Phillip Jarrell is a guitar-maker and professional photographer based in Shanghai. He is a guitarist and an experienced songwriter with writing credits including “Torn Between Two Lovers,” written with Peter Yarrow.
In the spirit of GigMaven’s forthcoming Golden-Axe Competition (we’re giving away the beautiful instrument to the left), we’d like to bring you the thoughts and inspirations of the founder and maker of Jarrell Guitars.
“During the first 3 years of making guitars, I sourced all parts from factories around the world. I experimented with all kinds of pick ups, and with many different kinds of woods. I tested everything I could think of in the chain between the player and the sound that hits your ear. Our guitars are the result of a journey from my true love as a child, to contemporary designs, with the cold and clear mathematical measurements of precise guitar making.”
Why did you start making guitars?
I’ve always loved guitars. I can remember watching my father play along with Johnny Cash, when I was about four or five years old. He had some kind of Jazz archtop guitar, and was using a Grundig Hi-Fi as an amp.
I told all my friends I could play until I was ten, when I actually bought my first guitar (I think a Silvertone), and learned a few chords. I played songs like “Gloria” and “Walk Don’t Run” when I was 13, during my first gigs with a rock band. Then my dad bought me an old Fender ST from a pawn shop when I was fourteen. Wish I had kept that one. It was worn and needed paint. When my band started playing Hendrix songs, I stripped it down and painted white. That paint job didn’t last long. I sent it off to get painted, and it got lost. I went on to a Vox semi-hollow model. Then a Mosrite or two. Then finally a Gibson 335, and Martin D-28, which I kept and played nightly for the next twenty years or more.
When I was a recording artist with 20th Century Fox, I use to collect guitars. I noticed that a lot of touring artists used different guitars for different songs, sometimes using an instrument for only one song. I realized the sound and feel that certain guitars gave certain songs, and I used them as inspiration for my writing.
When I moved to Shanghai, I did not bring a guitar with me. I opened a fashion photography studio, and that dream came true. I worked. I shot everyday for about four years, until one day I fell down some steps in a restaurant and broke my foot. That slowed me down, and I started thinking about playing the guitar again.
I looked around all the shops and could not find an acoustic guitar that sounded like an acoustic guitar. I went through all the shops in Shanghai, and then went to Beijing. Finally I did find an acoustic guitar that could inspire a song. I had never heard of the brand name. I set out to find who made it, which must be the most difficult task in the world. I’ve found that the source of a good guitar is a best kept secret.
During the many months of research that followed, I realized two important things. First, that I knew photoshop very well, and with it, I could design whatever guitar I wanted. Second, the Gibsons and Fenders of my youth were now considered to be some of the best guitars ever made. For me they are just what a guitar is suppose to sound like.
Since then, my quest has been twofold: to design a guitar that looks so great that you want to wear, and to make a performing guitar that sings, that inspires, and that sends me into another dimension.
Do you design the instruments yourself?
Yes. I remembered my dad talking about how a good tailor could make a suit after seeing a picture of it (he had a ring made from a picture he found in a New York Times). Once I found a couple of guitar makers whose work I liked, I started to design guitars in Photoshop. We got great looking designs quickly, but it was the art of guitar making that took time, and is something that will continue indefinitely.
For the first two or three years, I read everything I could about guitar making, which led me to a guy with a Plek Machine in L.A. He could scan the guitar and show me each point on the fretboard where a buzz might occur. After each trip I’d go back to my luthiers to give them feedback. The learning process was difficult–they don’t speak English, I don’t speak Chinese, and my interpreter doesn’t know anything about guitars!
Along the way, as I reconnected with old music business buddies, I was surprised at the emotional responses our guitars were getting. We’d show them new designs via email, people were taking them seriously. They couldn’t wait to get one. These responses drove me to develop the instruments in the real world.
In the beginning, my vision and ideas were limited by the craftsmanship of the luthiers, and I continued to search for more talented makers. My skills as an artist are exact, and guitar making is also exact. Every measurement is very precise, and once I figured out measurements that felt right, I was on my way to a great guitar. Presently, Jarrell guitars are the best playing instruments I know, bar none.
What other guitars inspire your instruments?
I am sure that all the guitars I have played somehow became a part of my understanding of guitars.
What’s one of your most memorable musical experiences?
I remember the first time I was in the studio with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section to demo my songs. Those guys signed me to write for them, and then when I brought the songs in they took me into the studio for the first time, and it was like a dream. I was so scared I could hear my self breathe and my heart beat, and I became so sensitive to the sound of my voice that I couldn’t recognize my self!
Then there were the days when Mick Ronson and I spent a lot of time together. He and Mick Shane both played on some of my tracks. Being in the studio with Mick Ronson was also like a dream. One day after he finished an overdub, he laid his guitar down and walked out of the room. I went out and picked it up, and tried to play it with the sound set just as he had adjusted it for his performance. It was so powerful to touch that I could not control it at all. I have no idea how he did what he did, but it always felt like when he played a guitar, any guitar, it always felt like God was talkin’.
Then there were some tracks I cut in Los Angeles. Listen to this group of players. We were in Malcolm Cecil’s studio in Santa Monica (Malcolm had moved his studio from NYC, where he worked on Songs in the Key of Life with Steve Wonder, check the video below). Malcolm was helping book the session musicians. We had Nicky Hopkins on piano, Earl Slick on lead guitar, Reggie McBride on bass, The Waters Family background singers, Raphael Ravenscroft on sax, the horn players from Tower of Power. That was still the favorite of all my studio days. It was in ’79, and the tracks were never released. Maybe we should put them out one day. There was also a few times that I met Stevie, and we would shake hands to say hello, and that was an erie feeling. I could feel him going inside my mind and reading my thoughts. No way to hide from a guy like that. Scary! Imagine if everything you thought was heard by those around you.
What’s your favorite part about making guitars?
I love putting new elements together. All the details are interesting. Even the smallest point like the color of the volume knobs, and how they feel when you touch them. I think of them like I am making a fashion show. Dress them up to evoke a certain style and vibe, and then figure our how to make that guitar sound like it looks.
What’s your least favorite part?
I discovered that when manufacturing anything, more things can go wrong than you can possible imagine. Only a road test over a long period of time will prove what really works and what does not. That is why it is only after 50 year that we know some of the guitars made in the 60’s and early 70’s were really great ones. I learned that there’s a great distance between what you think and what really is.
If you had to make another type of instrument, what would it be?
We have just started making bass guitars. There are so many different types of guitar, that it is like a whole other world to go from a semi hollow body to a solid body, and all the different points of a solid body, and then to acoustics, and now to bass. Each one is such a specialty. I can’t imagine making something I don’t have a feeling for. So anything outside of a guitar or bass I can’t even imagine.
Who are your top five favorite guitar players?
Jimmy Page, Duane Allman, Jimi Hendrix , Mick Ronson and Luther Perkins. These five guys had the biggest influence on me as a player, and I’ve listened to their music more than anyone else’s.
What are your top five favorite albums of all time?
Led Zepplin II, Jimi Hendrix Are You Experienced, The Beatles Abbey Road, Tears for Fears Songs From The Big Chair and Loreena McKennitt The Mask and the Mirror.
What kinds of players are your guitars for ?
At this time we have made a limited amount of guitars, but they are meant for professionals from a wide range of genres. They’re for sensitive players who recognize the what they are, and know the difference.
