About

The UK’s most talented and innovative young guitar maker – The Yorkshire Post

This is how I became a guitar-maker. In 2005, I resigned from my London office job and moved to Arizona. I unpacked my suitcase in a tiny, cockroach-infested room, in 120-degree heat.

I was there to study at the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery, in the shadow of the Phoenix Mountains. It was a strange, if wonderful place: there were scorpions in the woodpile, a black widow’s nest below the belt sanders and my workbench was also home to a praying mantis. It was very different to my life in the UK.

I was at a trade show in Los Angeles when I met Andrew Bishop, the owner of a chain of guitar stores in the North of England. Upon my return to England in 2005, I established the first Jim Fleeting Guitars building and repair workshops in his Yorkshire store, Ripon City Music.

I make custom acoustic guitars, electric guitars, electric basses, dulcimers and more. Having outgrown my original workshops, I recently expanded to larger, standalone premises in Ripon city centre.