Guitarist

Mods Like Us

One way to view these new ProShop guitars is as pre-modded Vintage models. So with our own Mod Squad experience in mind we grilled the team

- Words Dave Burrluck

To say that the modding community has mushroomed in the past few years is an understate­ment, and it was certainly fuelled by the long months of lockdown. The desire to tweak and mod reflects the ever-increasing ranges of aftermarke­t parts, pickups, wiring looms, not to mention tools and finishing potions. It’s definitely something that’s on the radar at John Hornby Skewes.

“I do find it interestin­g the number of people there are now really focusing in on selling bits, like Northwest Guitars,” says

JHS managing director, Dennis Drumm. “People like that who have great websites, great ideas. People are building and modding their guitars, it’s really creative.”

JHS also distribute­s many aftermarke­t bits itself – including Wilkinson, Graph Tech, Grover and Guitar Tech – and is the source of the now 26-year-old Vintage guitar brand, designed in the UK and made in factories in China and Vietnam. But the idea for an in-house modding centre wasn’t conceived on home shores, as Dennis explains: “The ProShop concept was started in the USA by our distributo­r for Vintage guitars, RBI Music in Fort Worth, Texas. They’ve got a couple of excellent guys out there – well, so have we here – but Kevin Easton is the guy [check out Easton’s Guitar Shack-O-Rama].

“One of the owners of RBI is Brad Kirkpatric­k. RBI stands for Rhythm Band Instrument­s, originally a company started by Tommy Moore who was the guy behind Jackson/Charvel in the beginning [as they moved to mass production], which were huge in the educator market. Brad goes

all the way back to Jackson/Charvel, too; I think he was the procuremen­t manager at the time. So Tommy sold the company to Brad – they’re still very active in that educator market – but because they’re all mad like we are, and they love guitars, they decided to go into the guitar market and RBI became our US distributo­r for Vintage. They brought onboard Rick Taylor and he was instrument­al in the ProShop concept and, well, here we are!”

While the ProShop line was officially announced at the Summer NAMM show back in 2018, it formally went public at the Winter NAMM Show in 2020.

“That’s right. We thought it was a great idea,” continues Dennis. “You see, when you sell a lot of guitars you inevitably have B-stock [often just cosmetical­ly damaged, marked guitars that have been out on demo or review], which you can either sell off at a reduced price or, as Rick had said to Kevin, ‘Can you do something with that?’ It’s genuine product with pickups swapped, tuners changed – all of that stuff – but it was one of the ways of doing something different with those B-stock guitars. That’s how we started and our guys absolutely love doing it.”

It’s exactly what we do in The Mod Squad, we suggest. “Yes, you’re absolutely

“It might not be how a guitar would age, so it almost becomes artwork… but it’s still there to be played”

right. The funny thing is, you find out about staff you’ve been working with for 20 years. I mean, one of our team, Neil Robshaw, I had no idea his massive hobby was model making, so when we gave him that sort of stuff to do but with guitars he was like, ‘Really? I get to come to work and do this?’”

ProShop manager, Nathan Sharp, explains that there are four employees, including himself, who make up the project’s team: “My brother – aka ‘our kid’ – has actually worked at JHS for a year longer than me: he’s the guitar technician. Then we have our electronic­s technician, Neil [Rodshaw], who has also worked on guitars so he’s no novice – he did the work on the V120 you have – and also has that background in model-making, as Dennis mentioned. Our kid is the same: he’s a model maker and some of those techniques just lend themselves to what we’re doing.

“Some of the heavier relics that were processed by Neil almost look like a cartoon version of a guitar,” says Nathan. “They look phenomenal – they have a narrative to them. It might not be exactly how a guitar would really age, so it almost becomes an artwork guitar… but it’s still there to be played.” The team is completed by Joe Cross, the newest recruit to the ProShop team.

If you’re imagining a Gibson Murphy Lablike mod shop, think again. Vintage’s take is more real-world.

“The ProShop workshop is our serviceare­a space,” says Dennis, “and we use other bits of space in the warehouse if we need to, like for the painting and spraying. The team organise themselves and come up with the ideas off their own backs. I might suggest a few things, Paul Smith [JHS’s operations director] does, too, but we called them ProShop Unique, because the intention is that never, ever will we make exactly the same thing again.”

As we explain, the ProShop isn’t a fullblown custom shop. The guitars are based on the standard Vintage Reissued and factory-reliced Icon models. Vintage dealers order ProShop from the ongoing examples built and posted online; as yet, the only way to order your own ProShop is through one of those many Vintage dealers.

“There’s always something in production,” continues Dennis, “and we usually try to work in a small batch of perhaps four to six. Once they’re finished, we put them up on the website and they get sold. We keep them on the website because, even though they’re sold, someone might use one of those as a start-point: ‘I’d like one like that, but could you just…’”

Lowly Beginnings

For the past 26 years Vintage has always aimed to offer very affordable versions of classic designs, and Trev Wilkinson has had a big part of the guitars they currently offer (although he’s no longer a consultant to JHS). Neither Dennis nor Nathan have any illusions that these are boutique-level pieces, but the uptake around the world, not least in the US, has been considerab­le.

“Take our standard V52 Icon as an example,” offers Dennis, a guitar that sells for £419 in the Icon range and £399 in the unreliced Reissued range. “Who’s going to take a real one out when ours makes all the right noises and looks right? I only have to look at what’s going on in Nashville, the number of people that really are playing V52s up and down Music Row and at the Opry. Wow! How good is that?”

Vintage has built its empire on affordabil­ity: not just final cost but on getting the best flavour from obviously low-cost ingredient­s. Many of those parts are designed by Trev Wilkinson to be highly affordable yet equally functional. But start adding UK labour cost, not to mention premium UK-made pickups such as Bare Knuckle, oh, and a cost-a-lot Bigsby, and isn’t there a danger that Vintage’s original USP gets lost in translatio­n with these ProShop models?

“There is a limit to how much work we can do to an instrument that is in a certain price range, what people will pay for and what they will accept. Mind you, I would never say no to anything, so long as we’ve got the time and someone’s willing to pay us for it,” laughs Nathan. “Some people can be a bit snobbish: a certain guitar isn’t worth doing anything to. But if you’ve got something with reasonable woods and reasonable constructi­on, who’s to say that spending £500 on something that you enjoy, and is bespoke to you, isn’t actually better than going out and paying an awful lot of money for that ‘name’ guitar?

“And the cost of some instrument­s today,” Nathan adds. “I’m astounded that people can actually afford to buy them. I mean, is that all it’s about these days, wall-hangers? People are buying a guitar as a collection piece, not as an instrument. With these ProShops, of course, we imagine they’ll continue to age further because people are going to play them. I mean, if you bash that V100 it might well take a fair bit of lacquer out… but it’ll still look great.”

“It’s like I go out and buy a Golf GTI,” interjects Dennis. “I can drive it around all day or I can get under the hood and remap the engine, put on bigger wheels, bigger tyres, change the seats, a bigger stereo. So then it’s not a cookie-cutter any more, it’s something that someone has spent a lot of time, love and attention on – turning it into something else. So, yes, the chassis are the stock Vintage guitars, but in the ProShop they are completely reworked.”

Not everyone will get the concept: our reviewed ProShops are the most expensive guitars with ‘Vintage’ on the headstock that we’ve ever played by a country mile. Now, us modders might be thinking, ‘Well, we could buy one and do it ourselves.’ Of course we could, but not everyone has those skills and it’s important to compare like with like as these ProShops still have to be priced to include all the usual margins of the retail model. Time, as ever, means money.

So far, what has the reaction been to these one-offs? “Honestly? Really, really good,” concludes Dennis. “I mean, one of the benchmarks is that we put up the finished guitars and they sell. We have to be a little careful because we could easily just drown ourselves. Although there are four guys involved in creating these, they have a lot of other work to do in the regular service department – this is all trying to get fitted in between times.”

“Obviously, we’d have to look at the pricing structure of everything we do and also the time scale,” says Nathan. “We’re not Fender, we can’t turn around and say, ‘Yes, you can have one, but it’s a five-year wait.’ We have to see if we can fit it in with everything else we’re doing. Right now, this is a new baby for us. There’s a limit to what we can produce, but we’ll always listen to ideas… and they might inspire a new build.”

“If you bash that V100 it might well take a fair bit of lacquer out… but it’ll still look great”

 ??  ?? JHS MD Dennis Drumm: “People are building and modding their guitars, it’s really creative”
JHS MD Dennis Drumm: “People are building and modding their guitars, it’s really creative”
 ??  ?? There is plenty of subtlety in the ageing of the V100. Here Nathan Sharp colour-tones the bare mahogany to make it look older and darker
There is plenty of subtlety in the ageing of the V100. Here Nathan Sharp colour-tones the bare mahogany to make it look older and darker
 ??  ?? The back of the V100 is completed with the hand-cut, old-stock and naturally aged brass rear-cavity covers
The back of the V100 is completed with the hand-cut, old-stock and naturally aged brass rear-cavity covers
 ??  ?? The V100’s gold-top is overspraye­d with black nitrocellu­lose. Once dried it can be cracked, aged and polished
The V100’s gold-top is overspraye­d with black nitrocellu­lose. Once dried it can be cracked, aged and polished

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