan to keep pushing some boundaries, both visually and technically. Sculpturally speaking, I’ve only scratched the surface of what I have in mind. I build fairly non-traditionally and I’m also not afraid of producing some unique formats, like, for instance, a current project which is basically a fretless 4-string guitar with the scale length of a cello, tuned to that same instrument’s standard tuning… an “electric cello,” if you will. I’m also working on some 5-string concepts and piccolo bass ideas in addition to the straight-ahead 6-string guitars.

I draw every day and have a number of designs for fully carved guitars all lined up and ready to produce in the next few years. Of course, I’ll constantly develop new concepts and designs. There are so many possibilities that there truly is no end to the journey I’m on. Consider yourselves invited to join me along the way.

I want to thank William Jeffrey Jones of William Jeffrey Jones Guitars for taking the time to answer these questions. You can visit William Jeffrey Jones Guitars at:
William Jeffrey Jones Guitars

To learn more about the pickups used in William Jeffrey Jones Guitars, please visit:
Searcy String Works

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