“A vibey ‘Junior’ with a stylish boutique-y finish that’ll age with use”: PJD Origin Series Carey Apprentice and St John Apprentice review

What is it?

One of the surprises of 2025 was PJD’s Origin Series. As you will have read, York-based PJD Guitars has made quite a name for itself with its clean and affordable UK builds in a variety of styles.

And with a current retail of £1,349, the start-up UK Standards aren’t expensive in anyone’s book. While the first 2025 Origin Series Pro models – the core single-cut Carey and offset St John – cloned PJD’s more limited and higher-priced Custom Shop style, they are made with PJD’s new manufacturing partner in Indonesia and, complete with a standard gigbag, slashed the cost of the UK builds with a £799 in-store price.

Now, you don’t get the hand-wound UK-made pickups or the hard-to-beat Gotoh hardware and that super-detailed build, but the samples we saw more than captured the PJD style and quality.

Today, we have the next wave: the stripped-down, single-pickup Apprentice, available in both the Carey and St John styles you see here. And with a basic gigbag these will be in-store for a miserly £499.

The Apprentice – PJD’s single-pickup ‘Junior’ vision – dates back to 2022 when the company introduced a stripped-down but über-quality instrument with a cracked gloss nitro-finished slab body and headstock face in a PJD logo’d Hiscox case, with matching high-end price just shy of £2k. Other production runs followed and these very limited guitars found favour with plenty of tonehounds, not least Blur’s Graham Coxon.

PJD then turned the Apprentice into a much more affordable Standard production model, originally direct-order only, that was offered at £899. It didn’t have the cracked nitro finish or the sumptuous roasted and figured neck, but with its open-pore finish and single PJD humbucker, well, if you snagged one of these, well done.

However, a UK-made guitar at that price leaves virtually zero profit (and they are now discontinued). Which, of course, is where the Origin versions come in.

In Build

Pulling these new Indonesian-made Apprentices out of their gigbags, on first glance and even after a quick play, it’s abundantly clear they very closely follow the outgoing UK models. Like those Origins, these are available in the single-cut Carey and offset St John styles. Shape aside, they are identical.

No-one’s saying they’re complex guitars – that’s not the point – but both our pre-production samples are very cleanly built, not least with the satin open-pore finish to the 42mm thick Indonesian mahogany bodies, which have a classy forearm chamfer and light ribcage cut with a comfortable edge radius.

While the necks on the earlier Origin Pro models were a dark roasted maple, here they use a whiter shade of plain maple (screwed into the body, not bolted like the UK models) with their Fender-like scale length and 254mm (10-inch) fingerboard radius. Our pre-production prototypes use a lighter and slightly red-hued wood called merbau, but the ones you’ll buy will have more standard-looking Indian rosewood.

Hopefully, too, the unique rectangular fingerboard inlays will contrast a little more with that darker wood than they do here. And just so you can easily tell the difference between the UK PJDs and the offshore models: the former use a gold-coloured transfer logo; the Indonesian models’ logos are silver coloured and slightly smaller in size.

The hardware changes here, too, compared with the Origin Pro models, with a different steel baseplate, block-saddle through-strung bridge (not dissimilar looking to the Gotoh bridge used on the UK guitars) with vintage-style non-locking tuners.

The single PJD-designed Apprentice bridge humbucker sits in a PJD-style plastic laminate mounting ring and is a slightly lower output pickup than the one used on the earlier Origin Pro models, we’re told. Plus, here there’s obviously no need for a pickup switch, just a volume and tone control.

Specs

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• PRICE: £499 (approx. $679 inc gigbag)
• ORIGIN: Indonesia
• TYPE: Single-cut solidbody electric
• BODY: Indonesian mahogany
• NECK: Maple, bolt-on
• SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”)
• NUT/WIDTH: Bone/42.6mm
• FINGERBOARD: Indian rosewood, rectangular pearloid inlays, 254mm (10”) radius (prototypes, as pictured, with merbau ’board)
• FRETS: 22, medium-jumbo
• HARDWARE: Through-strung with 6x block saddles; vintage-style tuners – chrome-plated
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52.5mm
• ELECTRICS: 1x PJD-designed Alnico V Apprentice humbucker, master volume and tone
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.03/6.67
• OPTIONS: Colour only. The Origin Series St John Apprentice has identical specs and price to the Carey, only the shape is different
• RANGE OPTIONS: The new Indonesian-made PJDs also include the Origin Pro Carey and St John (both £799). The UK-made Carey and St John Standards start at £1,349
• LEFT-HANDERS: No
• FINISHES: Midnight Black (as reviewed, Carey), Nato Olive (as reviewed, St John), Cream Soda – open-pore polyurethane to body with satin neck back
• CONTACT: PJD Guitars

Playability and sounds

With nearly identical weights of 3kg, our two samples have a great feel from the off. It’s not just the weight, of course – the neck profile is similarly detailed to the UK models, a classic rounded C with a nut width of 42.6mm and barely tapering depth of 21mm at the 1st fret and just over 22mm by the 12th.

The satin neck-back is smooth and will probably shine up a bit with use. PJD rightly prides itself on its fretwork, and these don’t let the side down. The medium-gauge wire is very nicely fettled and each Origin Series model gets properly set up and checked here in the UK.

Tuning stability on both our samples proved rock solid: once strings were stretched and tuned we rarely touched the tuners – always a good sign. Overall, then, both our samples have a quality and fit-for-purpose feel that’s really very close to the outgoing UK-made Apprentice Standard models.

Both styles hang nicely from a strap and, as importantly, have a pretty vibrant ring unplugged. Played clean, the voice is well balanced with a relatively open midrange, a clean not overbright high-end, and strong but not overcooked lows.

The volume rounds things a little as you pull it back, but as we switch to some light crunch the clarity is evident, dropping into that pokey Telecaster-meets-Patent Applied For area that’s quite timeless.

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The longer scale length is typical of PJD’s builds, and, having played many examples, to our ears it definitely contributes to that clear, ringing response. There’s good old-blues snap with an ‘on the edge of break-up’ Fender amp voice, and with an overdrive kicked in it’s more early Led Zep than thicker Slash.

As you’d expect, there’s not the body of a Les Paul in terms of sound, but think Junior/Special with a little more sparkle and you’re on the right track. Really, if you can’t get a pretty purposeful classic rock voice out of one of these, it’s not the fault of the guitar. Above all, it’s the quality of sound, not to mention the positive playability, that impresses us.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

The price might suggest entry or beginner level, but there would be few guitarists – old or new – who couldn’t use one of these for simple everyday practice or as a viable lightweight gigging tool (or spare) that you won’t worry about.

Guitar World verdict: It’s a perfect guitar to experiment with open tunings and the like, not to mention slide, plus it’s an ideal modding platform for swapping pickups, changing the circuit and maybe adding a coil-split. All in, a vibey ‘Junior’ with a stylish boutique-y finish that’ll age with use. Our only dilemma is which shape we’d choose.

Hands-on videos

Guitarist

PJD Origin Series Carey Apprentice & St John Apprentice Review - YouTube

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