There is more than a whiff of change in the UK’s guitar-making landscape. Seth Baccus is riding the wave… but it’s been quite a journey
Three years ago – virtually to the day – we were chatting to Seth Baccus for our review on a superb £4k Nautilus Classic. To say we were impressed with his craft is an understatement. To be fair, Seth had shipped his first custom-order guitar a decade earlier after 12 years in retail at Mansons Guitar Shop, with eight as the manager, and had built his first guitar in 2004. He’d also been an on-the-road tech for the likes of John Paul Jones, Led Zeppelin’s reunion and local megastars Muse. Back then he was making around 20 instruments a year with an approximate build-time of nine months.
Shortly after that, like many sole customguitar makers, he reached a crossroads. “I was turning away so much work,” Seth recalls. “[From] dealers that would have been wonderful to deal with but clearly don’t just need one guitar now and then. Likewise, I was turning away artists who’d want a guitar way quicker than I could make it for them.”
Meanwhile, Leigh Dovey, who’d founded PJD Guitars back in 2010, always had the production guitar in mind. “The way I see it is that the electric guitar was always intended to be a factory-made instrument right back from the days of Leo Fender – aproduction-line guitar,” he told us. By 2019, PJD was exclusively supplying Guitar Galleries, and the following year, with a team of three, was building 12 to 16 guitars a month. In 2021, PJD branched out to produce guitars for another brand, the newly formed Cream T Guitars, with its production rising to around 40 guitars a month by the autumn of that year.
Shortly after Sounds Affects’ Tim Lobley had approached Leigh to build Cream T guitars, Seth got in touch. “I’d spoken to Seth over the years, asking him for tips and advice along the way,” said Leigh. “He loved the guitars we were building, especially at the price we could do them at. He was looking for a ‘team build’ guitar for a reasonable price.”
With more space and staf f, UKGB now has the capacity to build around 1,500 guitars a year Soon enough, Leigh had grander plans for PJD. “[My colleague] Mike Dunn and I thought, ‘Why don’t we change from being just the makers of PJD to being a manufacturing facility for other brands?’,” he said. And the idea of a guitar-making hub – what was soon to become UK Guitar Builders (UKGB) – was conceived. “So rather than PJD building Cream T and Seth Baccus guitars, which might seem a bit odd, we have UKGB building guitars for ourselves and other brands.”
With new investment, and more space and staff, UKGB now has the initial capacity to build around 1,500 guitars a year and is already working with two other brand
