“With our in-house pickups, we’ve now got real control of how our guitars sound”: PJD Guitars founder Leigh Dovey on the evolution of the UK’s most exciting electric guitar brand

Creating a business is the easy bit. Staying in business is a whole other ball game, and UK guitar builder PJD has certainly had its ups and downs over the years.

The new foundation is the Standard Series guitars, which were unleashed in 2023. Very affordable for UK-built electric guitars, but the chambered bodies of the original Standards were replaced with solid (but still lightweight) obeche, and the roasted and figured maple necks swapped to industry-standard plainer and unroasted maple.

Leigh opened the Custom Shop in 2024, allowing the return of the Elite models such as the original Carey, but despite requests the original Standard (Carey and St John) – which had many fans, not least this writer – was out of production until now. The company’s 15th anniversary seemed the perfect time to bring back this underground favourite.

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Where do you place the start point of PJD Guitars as a company? Was it from the time you made your first guitar?

“No, it’s not. I had been doing stuff two years before that start date [of 2010]. So 15 years that marks this anniversary is counted from the point that I could make a guitar that someone wouldn’t pick up and go, ‘What the heck is this?’ I was still in London at that point and then moved up to York in 2017.”

So, if this 15th Anniversary limited run aims to replicate the original Carey Standard from 2020, are you still using swamp ash for the chambered bodies?

“Yes, we only used swamp ash back then, so the original Carey Standard you have is definitely swamp ash. Then we switched to American white ash, just because swamp ash became incredibly expensive for a while – it still is and it’s not particularly easy to get in any quantity. When we needed to make quite a few, we realised it was totally unrealistic to use swamp ash. But now with the Classic, yes, we wanted that to be swamp ash.”

What about colours?

“The plan is to do them in the white you have there, but I think Andertons, for example, will order something different. I’ve kind of said if you want to order them you can have them in different colours. Certainly anything like a translucent black, white, a TV Yellow – anything that looks really classic.”

One of the differences with the new guitar is that you’re using your own in-house wound pickups.

“It was during 2023 that we really got into the in-house pickups. The first ones were on the current Standards, although Josh [Parkin, who joined PJD full-time in 2022] had been making a lot of one-offs before then. We’ve never looked back, to be honest – it’s just so much easier and less expensive. We’ve now got real control of how our guitars sound, too, and now that we’ve done it, it makes perfect sense.”

One thing you’ve replicated pretty much is that original PJD neck profile.

“Yes, it is a different profile from our current Standard necks – which will stay the same – and very close to the original. We’ve actually had quite a few people say that they have an older Standard and they really liked the neck profile.

“We’re just calling it the PJD Classic neck profile and it’ll go into our options list for any Custom Shop model. There were a few things we wanted to iron out, but it really is very close, certainly more than a nod to those early guitars. I understand why players like that early profile and we really want the new Classic to have that essence of the old Standard.”

Where are you now with staff and output?

“We have four people working on the Standard line – Harriet Dovey [Leigh’s wife], Lauren Varley, Luke Bushby and Ray Kilvington – and then Josh and myself handle the Custom Shop. I final QC absolutely everything on the Standard production now, which I did at the beginning, but I lost touch with that and I think that was a mistake.

“But now, absolutely everything goes through my hands. Obviously, I don’t need to QC Josh [laughs], and on the Standards the final setup is usually done by myself, too. I’d rather blame myself if something goes out that’s not 100 per cent.”

“Currently, we’re making around 250 to 280 Standards annually. In the Custom Shop we’re doing around 50 to 60, but that completely depends on what they are. We can obviously make the new Classics faster than the Elites as there’s quite a bit more involved with the binding and finishing.

“We appointed a new European distributor at the end of 2024 and he’s done a fantastic job, so now pretty much 50 per cent of what we can make goes to Europe. Germany and Austria are big for us – they always were, and now that we’ve reignited those areas, the numbers have come back.”

• “It’s the wide range of voices that impresses. Old or new, these are far from one-trick ponies”: PJD Carey Classic review
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.