The Standard

There is no such thing as a practice guitar.

St John Guitars runs on that one belief. Every instrument I build, rebuild, or repair is made to walk onto a stage or into a studio and perform without apology. I do not build down to a price. I build to a standard, and the number on the tag reflects the parts and the hours, never a shortcut in the work.

The components I choose, the magnets, the capacitors, the pots, the wire, shape your tone and shape how you grow as a player. So I treat every one of them as the most important part in the guitar. When an instrument leaves my bench, it is a St John Guitars instrument, judged on its own merits and nothing else.

My vision is simple, and it does not change. Build fewer instruments. Build each one better than the last. Give players an instrument they can trust under any condition, from a bedroom to an arena.

The Person at the Bench

An engineer's hands and a musician's ear

I have spent more than twenty years living in two worlds that most people keep apart. One is engineering. I have built and secured large-scale systems for two decades, work where a single missed detail can bring the whole thing down. Precision and documentation are not habits for me. They are reflexes. The other world is music, and it has been with me my whole life.

In 2009 I came through a near-death experience that changed how I hear. What had been a love became something closer to a calling. Playing came to me with a clarity I had never had, and building followed close behind. I understand my own path through the lens of acquired savant syndrome. Whatever the name for it, the result is the same at the bench. I hear the instrument, I see the whole signal path in my head, and I cannot leave a detail wrong.

St John Guitars is where those two worlds meet. The engineer logs every measurement and shields every cavity. The musician refuses to sign off until the instrument sings. You get both of them in the same guitar.

Inside Every Build

The details most people never see

The difference in a St John instrument lives in the places a buyer rarely looks. Every control cavity and pickguard gets a full copper Faraday cage with a star ground, so the noise floor stays dead quiet under stage lighting and high gain. My hand-wound pickups are measured on the LCR meter for DC resistance and capacitance before they ever go in, so the voicing is known, not guessed.

Harnesses are hand-soldered on full-size CTS pots with cloth-covered wire. Fret work is leveled, crowned, and polished to a mirror, the nut is cut to spec, and the setup is dialed before anything ships. Every build is documented down to the part number, because I run my shop the way I run my engineering work. If it is not written down and measured, it is not finished.

Tone is not an afterthought either. I wire with film and paper-in-oil capacitors sourced from Russia, Ukraine, and the United States, each with its own voice, never the penny ceramic cap that ships in a factory guitar.

Things I Have Invented

The quick-swap tone plug

I am a builder, but I am also a tinkerer, and when something on the bench is harder than it should be, I fix it. That is where my quick-swap tone plug came from. Changing a tone capacitor usually means pulling the harness and heating up solder joints. On a St John harness it does not.

Every tone cap rides on a keyed plug that seats into a socket in the wiring. Pop one out, push the next one in, and the guitar is re-voiced in seconds with no soldering iron and no cut wires. You can run your guitar plug-and-play and keep a small menu of caps in your case, or have me hardwire your favorite for good. Your guitar, your call.

Book My Time

Bring me your guitar or bass

Whether you want an instrument built from nothing or you have a problem that needs solving, you can book my time. Here is the work I do, on guitars and basses, out of my Lynden shop. Every job is quoted up front, and the estimate is free.