“The whole guitar feels very alive in your hands. There’s punch and power, with a grainy detail to the big voice”: PJD Guitars St John Apprentice review

There’s no shortage of great-quality UK-made guitars, but for under a grand, PJD’s new Apprentice model is leading the charge in terms of quality and cost

PJD guitars St John Apprentice
(Image: © Future / Phil Barker)

Guitar World Verdict

These will be limited, only available direct from PJD, and on this evidence if you’ve got any kind of rock ’n’ roll heart then we’d strongly suggest you place your order. An antidote for the complex modern world, it certainly reminds us why we got into this whole lark in the first place. Superb stuff.

Pros

  • +

    Superb pared-down, high-level craft.

  • +

    Quality hardware.

  • +

    Light weight.

  • +

    Mainstream neck profile.

  • +

    First-class playability.

  • +

    Hot-vintage single humbucker.

Cons

  • -

    Junior fans might miss a tone control and that old-style circuit.

You can trust Guitar World Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing guitar products so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

Whatever the reasons, we could suggest there’s a bit of a trend emerging: the stripped-down, high-quality electric guitar that’s far from hard on your income. It was the theme of our last cover story and, working on that, we got wind of a new entry, PJD’s new Apprentice.

We say ‘new’ because the brand released some small runs of single-soapbar-pickup models back in 2022, with lightly reliced gloss nitro finishes, which were the first to introduce the gold decal logos now standard for all its models.

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Dave Burrluck
Gear Reviews Editor, Guitarist

Dave Burrluck is one of the world’s most experienced guitar journalists, who started writing back in the '80s for International Musician and Recording World, co-founded The Guitar Magazine and has been the Gear Reviews Editor of Guitarist magazine for the past two decades. Along the way, Dave has been the sole author of The PRS Guitar Book and The Player's Guide to Guitar Maintenance as well as contributing to numerous other books on the electric guitar. Dave is an active gigging and recording musician and still finds time to make, repair and mod guitars, not least for Guitarist’s The Mod Squad.