Leigh Dovey has been building guitars in the UK long enough to know exactly what matters in the first thirty seconds. Neck comfort, fretwork, how the instrument sounds before it’s even plugged in. Australian Guitar Review sat down with him this week for a full feature on PJD Guitars, covering the brand’s genesis, its design approach, and the launch of the Origin Series. Read it here.
Dovey is plainspoken about what he’s trying to build and why.
On working with classic shapes:
“The classic designs are classics for a reason: they’re timeless, and they just work.”
The St John is a good example of that thinking in practice. Dovey has always found the classic offset Jazz shape a little too wide in the lower bout, so the St John pulls it in. The offset feel is preserved, but the guitar sits and plays more comfortably. That kind of quiet refinement, rather than reinvention, runs through the whole range.
On what he wants a player to notice straight away:
“How comfortable the neck is, how good the fretwork feels and how good it sounds even unplugged.”
The Origin Series took four years to arrive. The prompt was simple: players kept telling Dovey they loved PJD but couldn’t get there on price. On the decision to finally do something about that:
“It really made me think, well, let’s make this available to everyone. And here we are.”
The price point is more accessible than PJD’s higher-end UK instruments. The design intent isn’t adjusted to match. That consistency carries into how Dovey talks about spec sheets too. A feature list won’t tell you whether a guitar makes you want to keep playing it. Getting the wood, the wires, and the metal in the right relationship to each other is where the actual work happens.
On where the brand is headed:
“I’m not a guy in a suit picking guitar specs from a catalogue. I live and breathe (and build) guitars all day, every day.”
PJD Guitars is now available in Australia through Paytons. The St John and the Carey Origin are both in stock locally. No import wait, no guesswork. Dovey makes the case for that access himself in the feature, noting that hands-on experience is something an online purchase can never fully replace.
