| About JMG Jan Gorski-Mescir is a former and (sometimes) current session musician, primarily a bassist, an artist, writer and podcaster, formerly a lecturer and research web designer whose wife says should really have slept more. Born in 1959 in Hannover, Germany to a German mother and Polish father, he was however raised in Liverpool after being adopted by a Liverpool-Irish family, and accordingly defines himself as 'Krautscouse' and bleeds Liverpool Red to the last drop.. Jan first became interested in the art of guitar and amplifier repair while working as a session player, first on his own equipment (after all, if your gear doesn't work you can't get hired and ergo, you don't get paid) and then via word of mouth from other musicians when he stated being asked 'could you see if you can do something with my Stratocaster, Les Paul, crackly Ampeg stack' etc - so he thought it was a good idea to learn more about doing it properly, after all you don't want to screw up a 1955 Les paul Gold top or a Marshall Bluesbreaker amp - many years later, it now occupies a sizeable portion of his living. Jan initially studied to be a sculptor, Fine Art being another of his great loves, he also draws, paints and works as a printmaker as and when time and space allow and he found all these skills were directly transferable to his work in restoring, building and repairing guitars, basses and other instruments and amplifiers. he and his wife Rae moved to Bordeaux in France from London in 2013, where they both work in their differing fields, sometimes with occasional overlap. Having built his first guitar in 1982 - a solid-body bass guitar made of walnut and ash incorporating many of the features he liked in the older Fender Jazz basses but with a few extras of his own (circuitry that enabled phase-switching and prevention of tonal roll-off), he was pleased to find many of his contemporaries and far better musicians than him very much liked what he had made, though he was less pleased when after only six months or so and after only being used for a few pieces of studio work, the bass was stolen from a gig in London....such is the musician's lot! Since then, Jan has built several other basses, most of which have been sold on - bar one - which more or less mirrored his original first creation. These have included Stratocaster, Telecaster and Les Paul style guitars, but often with specific differences to the original in terms of finish, neck radius, pick-ups, electronics, locking machine heads, different tone woods and on occasion, specially made hardware and switch gear, or whatever else was asked for at times by a given customer. He has also rebuilt original Rickenbackers, Fenders, Gibsons, Hofners and others from mostly original parts when the owners of those guitars thought -or had been told - they were beyond repair, sometimes apart from the necessary carpentry, this has involved completely rewinding original pick-ups by hand and replacing pole and humbucker magnets, sourcing and fitting original period spec pots and much more besides.. jan's creative activities had to take a backseat for a while before and immediately after he had a carpal tunnel operation on his left hand at the end of his first year in France. The operation was a complete success so now the artistic activities are fully back on the agenda along with not only the working on guitars, but the playing and recording of his musical ideas in his modern home studio. It was during this time of relative inactivity that he first got into podcasting for @AnieldIndex, since when he has developed his own series of pods, the 'Jumpers for Goalposts' Club and City History pods, which he writes, creates, records and narrates himself. The pods have the added fun element of a challenge to re-record as accurately as possible, a song from the charts of the era under discussion. Over the years, Jan - who is not a huge fan of most modern guitars, has amassed a sizeable collection of vintage guitars, the oldest of which is a Gibson BR-9 lapsteel guitar from 1951 and the most recent an Epiphone 12 string acoustic from 1989. The bulk of his guitars date from the 1960s or early 1970s. Some were donated in a 'sick state' and have since over time been restored, two were bequeathed by old friends and the rest have been bought mostly at a time before they were fully valued. There are a few of course which were bought as restoration jobs and have been kept ever since. |
 |
© 2016 JMGweb