TEXARKANA, Texas - Pandemic downtime last year inspired longtime local musician Bryan Jefferies to retool his working life and put a half-century of guitar smarts to work building guitars.
Thus, B-Custom Guitars was born, providing custom guitars geared toward the serious player, combining Jefferies' exacting standards for the look, the feel and the sound available in the instrument. His aesthetically gorgeous guitars favor exotic hardwoods and need the right feel, something a musician can sense, he says.
Although he started his endeavors last year, Jefferies recently held a grand opening to introduce his creative work to friends and musicians.
While on break, Jefferies thought about having a guitar built for himself with money saved, but he realized that by the time he bought the guitar he wanted, he might spend $3,000 to $4,000, normal for a "decked-out, custom-built" guitar, he explained.
Even then, he was having trouble finding exactly what he wanted. Why not do it himself, he thought, while flipping through YouTube videos about building guitars and seeing a CNC machine pop up.
"I don't have a history of woodwork," Jefferies admits. "Up to this point, I had never owned a saw, really. I didn't own anything." But what he saw others doing looked like something he could do.
For not much more money, he realized, he could concoct his own little shop and build a guitar himself.
"Well, I did, and I ended up liking what I put together," Jefferies said. "And then I thought to myself, well gosh, this is a machine that helped me, this CNC, so I should be able to replicate this. So I thought, you know, why not?"
Right now, Jefferies is on his third CNC machine. Within a year he went from nothing to a set of workshop tools that include a band saw, table saws, sanders and more. Every penny he makes gets funneled back into the business. Making more guitars pays for the equipment he purchased.
"I've outfitted all kinds of stuff just within that year, so I spent a small fortune, but then again I've been able to accomplish a lot," Jefferies said.
In that time, he learned what he needed to do, putting the finishing touches on it all. Only recently, he started selling. "Right now, my new job is marketing what I spent all year putting together," said Jefferies, noting his father was a woodworker and made custom furniture on the side.
Perhaps there was a latent talent there for Bryan, untapped until now.
"He was a machinist at the paper mill, but he did that on the side. His father, my grandfather, was a carpenter by trade. Several of the homes that I grew up in when I was younger my dad built by himself," Jefferies said. "I think part of that was in me and I didn't know it."
When Jefferies, whose band is the popular Split Decision, started building his guitars, his affection for the craft grew.
"There's something about really exotic woods," Jefferies said about the appeal, too, woods like padauk and wenge. They did it for him. He didn't want to simply build something functional. He wants his guitars to be more.
For Jefferies, a successful guitar has three qualities, starting with the allure that inspires someone to reach out and touch a it.
"What encompasses that for me is probably several things. One is the woods, the exotic woods, lots of high grains, some things like that. But also the carves, the curves in the guitar. I try to make these things to where they look like they would be aerodynamic almost. They have carves in the right places," he says.
That means clearance when they're held on the fret, too. After 50 years of playing, he has practical knowledge to use. He says some builders he's seen aren't serious players.
"They were more woodworkers going toward guitar, and I'm more of a guitarist going toward woodworker," Jefferies said. He knows what he's looking for via touching it, hearing it and playing it.
"When I get through with a guitar, I can tell tell whether or I need to go back and do some work on it because I know what to look for in a nice guitar," Jefferies said, noting he's musically more of a higher end fusion player.
"My guitars are made for the player," he said. "They're made for the guy who would notice the difference."
In addition to the look, the sound and feel are essential. "The body needs to be balanced and feel a certain way," said Jefferies. With the design, he's taken some familiar looks and modified and modernized them, pulling them into the 21st century, as he puts it.
However, this work is custom work with the customer putting their own ideas into it, looking at the options and body style they want, everything from the frets they want to the neck profile and pickups.
"I use nothing but high end hardware," Jefferies said, but he still see his guitars as inexpensive despite that, starting at $1,500.
With plenty of his own video and photography experience, he's ready for the next stage of getting the word out about what he's crafting and what he can do for the discerning guitarist.
He's also happy to have developed a new skill at this stage of his life, after so long as a musician.
"I'm in love. Every day when I wake up I go out to the garage and get a piece of wood and start cutting," Jefferies said. "It's like, yeah, this is great."
(On the Net: bcustomguitars.com.)