Written By: Dan O'Donnell
Bryan Jeppson has been playing guitar most of his life and,
for the three decades or so he’s played in bands, he’s always been stumped
in his search for a left-handed guitar that provided the tone and playability
that he wanted. So the lanky, longhaired lefty decided that if he couldn’t find
his dream guitar, he would build it.
“I was always frustrated by the scarcity of quality
left-handed guitars,” Jeppson said. “By the mid-nineties I started to relieve
my frustrations by making them for myself.” He said he had an epiphany while
shopping at a music store in Maryland.
“I was in a store in Gaithersburg, MD, and they had a
bargain bin of parts in the back, and there was a left handed guitar body for
ten bucks,” Jeppson said, sounding like a Local Music Gear reader. “And I said,
‘Yeah, I could do something like that.’”
So Bryan put out the ten bucks, started making kit guitars
and moved onward to necks and pickups. Now he finishes his artworks at his
workshop, for appreciative artists. Each guitar is custom made, generally with
his signature hand-wound pickups, and many feature intricate carvings and
inlays on them all done by Bryan Jeppson.
Learning the craft wasn’t easy, Jeppson said, but he added
that perseverance paid off.
“There was a lot of trial and error in the beginning, with
emphasis on the error,” the luthier said. “But learning from my mistakes and
spending more and more on tools, I eventually found my groove.”
Not long after he immersed himself in the search for his
sound, he said, audiences began to take notice.
“People began coming up to me at gigs, complimenting me on
my tone and wanting to know what kind of guitar I was playing,” Jeppson said.
“One thing led to another, and I began making guitars to sell.”
He learned by watching videos, and reading a book by Melvin Hiscock. In addition, he joined a woodworker’s club in Norwalk, CT, a two to three hour drive from his home.
He learned by watching videos, and reading a book by Melvin Hiscock. In addition, he joined a woodworker’s club in Norwalk, CT, a two to three hour drive from his home.
“I would get up early, drive up there, be the first one
there and the last one to leave,” Bryan said. “I got to hang around with these
guys who were professional cabinet makers, and they gave me all kinds of tips
on woodworking.”
He also spent two weeks at the Summit School of Luthiery on
Vancouver Island, Canada, where he says he “basically spent two weeks making
guitars all day and walking around on the beach at night.”
He owes his ability to craft eminently playable necks to the
Summit School, Bryan said. But when it came to the finish on his guitars, he
had trouble finding one that was just what he wanted.
First he tried nitrocellulose lacquers, but abandoned them
for the considerably more difficult to work with but much deeper spar varnish.
“As far as a spar varnish is concerned, if you make a
mistake you’re screwed,” Jeppson said. “You get a lot of custom luthiers who
tell you nitro is so much better, that ‘it’s how vintage guitars are made.’ …
It isn’t that. It’s just that nitro is all they know how to apply.”
Many Jeppson guitars are made with a deep sparkle finish,
which also led him to use the more layered-looking spar varnish.
The spar varnish seems to be working; it magnifies the wood
grain finishes on his guitars with a deep, solid clarity.
While the clear and colored finishes on Jeppson guitars are
impressive, equally impressive are his hand-wound pickups. Typically
underwound, his pickups produce a super-clean, sparkling tone that is rich in
harmonics.
“They’re very clear sounding, but without being sterile;
they’re more sensitive, without being overly microphonic,” Jeppson said.
“They’re a player’s pickup. If you’re really good, they’ll make you sound
better—but they won’t cover up your mistakes.”
Antar Goodwin, a veteran session bassist who has appeared on
TV with Sting, recorded and toured with Matisyahu (“He’s not Matisyahu, he’s
Matthew,” Goodwin said of the Hasidic rapper) as well as Patty Smythe, LaurenHill and other notables, said he believes in Jeppson’s work because of the
reactions he gets.
“I can honestly say that I got more unsolicited comments
about the bass from singers. And when I bring another bass they ask me, ‘where
is (the Jeppson)?’” Goodwin said while giving one of Jeppson’s newest basses a
workout at the Jeppson shop. “To get comments from singers, drummers and
guitarists about how rich the tone is, that’s just incredible. And it happens
so frequently—after he started winding his own pickups, it happens a lot more.”
Goodwin said that owning a Jeppson instrument, while
satisfying, can lead to owning more of them.
“Bryan’s built me two—more than two, but the two I use most
are ones he built. One’s like a Jazz Bass but sexier, and the bass that really
began my relationship was a hollow chambered fretless five-string bass guitar,”
Goodwin said. “It’s really kind of stunning.”
Goodwin related how he dropped a set of Jeppson pickups into
his Fender, and the reception they got.
“After I put his pickups into my jazz bass, people ask me ‘what is that?’” Goodwin said. “I tell ‘em it’s a Jazz Bass. I didn’t do anything different to it except put in Bryan’s pickups. I don’t know what he did, I don’t know what the secret is, but people really love the sound of his basses and the sound of his pickups.”
While Jeppson makes pickups of extraordinary clarity and
punch, there is a lot more to his guitars than just some nice magnets and a
pretty finish. His necks are fashioned from tonewoods with an eye toward what
guitarists need and want in a neck, Jeppson said. To that end he shaves the
treble side of the neck somewhat to allow easier reaches of higher registers,
and maintains nearly the same thickness as the neck gets closer to the body.
“My necks are thinner and flatter on the treble side,
because that’s the way your hand curves,” Jeppson said. “Another thing I try to
do is keep it the same thickness all the way down. That way when you go from
doing chords at the bottom of the neck to doing a run at the top of the neck,
it makes the neck feel a little faster as you go up the fretboard.”
In addition, Jeppson uses top of the line hardware, from evo
alloy frets to locking tuners, and sees each guitar from a player’s eye, not
just a designer’s eye. He brings air dried tone woods from an ecologically
responsible forest where the trees are harvested after they fall naturally, a
process that he says is good for the sound because air drying does not change
the cellular structure of the wood like industrial kiln drying does.
He also worked with the Audere audio company to come up with
a custom pre-amp for his basses and does incredibly detailed
custom inlays and body detailing. And now he is taking his woodworking a step
further with the introduction of his new line of archtops, which he expects to
introduce in early 2013.
Jeppson said that he started his business because he wanted
to provide musicians with the quality, individuality and versatility of custom
instruments at an affordable price. That goal is made a lot easier by the fact
that he can substitute woods, components, pickups and even inlays to satisfy a
customer.
“I ultimately try for a very organic sound—a tone where the
sound of the wood really comes through. I want my guitars to sound like vintage
guitars, but play like top of the line modern instruments,” Jeppson said.
“Since the guitars are hand built one at a time with my own pickups, I can
always tweak them to whatever tone a customer is craving.”
Read the Local Music Gear reviews of Jeppson Guitars:
Capri Archtop
Anaconda
LSJ-5 Bass
Spitfire
Read the Local Music Gear reviews of Jeppson Guitars:
Capri Archtop
Anaconda
LSJ-5 Bass
Spitfire
Contact:
Jeppson Guitars
EastBrunswick, NJ
bryan@jeppsonguitars.com
EastBrunswick, NJ
bryan@jeppsonguitars.com
Posted 12/2012
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