Joseph Kaye guitars
We take a trip down to London’s East End for a chat with Joe Dobson to find out why his custom-built guitars and loving restorations of vintage Fenders have caused such a stir on the boutique market...
The Briggs Building has stood next to Regent’s Canal on the corner of Southgate Road in East London since the early 1800s. A stone engraving above its entrance immortalises the name ‘THOS BRIGGS (LONDON) LTD’, although the textile manufacturer closed its doors long ago. An ageing relic of the industrial revolution, it lay derelict for many years and was eventually brought back to life after being redeveloped into a mini complex of workshops. This is the new face of inner city manufacturing and the home of Joseph Kaye Guitars.
Having crawled through Central London’s solid jam of mid-week afternoon traffic, we finally arrive and park up opposite the Briggs Building. Company founder Joe Dobson greets us and invites us in as we walk across the street from Islington to Hackney. “We’re right on the border of Hackney,” says Joe “The opposite side of the road to us is Islington. I left Denmark Street and came straight here. I had work to finish. I had to get stuff done.”
The company name, Joseph Kaye Guitars, is derived from Joe’s first and middle names and is essentially a one-man operation assisted by in-house pickup winder, Carolyn Marshall. With a small army of notable players extolling the virtues of his custom builds, such as Wilko Johnson and Norman Watt-Roy, Joe’s guitars have slowly but surely gained an admirable reputation, often through word of mouth. “I’ve built three guitars for Wilko, so far,” Joe tells us. “When I did the work for him that kind of validated me for a lot of people. It’s really taken off since then.
“Norman was always saying how much he loves the basses I’ve made for him. I’ve just made a new bass for [Madness bassist] Mark Bedford. I asked him how he heard about us and he said ‘Norman’, which was great. One person normally tells another person. I’m ridiculously busy. I’m building Norman a new bass at the moment – it’s another replica of his old ’62 Shoreline Gold Jazz Bass [now owned by Colin Greenwood of Radiohead], but this time with an ash body. His original Jazz Bass has an ash body, which is really rare for a solid custom colour guitar.”
Joe shows us the work in progress that is Norman’s new bass. The body is a piece of wonderfully light Southern Swamp ash, with a beautifully figured piece of Brazilian rosewood set aside for the fretboard; it’s shaping up to be a very special guitar indeed.
It’s just one of many projects currently underway in the workshop. As we take a look around we spot a trio of pre-CBS Fender classics that Joe has recently refinished and restored: a ’63 Musicmaster in Sonic Blue (converted to Duo-Sonic dual pickup spec), a ’64 Dakota Red Mustang and a ’59 Fiesta Red Stratocaster.
“I’ve just finished those three. Doing restoration work is where a lot of my knowledge comes from. When I was younger this stuff was available and not too ridiculously expensive,” reflects Joe. “The ’59 Stratocaster was restored to the original Fiesta Red custom colour. ’59 Stratocasters
“I’ve built three guitars for Wilko Johnson. When I did the work for him it kind of validated me for a lot of people. It’s really taken off since then!”
had a slab ’board neck, which is my favourite. And the neck profile is skinny as hell; they made a very skinny profile in 1959. It was Fiesta Red originally, but it got stripped and then painted white. All of the parts are correct and the pickups are right; they have the original windings and they sound really cool. They’re a bit thin, but when you push the amp it really comes alive. The owner has a picture of Hendrix holding this guitar – he was in the right place at the right time!”
In addition to new builds and full restorations, Joe also spends his time in the workshop conducting repairs for players keen to get their guitars into a reliable and gig-worthy condition. “I’ve recently done a lot of repair work for The Pretenders. They’ve got a tour coming up and they’ve just brought a load of guitars out of storage,” he explains. “I had to sort through 17 guitars. Some of them just needed to be levelled and some of them were re-fretted. There were also some that needed to be re-’boarded – I’ve been virtually rebuilding them from scratch. I just did Chrissie Hynde’s white ’66 Tele; it needed re-fretting, a new bone nut and a pickup rewind. There was a lot of general set-up work that needed to be done. I do a fair bit of that kind of stuff – getting bands back out on the road again.”
It’s safe to say that nothing is too much of a challenge for Joe, whether it be spec-ing together an unusual custom build, restoring a vintage guitar to its former glory or tackling the trickiest of repairs. But with no formal training as a luthier, how did he manage to acquire such advanced skills and where did it all begin?
“When I was at college I used to restore old scooters and VW Beetles,” recalls Joe. “They were all painted in nitro – the old paint system was nitrocellulose and I knew it very well. I also did some woodwork when I was at art school. I mean I knew some carpentry, but I wasn’t trained as a luthier. My career in the music business began in 1990 when I began working as a camera operator shooting music videos for a company called Oil Factory Films.
“I would often look around Denmark Street and I guess it really kicked off when I bought an old ’62 slab ’board Fender Jaguar. I refinished it back to Sonic Blue and found all of the parts to fully restore it back to original spec. I took it on as an art project and distressed it and it just came out right. In the process of finding the parts for it, I bumped into [luthier] Philippe Dubreuille in Denmark Street. When Philippe saw it he was blown away by how good it was and said I could use his workshop to polish the body. I kept going back to his workshop underneath Angel Music and started to watch him working – routing wood and that kind of thing.”
Whilst hanging out in Philippe’s workshop on Denmark Street, Joe got his first opportunity to really put his skills to the test by building a guitar from scratch. “I found some decent wood in a bin and showed it to Philippe,” remembers Joe. “It turned out to be Honduran mahogany, so I made a Les Paul Junior copy and carved my first neck. I managed to do that right because I’d held enough old guitars in my hands. Philippe did the finish and I wound the pickup and I sold it on eBay for £800, which was good timing because I was absolutely broke! At the time I didn’t know exactly where I was headed, but I got a real buzz out of doing the Jaguar and with the
“I made a Les Paul Junior copy from Honduran mahogany and carved my first neck. I managed to do that right and sold it on eBay for £800!”
Junior I’d managed to do something that was a real challenge and pulled it off. After that I just got a fire for making guitars that sounded good. I had a good guitar collection when I was younger and when I started looking at buying guitars again I realised that none of the new stuff had the same sonic quality to it that a lot of the old stuff did.”
Without Skip ping a beat
With a current stock of Victorian pine in the workshop destined for Telecaster-style instruments, recycling old wood is an approach to guitar building that Joe has continued to pursue with a passion since building his first guitar. “The Victorian pine is all from skips around North London. A friend of mine was driving around as a chauffeur and he kept ringing me up saying ‘I’ve just found a skip with some old wood in it’, so I said ‘If you find anything then just bring it in’. A lot of it was useless, but if you pick through it you can find some really good stuff. The pink stuff is Douglas fir and some of it is Scots pine. The prototypes and some of the earliest Telecasters and Esquires were made from pine. The Victorian pine I use is of a similar age to the wood that Fender used all those years ago.”
It’s unusual to find quality, hand-made guitars built from pine and most people will be unfamiliar with it as a tonewood, so how does it compare to other, more common materials? Joe picks up a body that’s already been finished in nitrocellulose: “This is Victorian Scots pine. It’s incredibly resonant,” says Joe as he taps on the wood. It rings like a xylophone. “Great mid-tones! You can hear that it’s got a great mid-tone in there... Pine sits between ash and alder. It’s very balanced,” enthuses Joe. “Ash does great top end and alder does great mid-tone, but the Victorian pine has both – a really bright top end and the clarity across the tonal range is fantastic. It’s just really full. You know that jangly Gretsch sound? They’ve all got centre blocks with this kind of pine wood in the middle. They were using it thinking it was a cheap packing wood but that pine middle helps get that incredible Duo Jet sound.”
“The Victorian pine I use is from skips around London and is of a similar age to the wood Fender used all those years ago”
hi S neck of the Wood S
Starting off with the right piece of wood is essential to building a great guitar, but that’s only the beginning of the process. “You’ve got to choose the right wood – customers come in to the workshop and we hand select bits of wood – but it’s also about the
glue and the nitro,” advises Joe. “And with a hand-wound pickup you’ll hear what that’s all about. That’s as simple as it gets, but it’s time consuming. I use hide glue and when I glue the body pieces together I normally leave it for a few months to tighten up.
“When it comes to the woodwork a body will take around a few days and a neck will normally take about a week. When it comes to carving necks, I’ll cut the outside shape then rout down the middle and bow the truss rod from either end. Once that’s dry, I’ll camber and shape the front, then I’ll put the frets and the dots in. That’s when I’ll begin profiling the neck. It takes about three or four hours to get the first rough in. It’s done by look and feel. I do it in stages. It’s a process, like sculpting; after I’ve finished with the rasp I’ll use a blade, then a file, then sandpaper.”
Though the guitar-building can be timeconsuming, the paint is a whole new level. “Once the nitrocellulose lacquer is on the body you have to leave it for at least six weeks to cure. It takes at least a month or longer to get the lacquer on – you’re looking at two to three months just to do the lacquer,” Joe explains. “When I age the lacquer I let it cure for three months as it won’t check properly beforehand. I start by hand brushing shellac and once that’s done I’ll sand it back. Then I go into nitro. That’s all I use. I try to avoid grain fillers. You can keep it simple by just using shellac and nitro. It sounds the best. I’m not into pore fillers or putting grain fillers on. You can do, but I like to keep the wood as pure as possible. I just prep the wood up and move on to the shellac, followed by clear nitro, then colour, then I’ll seal it.
“Afterwards I hang it up to let it all dry in before polishing. After that it’ll be really tight. I refuse to cut corners and do things more quickly. I think the longer you leave it, the better the job is. I don’t think rushing a job improves the guitar in any way.” www.josephkayeguitars.com
“I refuse to cut corners and do things more quickly. I think the longer you leave it, the better the job is. Rushing the job doesn’t improve the guitar in any way”