DestroyAllGuitars William Jeffrey Jones Guitars

~ William Jeffrey Jones Guitars ~

Since roughly 1988, William Jeffrey Jones has been a full-time commercial sculptor - a hired gun sculpting prototypes for various manufacturers, primarily the toy industry during the last decade. His toy/figure client list has included McFarlane (www.spawn.com), NECA (www.necaonline), The Four Horsemen, Master Replicas (www.masterreplicas.com), and Jean St. Jean Studios to name a few. He has also worked extensively in the giftware, display, and architectural ornamentation industries. His job has always been to bring ideas into the realm of the living, whether those ideas were his or those of someone who hired him to develop their ideas. In Jones' professional opinion, the best piece of artillery in an artist's arsenal is the ability to look. Looking is where it all begins. Out of necessity, Jones also learned to "listen" in order to meet the goals as efficiently and effectively as possible. They say time is money. Jones thinks of it more in terms of time for more projects.

After decades of working as the hands and eyes of prototype development, Jones realized that he'd developed a lot of very popular and successful pieces... none of which he owned any creative rights to, whatsoever, regardless of the amount of concept or design input he'd provided. Jones is quick to point out though that as a professional, he has no problem with that nor does he have any hard feelings toward any of the companies who are still marketing the work he has done for them. "My job is to develop a successful design that benefits the commercial client and license holder. That's the whole point." But after years of 60-80 hour work weeks helping other companies make millions, he realized that he hadn't taken the time to develop something for himself.

Jones had been building guitars of his own design for several years between sculpting gigs or "after hours" - whenever that is - and began to develop his own brand. As the toy industry began to allow for less and less creativity on the part of the hired talent, jones' creative monsters had to be fed, so he was drawing, designing, and building guitars in his spare time. At some point, he just began to spend more time building instruments than sculpting prototypes and financially speaking, the guitars began to take over as the primary provider of income, in addition to becoming the focus of his creative passion. Jones can't recall the day when he suddenly quit one type of job and went to a different kind of job the following week. It just fuzzily evolved that way.

Now, Jones "listens" to himself regarding what he expects out of a particular project, as well as giving the go ahead when the idea wants to take a bit of a detour. So many guitars develop on the fly. Others are fully developed on paper first and rigidly adhered to as the instrument is produced. While he's building that one, however, he's designing the next variant in his head. Another studio method of Jones' is to have several projects going at once. If he cuts out one neck, he might as well cut out 3 or 4, then he works those additional projects out as variations of the first or completely different tangents of their own. It's a great process. Jones is all about the process and always will be.

For every finished guitar, Jones has a handful of other variations developing in the shop. This is what he's always done his whole life, even since he was a child, filling his Big Chief tablets with hundreds of designs of cars, airplanes, helicopters, houses... you name it. It amazes even Jones that as a 7-year old, he was methodically doing exactly as he does now. Except... now, he gets to work with pointy stuff.

William Jeffrey Jones Custom

William Jeffrey Jones Guitars evolved purely as the means to express the personal creative concepts and skills of acclaimed commercial sculptor, Jeffrey Jones. A working artist for over 25 years, Jeffrey has also been a guitarist for over 30. His woodworking experience from a very early age actually influenced his decisions to become a professional sculptor, so from there, building guitars was a simple extension of logic, driven by passion, experience, and the lifelong commitment to creative endeavor...