Guitar Connections Part 1

Circa 1992, Jens J Hucke is in his workshop looking to recruit some help with the construction of a batch of bespoke bound guitar necks for a limited edition. The instrument is based on a design he created for Blues legend John Slaughter often featured in the Chris Barber Jazz Band. Dave Burrluck, top reviewer at Guitar Magazine recommends Phil Norsworthy, who comes on board for this project. Pickup guru Kent Armstrong designs and makes the unique pickups designed for the JS Signature guitar.

A few years later, Phil leads the Production team at Patrick Eggle Guitars, the UK's largest manufacturer at the time. There he meets Tony Webb. Webb ends up overseeing the production move of world renowned Blade guitars to the UK, as well as building many of the prototypes for design genius Trevor Wilkinson.

By about 2001, Phil Norsworthy assists in setting up production methods for JJ Guitars with Jens J Hucke and establishes the contact with Webby, leading to his joining the company and becoming Production Manager once Jens resigns from the company he co-founded to persue other interests and directions.

"Working with Phil and Webby was a true experience. The lessons I learned are among the seeds that lead to the birth of Wolford Guitars, and I am eternally grateful to them for their tuition" says Wolford Guitars' founder Jens J Hucke.

The team is reunited in 2009. Phil Norsworthy is now a successfull Design and Manufacturing manager with a large international company, but his passion for guitars is still burning and his CAD skills are welcome additions in the design process of Wolford Guitars. Tony Webb was also back, assisting with the tooling up and readying production methods. By January 2010, Jens Hucke is in the workshop and Wolford Guitars are officially born.

Vintage Fingerboards on Wolford Guitars

Vintage Fingerboards on Wolford Guitars

Vintage Guitars are something than many aspire too, but a hard to find. But you may have a Wolford Guitar with a 50 year old fingerboard! How is this possible you ask? We still have hundreds of old Indian Rosewood fingerboards in stock. The story of how we got them covers over half a century of British Guitar history and in that period covers the 60's Burns, the 80's SynthAxe digital guitar, and eventually JJ Hucke in the 90's and then Wolford Guitars in the 21st century.

One of the most successful English companies of the pioneering days of rock music was Burns Guitars, closely associated with Hank Marvin and the Shadows. Burns Guitars ruled British guitar music for a time. However once the British market opened up to more American imports, the company eventually ended up selling many of it's assets.  One of the individuals who had purchased original Burns equipment was Mal Chapman, who among other things acquired thousands of Burns 60's fingerboards blanks.

Mal Chapman was a very enterprising individual, and as a talented guitarist and salesperson, got involved with SynthAxe in the later 80's, the revolutionary Midi Guitar controller.  A young German living in France came to London to buy some guitar spares for his growing side line of guitar "customisation", and after witnessing a demo of the SynthAxe, orders a basic unit. This was a then still teenage Jens J Hucke, founder of Wolford Guitars, and he still has the SynthAxe to this day, blaming it for not being able to afford to buy his first car till 10 years later....

When JJ Hucke Guitars were first shown at the London Guitarist Show in Wembley, Jens met with Andrew McKenzie who had launched the PalmBay range of guitars, which shared some general styling cues with his own Antarctica model. Through Andrew, Jens also met with Barry Gibson, who was now producing the new Burns guitars in the same building as PalmBay. Music Shows in the UK, Frankfurt, and LA were often a joyous opportunity to catch up among competitors and friends.

At one of these shows Jens was approached by Mal Chapman about some fingerboards and purchased a few. Mal was at the time selling small batches of the boards to several individual small makers in the UK. In a random conversation Jens realised that Mal had been involved with SynthAxe, and they stayed in touch after that. Mal Chapman had started in the mean time a successful flight case and picture framing company trading as Reflections GR Cases. When eventually Jens became involved with JJ Guitars, he swapped a couple of JJ Hucke guitars and cash for all the remaining fingerboards. He kept a few hundred of these boards for his personal reserve, and these are now used on some of our Wolford Guitars.... and this is how we can offer half a century old fingerboards.

Wolford Guitars and Jens J Hucke are not implying any association with SynthAxe, PalmBay, GR Cases, Burns or any other company or individual whose Trademark we fully acknowledge.